Moving Forward in Reverse (18 page)

20

I took my post as I had seen so many others do before me,
obligingly placed the left prosthetic hand on the Bible, and solemnly swore to
tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I think I did fine, both during Mike’s questioning and the cross
examination by Bradley Wentworth. Although he did address me as Scott for the
first time during the trial (I’m sure to avoid coming across as being hostile
towards ‘the unfortunate man’), Wentworth didn’t fail to paint a clear and
manipulative picture of the man he wanted me to be: normal, unfazed, and quite
accomplished with ‘overcoming my illness. ’ As they say, perception is key.

~~~

The afternoon sunlight burst through the windows in Tom and Sue’s
living room like an eccentric guest. I leaned back in the wooden rocking chair,
idly studying the slice of Domino’s pepperoni pizza I held.

I had sandwiched the crust between the first two fingers and the
thumb of the right-hand myo. I knew what it should feel like to have the crust
in my hand: the crispy outer edge crunching under the first faint signs of
pressure from my fingertips; the doughy inner layers eagerly giving way to a
greedy grasp. I had held so many slices of pizza over the years; I shouldn’t
have felt the need to touch this one as intimately as I had the others. But I
did.

Tom came back into the room carrying two Cokes. I hastily brought
the pizza to my mouth and bit off a chunk of grease-coated cheese and bread.

‘So,’ he said as he held one Coke out to me, ‘what now?’

‘Mike told me he’d call when the jury has announced,’ I replied
around another mouthful of pizza. At least I could still taste it as acutely as
I always had.

Tom plopped onto the tan sofa and rested his left, Coke-holding
arm on the armrest. ‘What are Mike’s thoughts about it?’

‘Without the Women’s Day quote to refute Marsh, Mike’s at 50-50.’

Tom made a sound in the back of his throat. Whatever he had
intended the noise to mean, it was hopelessly contorted by the bite of pizza he
was chewing.

‘That’s what it all boils down to, doesn’t it?’

I nodded and looked down at the strip of crust left in my grip.
The attorneys had given their closing remarks that morning. In front of the
jury, Mike had said that our case was solid, Dr. Stevens credible, and my life
had been not just altered but devastated. The amount of judgment, he informed
the jury, should be ten million dollars.

I had squirmed at that number. Ten million dollars to justify the
fact that I could never feel the warmth of fresh pizza in my hands again? Maybe
my life hadn’t been devastated
that
badly. But the jurors didn’t seem to
be bothered by the number he pitched to them, so I had bowed to his
professional judgment on the matter.

The second chair for the defense, the plump and frumpy Robert
Junig, countered first. ‘Their request of ten million dollars is so far off
we
should receive a judgment,’ he ranted.

I jotted a note to Mike:
Huh?
Mike just shook his head,
looking far from impressed by the scattered-looking opposition and his aberrant
speech.

Bradley Wentworth was much smoother when he gave his closing
remarks after Junig. Wentworth simplified the case to one, definable thing:
Marsh’s testimony.

I turned to look at Tom on the sofa beside me. ‘Strange how two
weeks of witnesses, the objections and arguments come down to an article in
Women’s Day Magazine.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ he said with his eyes on the next slice of pizza. ‘You
know –’ he began, but never got to finish the thought because the clangor of
the phone erupted from the kitchen. He turned wide, think-this-is-it? eyes on
me, his hand hovering part way to the pizza box. I pinched my lips, raised my
eyebrows, and nodded.

It has to be it.

When the phone cried out a second time, Tom pushed himself to his
feet and strolled casually towards its summons. I could hear the muffled sound
of his voice as he answered. A moment of silence. Then another soft murmur.

He reemerged a moment later, the phone held slightly away from his
body as he brought it to me.

‘Attorney Mike Schumacher’s on the phone. He says the jury has
returned a verdict.’

I took a breath, wiped the rubber fingers of the right myo on my
pant leg, and stood to take the phone.

‘Hey, Mike,’ I said in the best imitation of carefree calm I could
muster. Inside, each of my organs seemed to be practicing the art of tying
sailing knots.

‘Scott,’ Mike said, the single syllable drawn out with a weary
sigh. His voice engendered images of a man slumped in his office chair, his
shirt open at the collar and jacket rumpled at the creases. If I hadn’t been
frozen where I stood, I may have put the phone down before he could say more.
That was not the voice of a man who had just won a battle.

‘They came back Not Guilty,’ he said at the same time as the words
flashed through my mind. We had lost. I wanted to sit, but my knees refused to
bend. ‘The jury asked if you could be awarded for limited damages,’ he
continued, his tone like a consolation prize – then the prize was taken away:
‘but it wasn’t possible.’

I looked down and saw four, straight tracks of grease on my pant
leg. My mouth tasted like pizza even though I could no longer feel its weight
on my tongue. The case was lost.

‘I’m sorry, man,’ Mike said at length. ‘We did try.’

I swallowed cheese-flavored saliva and licked my lips.

‘Fuck,’ I deadpanned with all the vehemence of a stone. ‘You did
more than I could have hoped for, Mike. Thanks.’

When I hung up the phone, Tom was ready with another Coke in each
hand. I smiled weakly and took the one he offered, drawing in a long swig. It
was over. The pendulum of my life had swung completely opposite of where it had
been before the illness.

Then my knees chose to cave. As if the channels between brain and
limbs had finally re-opened, my legs buckled under me and I crumpled onto the
edge of a cushion. I threw my arms out and managed to keep the Coke upright as
I teetered forward and Tom grappled for my elbow.

‘Easy there,’ he said when I had settled on the sofa. ‘You good?’

‘Yeah.’ I slowly set the can back on its coaster. ‘Yeah, I’m
good.’ After a few moments of silence, I told Tom I just needed some time to
think and thanked him for the pizza. He didn’t press me, but the expression in
his eyes said it all.
Please don’t lose it
, they seemed to beg.
Please,
just hang in there
.

I tried on a reassuring smile as I left, but found it ill-fitting
and abandoned the effort. When I heard the click of Tom’s door closing behind
me, I gasped like a diver coming to the surface and doubled over. It was done.
The case was lost. I had nothing. No job. No income. No security. No hope. No
options.

I felt the cold, callous metal of a metaphoric pistol pressed
against my skull; a finger on the trigger that wasn’t my own. When I could
breathe again, I straightened up and continued shuffling out to my car.

By the time I reached my apartment a few miles away, the
desperation and dismay no longer felt like they had belonged to me. They were
distant memories, like emotions experienced vicariously through someone else;
not truly my own. I was calm as I ascended the steps to the main floor of my
apartment.

I passed through the living room, ignoring the sofa and made my
way up the second flight of steps leading to my home office. I selected
suitable music for my work: Talking Heads, Sting, Traveling Wilburys, Donald
Fagen, Genesis, Bob Marley, John Mellencamp, Steely Dan, Robert Palmer. It was
time for me to design my own Atlas. Where was
I
going and how was
I
going to get there?

Peter Gabriel’s
So
album started to play as I opened a
fresh
Word
document. Bogart jumped onto the desk and took his usual
perch next to the keyboard. As track three began to rise from the speakers, I
let the lyrics and music propel me forward. My focus began to converge on what
I wanted to accomplish and as it did, I began to understand that I needed to do
whatever I could to start the head of the pendulum swinging in the opposite
direction.
I
needed to make it move because no one else could do
it for me.

21

By the time I was ready to begin my trek westward, I had sold my
massive collection of cassette tapes and entered the age of CDs. With Bogart
draped over my left shoulder and my 36-disc portable CD case laid out on the
suitcase that filled much of the passenger seat to my right, I started rifling
through my high-tech music collection in search of the ideal audio ambiance for
our journey. Flipping past disc after disc, I couldn’t help grinning at the
memory of my fervent belief that CDs would never catch on. I had been so
convinced that I’d ordered my custom Pontiac Grand Am GT with a cassette player
instead of a CD player. Oops!

Damn, that was over four years ago,
I thought, shaking my head at
the ceaseless passage of time.
It was also right before I became sick. In
fact, it’s been four years and one month to the day since I was admitted to the
hospital. Which means this time four years ago, I was just waking from the
coma.

The realization washed over me like a tidal wave through time. I
sat momentarily frozen in the driver’s seat of my car, unable to shake the
surge of the past.

As it had washed in, the feeling ebbed and pulled back out to sea.
I blinked to clear my vision and refocused on the CDs at hand.

. My hand hovered over the sleeve holding  Jackson Browne’s
“I’m Alive.” A lopsided smile quirked my lips.
Nah,
I thought and kept
flipping, discarding album after album until . . . There it was: Tom Petty’s
Full
Moon Fever.
Gingerly, I slid the delicate CD out of its pouch and pinched
it between finger and thumb to glance at the song list. “Free Fallin’” came
first, but we could skip that. “I Won’t Back Down,” however, was perfect.

I popped the disc into my player and cued it to track two.

'Well, Bogs,’ I said to the cat on my shoulder, ‘time to hit the
road.'

We had five states and eighteen hundred miles to cross before we
reached western Washington, and only four days in which to do it. Considering
all I had managed to accomplish since taking the job as John Wedge’s assistant
coach at The Evergreen State College (TESC) in Olympia three days ago, four
days devoted solely to driving sounded like a walk in the park.

I glanced in my rearview mirror, realized it was a pointless
gesture now that I’d filled my Chevy Cavalier to the roof with my limited
possessions, and eased my way out of the driveway one tap of the brake pedal at
a time. What couldn’t be crammed into the four-door sedan was sold in a
haphazard garage sale during the weekend. Between selling, packing, and settling
things with my landlord, I had also made the requisite phone calls to my family
and joined Tom and Sue and their boys for a farewell dinner to break the news
of my impromptu move.

They had known that as per my ‘game plan’ I’d been scouring the
country for work, but I think learning that in one week, I had taken a job in
Washington State, sold a majority of my material possessions, and was leaving
Wisconsin with only my cat for company caught them a little off guard.

No one had said anything particularly profound to the news that I
was heading west; in fact, most of what they had offered was wide-eyed silence
followed by hasty well-wishes and it’s-probably-the-right-thing-to-do’s. What I
didn’t tell them was the particular arrangement I had entered into with Head
Coach John Wedge; the agreement which said I would work free-of-charge provided
John helped me land a position at a larger university sometime during the next
two years. Those worrisome little details, they didn’t need to know.

As I navigated towards the highway, I imagined them holding a
collective breath, anxiously waiting to see what would become of me. I, for my
part, was breathing easy as I belted out the lyrics to “I Won’t Back Down” and
put the gas pedal to the floor on I-90 West.

~~~

John Wedge was a lean man with a froth of white hair covering his
head like the tip of a Q-tip. His blue eyes crinkled at the corners, giving him
an affable appearance despite the stern line his mouth was apt to form.
Standing side-by-side before our team of eighteen young men, we matched in
stature and aura of unassuming authority. But where John spoke with animation
and gesticulating hands, I stood stationary, like a sculpture meant to capture
a single moment or an instant of emotion, wearing a long-sleeve shirt to cover
the plastic forearms of the myos, and the myos surreptitiously clasped behind
my back. In this stance, from the front I appeared normal and unaltered. I told
myself it was simply a natural way of standing with no ulterior motive to my
posturing.

As John welcomed the team and made the introductions, I watched
the players cast clandestine glances my way. I was reasonably certain John had
given them more details about me and my past than what he was divulging now – I
imagined they would have needed some forewarning about my handicap, at the very
least – but I was glad such information had been passed along outside of my
presence. It was hard enough meeting new people after my illness, having to
give a preface to these young men as if attending an Amputee’s Anonymous
meeting (‘Hi, my name is Scott and I’m handicapped’) would shatter what little
self-possession and poise I had to cling to. I would gladly share the details
of my disease with them eventually, but not before they had a chance to become
acquainted with Coach-Martin-the-man. Scott-the-amputee could come out in due
time.

When his spiel was complete, John stepped back and gave me the
floor – or soccer field. I stepped forward and felt the heart-clenching
awareness of 18 pair of eyes latching onto my face. Keeping my hands securely
behind my back, I took a moment to meet their gazes, allowing them time to take
stock of me freely and openly while I pretended to be unfazed by their
inquisitive gazes.

It was probably a blessing in disguise that my career and future
were on the line at TESC because it left me with no choice but to be my old,
cocky self. I couldn’t afford to let my insecurities get in the way of our
success. So, with a stabilizing breath, I issued the same opening statement I
always did:

‘My mission is not to teach you, but to put you in a position to
learn.’

~~~

For the first two weeks, my days were packed with two daily
training sessions, preparations for the sessions to come, reviews with John,
and the seemingly incessant clothes-changing that had to be done. With an
average annual rainfall of over fifty-three inches, seldom was an outfit worn
in the morning still dry by lunch – Hell, they rarely made it through breakfast
and my morning walk to buy a copy of the
USA Today
(my twenty-five-cent
daily indulgence).

I feared that were my feet to remain wet it might cause the skin
on my “bad foot” to breakdown again and wet forearms weren’t much better as
water – like sweat – under the forearm shells would cause them to misfire or be
difficult to manipulate. This left me hustling home between the morning and
afternoon training sessions to devote an aggravating hour to fighting my way
out of my saturated clothes, a task which, without wrists, was damn near
impossible.

The socks were the worst. Before leaving Eau Claire I had been
outfitted with rubber feet rather than the original boot-style prosthesis. The
rubber feet came with rubber toes and reached up to just below the medial
malleolus of my ankle when I slid them on like slippers. Like almost everything
else in my life, the rubber upgrades came with a slew of downsides to
compensate for their few upsides: namely, they didn’t fit in normal shoes so I
had to wear waterproof Nubuck leather sandals with rugged, rubber soles and
easily adjustable elastic Velcro straps with socks. The feet looked so
realistic that I could have done commercials for Dr. Scholl’s, but I needed to
walk and these did nothing for the pivoting of my foot or my relentless
shuffling. To top it off there was the aggravation of rubber offering no slip
when it came to prying off wet socks.

Like enduring an unrelenting filibuster, my first few attempts at
shedding the socks from the rubber feet resulted in only frustrated furor and
no actual progress. The feet looked good, but had they ever taken the time to
consider the person wearing it? No, of course they hadn’t considered that
because who would want to spend time imagining the life of a handicapped
person? A growl rumbled at the back of my throat. This was absurd. One way or
another I was going to get that blasted sock off.

I thought about fire: cotton would probably burn before rubber;
considered a knife to cut the damn thing free, but that would require the
angling of a wrist and leave me sockless in a matter of days. Instead, with an
unceremonious yank of the cuff of the white tube sock, I peeled the sock down
over the top of the prosthetic foot and pulled my own amputated foot out. While
somewhat gratifying to do, this strategy still left me with a sock covering the
rubber foot. To complete the task, I continued to painstakingly peel the sock
over the rubber foot. The sock was off, but now it was inside out. Ugh!

Next came the remainder of my soaked clothing. I wanted to punch
the nearest wall – repeatedly – but a nagging voice at the back of my mind
admonished that doing so would likely damage both the wall and the electronic
hands, neither of which I could afford to repair at the moment. Quelled and
abased by defeat, I first pulled my left amputated arm free, then pinched the
disconnected left hand between my knees and pulled the shirt sleeve away from
the myoelectric hand, dropping the electronic beast onto the floor. This
procedure was then repeated with the right arm.

By the time I was sufficiently undressed it was all I could do to
lie flat on the bed with my eyes closed against the world and wait for the
exasperation to dissipate. Occasionally, Bogart would wander over from whatever
safe distance he had been waiting out my ordeal, and offer a conciliatory
demand to be petted.
How simple life would be if only I were Bogart
, I
reached to turn on the radio in the hopes of soothing my wounded pride with
music and realized that, without hands, I had to get up to do it.