Gone Page 4

  “Hey, how do my shoulders look?” They looked at each other, then back at me.

  “What? What are you talking about, Linda?” my mother said.

  I flashed her a smile. “Well, I’m lopsided now, ’cause my arm’s gone, so I need everyone to remind me to keep my shoulders even.”

  My dad stood tall and mute at the foot of the bed, taking it all in. When Dave and I burst out laughing, they looked totally confused. From tears to the loony bin. What a roller coaster we put them on. But we had caught them off guard. Momentarily distracted from tragedy, they had to smile at our goofiness.

  “Mable and Albert,” Dave said, “the military has a room for all of you at the BOQ in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. It’s where my parents and Adrian and Johnny are staying.”

  “When word got out that two active-duty military members and their spouses were in a train accident, food and support started pouring in from every direction. Everything’s covered for you while you’re here,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re with us.”

  Having crept despairingly into our hospital room, my parents had a glimmer of hope in their eyes when they left us late that afternoon. We can do this.

  By now, there was a full-blown battle going on in my head, one of David-and-Goliath proportions. One side was manned by troops saying, Don’t open your eyes . . . don’t move . . . cry a lot . . . moan and groan . . . be a pain in the butt . . . make everyone miserable and feel sorry for you . . . why me . . . The other side was peopled by forces cheering me on: Open your eyes . . . look around . . . smile . . . talk to people . . . laugh . . . pretend everything will be fine . . . make everyone around you feel good . . . you can do this. The fighting was fast and furious.

  Just when I’d convince myself to be positive and open my eyes, I’d see the gaping space on the bed where my legs should have stretched out in front of me, with ten toes that could wiggle on command. That would make me slam my eyes shut in avoidance.

  I’d always been an upbeat person, and I wanted to stay that way, no matter what it took. Attitude was the only thing I had control of, so my mind went into overdrive trying to be optimistic and cheerful. I pretended my brain was a muscle, which, if squeezed tightly enough, would power my way through all the challenges ahead of us. I wanted the open-your-eyes team to win in the warfare going on in my head. I can do this.

  An unwilling captive in a hospital bed, I had plenty of time to start working this through. I found myself looking for things to surmount. It was like an addiction: give me something to work on, something to think about, ways to start replacing what I’d lost. This helped me, but I also wanted everyone around me to take heart and see things working out for us.

  Later that day, a nurse walked in holding her fist next to her ear, a pretty good international signal that there was a phone call for us. Dave got out of bed more quickly than usual and followed her to the nursing station.

  A phone call. Just the distraction I need!

  He returned quickly and, with help from the nurse, put me in a wheelchair. The phone was on a long cord, but it reached only as far as the door to our room.

  “Hello?” I greeted my mystery caller eagerly. When I heard my best friend, Juli, on the other end of the line, I automatically continued, “What are you doing?” This was, and still is, my signature start of a phone conversation. Knowing that it was an expensive international call, we kept it short. As we came to the end, she said, “It’s so good to hear your voice. You sound just the same.”

  “Of course I do. I am the same—just a lot smaller.” I was grinning from ear to ear as Dave pushed me back to my bed. Hearing a friend’s voice gave me a new infusion of hope and confidence. I knew we needed a whole team of people to help get us through this. I knew we would have help as we returned home. We can do this.

  “We are going to learn how to do things with your left hand,” Nora said as she walked into my room a few minutes later. She placed a small, unopened milk carton on the tray in front of me.

  “Open it!”

  After turning it over several times, I gripped it with my teeth so I could rip it open.

  “Nein, nein!” Nora admonished. “You must not use your teeth. Never, never!”

  Despite her abrupt bedside manner, Nora was far from a cold practitioner; she was a do-what-needs-to-be-done-to-get-better kind of medical professional. Dave called her our angel. I had to agree. Her personality and style suited us perfectly.

  Winning the imaginary good-patient award became my goal, so I busied myself by turning the carton every which way, hoping it would just open itself. No such luck. Spreading apart the triangular top wasn’t too hard. I laid the carton on its back and used the tray table’s counterpressure. But if I opened it like that, the milk would spill. When I set it upright and tried to open the seal, the carton slid away from me. I pulled it closer, ignoring the throbbing pain in my back and trying to keep the ends of my legs from banging the bed’s side rails. As I hunched over the carton, my shoulders tensed up, inching closer and closer to my ears.

  No matter what I did, the glued surfaces would not part.

  My tiny body shrank into the bed, knowing I was a failure. An endless black tunnel stretched into eternity. How will I live if someone has to do everything for me?

  David, zero; Goliath, one.

  “Dave,” I blurted out that night, “I need to have a hysterectomy when we get home.”

  “What?” was his incredulous response.

  “Well, it would eliminate having periods, so one less thing to learn: how to use a tampon with one hand. Plus, I’m not sure having kids is a good idea.”

  He jumped up. “Hold on. Don’t make rash decisions.”

  “Why? I’ve been thinking about it, and I don’t think it’s fair for kids to grow up with a disabled mom like me.”

  I’d already decided it would be a crime to give birth to children who would hate us for making them part of a family with a mom who was in a wheelchair, who couldn’t do things with them, and who looked funny.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding. Don’t I have any say in the kid decision?”

  To be honest, I hadn’t considered Dave’s feelings on this matter, so I wasn’t prepared for his answer.

  “I want to have kids. And I want them to be your kids,” he said.

  “But—”

  “When they get to be teenagers, they won’t like us anyway, no matter who we are. They’ll think we’re dinosaurs. And there’s no difference between being disabled and being a dinosaur.”

  Immobilized by my healing amputations and compression fractures of the spine, I spent most of my waking hours focused on learning to use my left hand: tearing toilet paper off a roll, cutting food, turning the pages of a book, holding the book open, taking the cap off a pen. Nothing in my life could I take for granted.

  One afternoon after lunch, a nurse brought in a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste and left it on the hospital tray in front of me. Hunching over to hide what I was doing, I glanced around furtively, then bit the top before anyone could reprimand me, “Don’t use your teeth, ever.” The teeth marks left in the screw cap would give me away. Well, they are absolutely stupid to think that I can do everything with just one hand!

  With shaky fingers, I squeezed the toothpaste tube and watched with dismay as the toothbrush wobbled over onto its side, smearing the tray with a white, gooey mess. Every inanimate object seemed to have a life of its own. Things that used to sit still now teeter-tottered, swayed, or rocked and rolled in front of me.

  I couldn’t open a milk carton or squeeze my own toothpaste, much less take care of my bodily functions. The pain pills constipated me, but my bladder still worked. After my catheter had been removed, I had to be lifted up and put onto a bedpan. When the nurses insisted that I try to move my bowels, they would put my arm around their shoulders and lift me, positioning me on the commode. Moving my back and the accidental jarring of the ends of my legs, or even touching them, made me want to scream.

  Pain
is one thing, but the worst thing in the world for me was needing help with these bodily functions. The stink from constipation. The poop, the pee, and, most awful of all, my period. It was humiliating.

  “Dave . . .”

  I don’t like this. I don’t like this. I don’t want anyone . . .

  “I’m staying,” he insisted.

  Did I want him to do it? No. But did I need him to do it? Yes. I knew that it was better for him to do it than to have anybody else do it. He protected me from other people having to be there and forced me to suck it up and get used to it.

  Being physically stable was one thing. It was time now to turn our attention to our mental health, first to figure out what the big issues were going to be and then how we would solve them. That is not a very long sentence, only thirty-one words. But it signifies a huge project that would consume us for a long time. In fact, it would be years before we would know whether it had worked. It wasn’t always a pretty project. In some ways, it helped that we were Dr. Linda and Dr. Dave, Patient Linda and Patient Dave, Wife Linda and Husband Dave. It allowed us to assess and respond to our situation in ways no one else could. We needed to identify problems as we saw them, not as others perceived them. In doing so, we unintentionally alienated people along the way.

  One afternoon, after I’d been bathed and my hair washed, Adrian—who’d come immediately from Stuttgart, organized everyone’s lodging, and acted as a liaison between our families and the military—stepped in once again to help. Everyone knew how much I hated my curly, frizzy hair, so she started blow-drying it to straighten it. “I’ll do it!” Dave told her abruptly. The subtext was We don’t need your help. She handed him the hair dryer without saying a word. Her cold expression said it all.

  And when my aunt and uncle, who were traveling in Europe at the time, called to say they were dropping everything and flying to Salzburg to be with us, Dave told them he didn’t want them to come, that we had plenty of people, and that he and I wanted to start taking care of things on our own. Looking back, I think we could have been more gentle or politic in our reactions. We were flailing to right a ship that had capsized and that would sink fast if we didn’t take hold of it to keep it afloat. More people would only add weight.

  “I feel like an egg. I’m a mess. How can you still like me?” I asked Dave as he carefully wrapped his arm around me one night.

  In my brain, I was young, attractive, and sexy. There, I had an unending number of ways to entice Dave, but this tiny, legless, one-armed body in a hospital bed couldn’t possibly seduce a young, hot-blooded male—especially a handsome doctor with a limitless future ahead of him. There’d be no more playing kneesies, no more standing on his feet to dance or reach up to kiss him, no more bear hugs. How would I keep his feet warm at night? There wasn’t even enough of me left to cuddle with. How in the world could we ever make love again? Why would anyone want a sexless marriage? What would a virile, healthy young male see in my egg-shaped body?

  “Olsie, you’re more precious to me today than you were yesterday,” he said. He stroked the curve of my body and buried his face in my hair. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

  The hospital room was quiet and peaceful. Late-afternoon summer sun dappled the walls, and soft air came through the balcony door. All our family members and friends were gone, the surgeons had made their rounds, all the medical procedures and dressing changes were done, and we were alone together.

  It was a time of day we had come to savor, a time when we could talk, hold each other, and then talk some more. And we needed to do a lot of talking and holding.

  But at the moment, I was propped against the headboard, supported by two big white eiderdown pillows. My right shoulder was swathed in white Kerlix gauze. A white amputation bridge protected my lower torso.

  “Can we talk about the afternoon of the accident?” I asked. Tiny beads of sweat formed on my forehead. I was dressed in only a hospital gown, but I was always hot.

  Dave hobbled over and sat on the edge of the bed. He took my hand and replied, “Yes, what about it?”

  I started slowly. “Dave, I know exactly what happened on the train tracks. I never lost consciousness.”

  “I know,” he said. He dropped his head slightly, and his hand tightened around mine.

  I chose my words carefully and continued. “I can’t help but think about it all the time. I’m not sure how to feel about it. . . . And I’m not sure what we should do about it.”

  “You have every reason in the world to be angry. I’m willing to do whatever is best for you.” I could see his anger and confusion.

  “I know it wasn’t intentional,” I murmured, “but I’m not sure whether I can disguise my resentment.”

  “I understand,” he responded. The weight of what I said seemed to rest on him.

  I’d thought about it for days, but saying it out loud was somehow more difficult than I’d expected. What if I change my mind? What if it comes out anyway? . . . Just say it!

  “What has happened has happened—nothing can change it. I want to do what’s best for the future of our families. Who knows? You want to have kids. . . . We’ll need everybody in both our families to help. We can’t waste our energy on blame and anger.”

  Dave looked up and met my eyes. We both swallowed hard. This was our crossing of the Rubicon.

  “It’s your call,” he said, stroking my fingers. We wiped our tears, and then, for the sake of our friends and families, present and future, with a kiss on my forehead, he sealed our pact: “We were in Berchtesgaden, Germany, when the van stalled on a railroad track.”

  CHAPTER 3:

  A Room with a View

  In August 1979, the Salzburg Festival was in full swing. Herbert von Karajan was directing a new version of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, and the famous opera and symphony director Karl Böhm was directing his last opera at age eighty-five. A quarter of a million people filled the concert halls and outdoor stages for more than two hundred performances of symphonies, plays, and operas. Every hotel was sold out. There was no room at the inn, except at the Unfallkrankenhaus, the trauma hospital where Dave and I found ourselves in a second-floor, two-bed room.

  The view of the beautiful, romantic old city contrasted with that of our sterile, austere room. From our balcony, the timeless charm of the Old Town stretched out before us as Dave and I straddled two worlds. Inside the sparse, utilitarian hospital, we were starting over, with grueling work ahead of us. Outside, picturesque Salzburg beckoned us to dream of the beauty that still surrounded us if we were just willing to reach for it.

  “Hey, Linda, your shoulders are even. Good job,” Adrian said as she approached.

  Yes! Progress.

  “We brought you some dinner,” she said.

  “A very special dinner, a dinner for two,” Johnny said. He held aloft a covered dish, as if presenting a sacrifice to the gods.

  “But before you eat these little guys, you’ve gotta know the story.” He paused, as if for permission to proceed. “Now, the best way to find Schnecken is to set out on a forest path early on a Sunday morning with sturdy shoes, a walking stick, and a plastic bag. Keep your eyes peeled for these critters slithering along the path. Make sure you carry a Schneckenring so you know whether they’re big enough to take and keep. The last thing you want is Der Waldmeister to arrest you for poaching.” He had a twinkle in his eye.

  “On a Sunday, huh? Not Saturday morning or Thursday afternoon? Sunday. Sunday morning?” Dave teased.

  Johnny laughed and didn’t skip a beat. “I take them home and dump them into a large, heavy-lidded crock, where they stay for a week or ten days, feasting on cornmeal, sweet white German wine, and herbs. What a life! When the purification is complete, we boil them in a large pot with more wine, herbs, and water. After they cool, I pull them out of the shell and rinse them. Meanwhile, we boil the shells, saving them for presentation when we eat them. To serve, you warm the stuffed shells, place them on little escargot trays, and se
rve them with melted butter, fresh bread, fruit, and cheese.”

  “Which we have right here,” Adrian said as she pulled a loaf of bread from a local Bäckerei and several Tupperware containers out of her shoulder bag.

  I squealed and without thinking tried to clap my hands together. The sudden movement and momentum sent me listing starboard.

  “All right, help me up, someone. I can’t eat like this. I’m just grateful you took them out of the shells already. Nora would insist that I find a way to hold the tong in my left hand while using the fork with something else—something, anything, other than my teeth!”

  We all laughed. Johnny set the dish down on the bedside table and pulled my high, cane-backed wheelchair over toward the bed while Dave gently scooped me up and set me in it. “My lady, may I escort you to your table?” he said.

  “Yes. Please do. I’d like a view, please, something with a breeze, if you can,” I said, using my most aristocratic voice and better-than-thou face.

  “We have just the place,” Dave said. He wheeled me through the sliding glass door, which opened onto a tiny balcony just big enough for a small table and two chairs.

  The magic of the evening overpowered us. Below was a grassy area with large shade trees, walking paths, and a small gazebo. Beyond, the stunning view of the Hohensalzburg Fortress captivated us. Its massive whitish walls fade into a tan patina. Crenelated towers flank the corners, and small rectangular windows march along the tops of the walls, breaking the sameness. It consumes all the space on the largest hill overlooking the Old City. Adding to the charm are nearly a dozen delicate spires of old churches that rise to the base of the fortress. We felt like a king and queen that evening, looking over the city while the centuries-old fortress compassionately held vigil over us.