Fields of Grace

by Hannah Luce

  • • •

  The doctors got me up and out of bed after my last surgery in June, and they had me taking a couple of steps at a time around my bed. Those small steps took everything out of me. I was so weak and so exhausted that afterward I collapsed on my bed. After that, I had to take a few extra steps every day. Every step felt like a mile. I wasn’t always the most willing patient, but I tried.

  On the first Saturday in June, three weeks after the crash, I walked all the way to the visitors’ area and back, for the first time without a walker. The doctors saw that as significant progress.

  Two days later, I was being loaded into a medical transport plane, headed to a rehabilitation hospital in Dallas. They gave me extra sedation because I was petrified of the plane, but the medication did little to blunt my frazzled nerves. Wouldn’t you know it? The weather was bad, and the plane was dodging thunderstorms all the way to Dallas. Papa and a medical technician took turns holding my hand the whole way. Afterward, Papa wrote on his blog that we had an “an amazing adventure.” Leave it to Papa to look on the bright side. I called it a punishment worse than Hell.

  We landed in Dallas, and I was whisked to Zale Lipshy University Hospital.

  Things were going pretty well until my doctor came into the room. When I saw him I gasped. He looked just like Garrett, and he even had his mannerisms. I began to cry.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “What’s the matter?” I tried to explain, but every time I did I burst into tears again. “I can’t,” I said. “You can’t be my doctor.” I’ll bet he’d never heard that before. Papa’s timing is always impeccable, and he walked in right as I was sobbing. I saw the doctor look at him with an expression of complete bewilderment. Papa knew right away what I was thinking. The doctor really did look that much like Garrett. “It’s not personal,” Papa said. “I’m sorry. She’s been through a lot today.” (I ended up sticking with the doctor, and I’m glad I did. He was awesome.)

  Papa dried my eyes and pointed out the stack of cards and letters from well-wishers that awaited me—as in Kansas City, many from people I didn’t know.

  I couldn’t believe it when he showed me the newspaper stories about my progress and the move to Dallas. I had no idea so many people were following my recovery. Papa said he had even been interviewed by Matt Lauer for the Today Show that morning, and I thought that was pretty cool.

  As grateful as I was to be one step closer to home, I was still in terrible pain. My limbs ached from the wounds and the lack of movement, and the physical therapists put me to work right away. They were like drill sergeants, but with hearts. When I didn’t feel like working, they pushed me harder. Reach those arms! Throw that ball! Climb those stairs! Stretch! The danger of not doing the exercises was that my skin would tighten and my scars would thicken and constrict, and I’d be in danger of permanently losing the movement in my hand, arm, and leg.

  One day, the doctor took my cane away. I knew I didn’t need it anymore, but it had become a crutch. (I was developing a lot of crutches.) I argued at first, but he wouldn’t budge. If I was angry, he said, I should write my feelings on the mirror in the therapy room. “And reach high when you do,” he said. “Stttttrrrrretch that arm!”

  I took a marker and wrote until my arm throbbed.

  “I hate this place.”

  “I hate the doctors and the therapists.”

  “I hate my skin.”

  “I hate myself.”

  “I miss my friends! They’re gone! Is it my fault? Why couldn’t I save them? Why wasn’t I stronger?”

  “Why didn’t I let Garrett into my heart?”

  “Why wasn’t I honest about my true emotions?”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  I felt better for a while.

  For three weeks I did what they told me. I hated every minute of it, but I knew I had to do what they said. In early July, after a month of physical and occupational therapy, the doctors said I was ready to go home. I had made good progress, they said, and I could continue my physical therapy as an outpatient while I was living at home with my parents. Even though I hated the hospital, I begged them to let me stay. I needed more help, I said. I needed to be in a hospital setting. I wouldn’t do as well at home. “Please,” I cried. “Just a little bit longer. Please let me stay.”

  The truth was, I was terrified of going home. At least when I was in the hospital, and then in the rehabilitation center, I always had something to distract me from thinking about things. There was always another surgery, or another vial of blood being drawn, or exercise to perform, or a stranger trying to get into my room.

  At home, I wouldn’t have those diversions. There would be no escape from my tortured thoughts. Except for the pills that helped me to forget. And I’d made sure I stockpiled plenty of them.

  30

  Turning Point

  The darker the night, the brighter the stars. The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

  —FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

  After nearly a month at the hospital in Dallas the doctors said there was no reason to keep me anymore. I could do physical and occupational therapy three times a week as an outpatient. Papa came to take me home in his pickup truck. I was mad at the doctor for making me go and I stalled all morning, trying to hold off the inevitable trip back to Garden Valley. When I was finally wheeled out of the hospital, I felt like a sickly baby bird that’d been pushed out of the nest. I brought a bunch of pillows from the hospital with me. Papa piled them on the passenger-side seat, and two aides helped me up into the truck. Poor Papa. He was so excited that I was coming home, but I was in a grouchy mood and didn’t want to engage him in any kind of conversation.

  We got on the road and, as I stared out the passenger-side window, Papa put on some eighties music and sang along with the radio. He was upbeat and acting corny and I knew he was trying to make me smile, just as he had always done when I was a little girl and we were alone together in the car. He was trying his best to cheer me up, but there was no lifting my spirits. I was terrified of going back home to a quiet room, where everything was peaceful and calm, and there was nothing to distract me from finally facing my reality, a reality in which I would have to deal with the absence of my beloved friends, my guilt over their deaths, and living in my new pockmarked skin.

  We stopped at a coffee house on the way, another gesture by Papa to try to make me happy. He knew about my obsession with coffee and how I loved spending time in coffee houses. I was hardly healed enough to enjoy anything, though. I had tubes in my nose and my burns still bled through my bandages. I was heavily medicated and in terrible pain and I couldn’t walk more than a few steps without having to rest. Papa gently pulled me out of the cab of the truck and loaded me into a wheelchair he’d rented for such times. (A wheelchair? So this is my future, I thought. I can hardly wait to get started.)

  Papa steered the chair toward the coffee house. It seemed as if he hit every bump in the pavement, which caused me excruciating pain. A few feet from the door, he came close to running me off the sidewalk, and my face reddened with anger. “Papa!” I cried. “You’d be a terrible nurse!” Papa. Dear Papa. He had the patience of a saint. “That’s why I’m a preacher!” he said cheerfully. I made a weak attempt at a smile.

  I knew Papa meant well. He always meant well. But I was in no frame of mind to want to hear his jokes, much less to laugh at them. I was so bitter that my mouth tasted sour. I just wanted to take my medication and lapse into nothingness. I gritted my teeth and sipped my coffee as slowly as I could to delay the trip home as long as I possibly could. Finally, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I was slurping the last vestiges of my drink long after the drink was gone. Papa stood to leave. “Time to get home,” he said. “Mmmhmm,” I said.

  He pushed me back outside and we hit the same bumps that we did on the way in. When he lifted me back up into the truck, I burst into tears. Papa thought he’d hurt me, and he had, unintentionally, of course. I was crying becau
se everything hurt me. I couldn’t even touch my burned fingers to a keyboard on a computer without crying out in pain, and nearly a third of my body was in the same challenged condition. Every pain and every stain reminded me of my fear that I would never live another day without worrying about blood seeping through my clothes, or the slightest touch by someone or something sending me into a tailspin. Papa took my hand in his. I could see his eyes welling with tears. “Give it to the Lord, sweetheart,” he said. I cried even harder.

  I looked at my father differently after the crash. He had such a purposeful life, a life overflowing with love in and love out. I reveled at his unshakable belief in the word of God and the peace that seemed to come with a life anchored in faith, and I respected him for living within the tenets of his faith. I realized that I had been so angry with him for so long that I’d stopped looking at the sum of who he was, and was only seeing the things I didn’t like about what he believed.

  Papa was a kind and compassionate man with a huge heart and a silly, goofy streak. He truly cared about people, and he went out of his way to be the best father and husband he could possibly be. How could I be so angry with this loving man who had slept in a chair by my bed for weeks on end, holding my hand and comforting me, even when it meant endless sleepless nights for him? How could I resent him for wanting the religious faith for me that had brought him such comfort and joy during his life?

  At the same time I realized I felt disconnected from God because of Papa. He and my mother saw everything in life through the paradigm of their very specific religious beliefs. There wasn’t room in their lives for people or ideals that didn’t conform to their exacting definition of God. I didn’t relate to that God, the one who judged so harshly, and discriminated against perfectly good and decent people, and invited only a privileged few into the kingdom of Heaven. But maybe that didn’t mean I couldn’t believe.

  I had quietly begun wondering if maybe I could rediscover my faith. Perhaps it would just look different from theirs. I couldn’t condone the judgments that came with their religious conviction, or the God who rejected good people because they loved someone of their own sex and condemned us for endorsing creative expression in certain music and movies and art. I suspected any God I put my faith in would accept all of us, with all of our human foibles and missteps. And I had started to wonder if He had been with me all the time and I just hadn’t allowed myself to see the beauty and breadth of His reach because of the narrow lens I had been given through which to see Him.

  I couldn’t tell Papa any of that. He wouldn’t have been happy that I’d begun thinking about faith again, not unless it was on his terms. No, if I’d told Papa about how my faith was changing and evolving, he’d have been concerned that whatever my beliefs were, they weren’t good enough for God. Or for him.

  Papa turned his truck into our driveway. “Here we are!” he said. I had gotten completely lost in my thoughts and didn’t realize we were so close to home. “Here we are,” I said echoing him, trying to muster some enthusiasm.

  Mom was waiting at the door. She embraced me, careful not to hurt my burned arm and back. The dogs raced around in circles when they saw me. Charity was living in Chicago, but I’d been hoping my brother would be there to greet me, but no such luck. Papa said Cameron was away at summer camp. The house was, as I’d expected, as peaceful and quiet as a Zen garden. I panicked and went straight to my room.

  Mom had tidied it up and it smelled like sweet lavender. The windows were propped open and a slight breeze blew the lacy curtains inward. Mom had moved my favorite armchair in from the living room, a beautiful antique that had once belonged to my great-grandmother, and she’d placed chocolates on my pillow, just like in a fancy hotel. My private bath had a shower chair and seven different kinds of creams lined up on the vanity. (Mom and Papa, unbeknownst to each other, had both shopped for creams for me for my homecoming, knowing that part of my therapy was keeping my healing skin moisturized.)

  While Papa propped up the pillows on my bed, Mom walked in with a tray with homemade soup and an English muffin with peanut butter, my favorite snack. She set it down on my night table and hugged me. “I need to take a nap,” I said. Mom nodded. “Of course, sweetheart,” she said.

  Closing the bedroom door behind my parents, I took the bowl of soup and dumped it in the toilet, then wrapped the English muffin in a napkin, crumpled it into a ball and hid it under my bed. I hadn’t had an appetite since the crash and now my stomach was in knots because I was home, and I feared I might be sick if I even attempted to force something down.

  Later that night, after my parents turned in for the night, I snuck into the kitchen and tossed my balled-up muffin into the trash. The house was pitch dark and the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock. The silence made me cry. “The world is closing in on me,” I thought. “I feel like I’m suffocating.” I walked back to my room and tried watching The Scarlet Pimpernel for the fourth time, but my vision was distorted by flashbacks of burning flesh and bloody limbs. Feelings of panic and desperation enveloped me. I thought I sensed Austin and Garrett in the room, but I wasn’t ready to see them, and I told them so. “I’m pretending you’re not here,” I said. “I know you want a response from me, but I’m not going to talk to you.” Were they waiting for an apology? “No,” I said. “I’m sorry but I’m not ready to talk to you, not yet, not here.”

  I turned my attention to the numbers on my alarm clock. How long until it was time for my next round of meds? It was three in the morning and I’d taken my last dose at one. I was taking between sixty and seventy prescribed pills a day for everything from my physical pain to anxiety and depression, and the ones I called my numbing pills always wore off after an hour or so. According to the alarm clock, I still had two hours to go before my next dose. But my skin was crawling.

  Minutes passed and I turned up the volume on my TV, trying to drown out my wretched thoughts. My room seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and I felt nauseated. If I didn’t get some air, and soon, I knew I’d faint, and then what? Papa wouldn’t find me until he came in to say good-bye before he went to work.

  Feelings of fear and helplessness overtook me. I was reminded at that moment of how I had lost all control of my life. As if I had ever forgotten. I didn’t have power over my body or my thoughts anymore. I had to get out of the house. I left my room and walked outside on the deck and down the steps to the edge of the lake. Leaning against the fence post, I searched the blackened sky for answers. I cried out for Austin and Garrett, and my words echoed across the surface of the lake. “I’m sorry I asked you to go away,” I said, sobbing into my hands. “Where are you now? What am I supposed to do without you?” The only sound I heard was silence, and in my grief, I turned to God for comfort. “Please!” I whimpered. “Show me some sign that you’re here, that I’m not alone.”

  I waited for a shooting star, or a clap of thunder. Even a fish jumping out of the water would do. I waited and waited for something, please something, but nothing happened. My mind began churning up dark thoughts, and I blinked to try to force the horrific images away. Even if I’d been successful, I knew it would only be a matter of seconds before those shattering memories flashed in front of my eyes again.

  My mind rushed to the pills in my room. My pills, I thought. It was the only control I had left, when I took my meds. I turned and hobbled back up the steps and stumbled into the house. Once I was inside my room, I locked the door behind me, grabbed my bottle of numbing pills, and turned it upside down on my bedspread. I counted out two, then three, and one more for good measure. Soon, I would be drifting off into oblivion.

  31

  The Shower

  Mothers can forgive anything! Tell me all, and be sure that I will never let you go, though the whole world should turn from you.

  —LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, JO’S BOYS

  Looking at my own body triggered some of my worst flashbacks. I used to have white, creamy skin. Now a third of it was flaming r
ed and mottled and scarred. When I looked in the mirror I felt as if I was seeing someone else. Every time I looked at myself it was May 11 again. Flashback! “Hannah! I want you to tell me the truth. Do I look okay?” “Yes, yes, Austin. You look fine.” Sometimes I tested myself to prove that I really was seeing me. “Okay, I’m going to move my hand now,” I’d tell myself. I’d look down and see my hand moving, but it didn’t resemble the pretty little porcelain hand I’d had before the crash, and I refused to accept that it was really mine now. Flashback! The palms of my hands sizzle on a hot metal rod I grab to try to hoist myself out of the plane. I am half in and half out, draped over Garrett’s back, but something is stopping me from propelling myself any farther forward.

  My first shower after I got home was torture. Mom helped me to prepare for it but I insisted on going in myself.

  There’s a towel on the floor so I won’t slip and a pillow on the chair in the shower because my butt is so burned I can’t sit anywhere without a cushion. I don’t know what to do first. I turn on the water and hold tight to the chair as the warm water pours over my body. The shower spray feels like prickly needles piercing my skin. I embrace the pain because, just for a moment, it distracts me from my sorrow. And because I feel as if I deserve to be in pain.

  I’m terrified to look down, but I do, and I loathe my body. I reach down to my knees and try to scrub away my scars. It’s no use, of course. You can’t scrub away scars, I know. But how do I live with them? How will anyone ever look at me without grimacing if I can’t look at me without grimacing?

  I am overcome with rage, rage about what’s happened to me, rage over the senselessness of my friends’ deaths—and I can’t help thinking, “Why did I live and they died?” I slip off the shower chair and crumple in a heap on the tile floor. There’s nowhere to go to hide from myself. I close my eyes as tightly as I can but in an instant I see those mournful images. Austin burning alive in the plane. The human torch I saw had to have been him. Garrett slumped over, dead.