Moving Forward in Reverse (37 page)

‘I read over your information and wanted to talk to you personally,’
he went on, a soft V-sound catching on the W in
wanted
. ‘Is this a good
time?’

‘Sure is,’ I told him, slowly lowering myself into the office
chair.

‘Okay. So, tell me about your illness, Scott, and how you’ve been
able to get to where you are today. It sounds like it must have been an
incredible journey.’ His voice had a very down-to-earth tone to it, causing the
request to sound like an invitation.

‘It was a journey,’ I conceded, taking a breath as I leaned back
in the chair. I had been prepared for an interview where I was grilled on my
worthiness from top to bottom then back again, but in a few short sentences,
Dr. Brandacher had already banished any such strenuous ideas. He was
surprisingly easy to talk to, projecting a casual, carefree sort of attitude
which coaxed you into trusting that he wasn’t the type to judge quickly or be
unnecessarily critical of others.

I began to describe my bout with the flesh-eating disease to Dr.
Brandacher, careful not to over-explain concepts I was sure he had greater
familiarity with than I did. I was pretty certain I knew what they were looking
for in potential applicants. The university had already invested a great deal
of time and money into the hand transplant program, so what they needed now
were people who could handle the training required to receive a positive
result. And, a lot like with the head coach position at Gonzaga, someone who
could present a favorable face for the program and, most importantly, produce
wins.

I did my best to tailor my answers according to this theory,
dropping key words like “attitude”, “overcome”, and “confidence” whenever
possible. I made a point of mentioning our adopted children and what it would
mean to all of us was I to receive transplanted hands. No details were withheld
when it came to my recovery from the flesh-eating disease. Dr. Brandacher got
the full-length version of what I had to do to regain a sense of normalcy after
my amputations, followed, naturally, by an unfeigned vow that I could do it all
again. Not only that, but it would mean a lot to me to be a part of helping the
concept of transplanted hands move forward.

‘With all the soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with
missing limbs, we really need something like the Pittsburgh Protocol,’ I said
to him. I couldn’t say if it was just me, because I knew the pains of living
without a sense of touch that I felt so bothered by the amputees returning home
from battle or if everyone was as distressed as I was. Whatever the case, I
told Brandacher how I felt, declaring, ‘They deserve more than prosthetic
limbs.’

When his questions ran out and I had offered my last sales-pitch
response, Dr. Brandacher sighed, his voice dropping on the word, ‘Well’ before
falling silent for a few breaths more.

‘I’ve never done this before,’ he confided at length, his words
traveling sluggishly across the phone line as if he wasn’t quite certain he
wanted to let them go just yet, ‘but my gut tells me that you’d be perfect.
When can you come to the University for the first round of tests?’

~~~

Ellen rolled her head back to look up at me as I crept back into
the living room, raising her eyebrows inquiringly at my unrevealing expression.
I waited until I had navigated the mats of dogs lying on the floor and was
easing back onto the end cushion of the sofa before giving her a small smile.

‘I passed Screening Round 1.’

Her raised eyebrows peaked in the middle as a grin creased her
cheeks.

She reached up to draw my face in for a kiss on the cheek,
gushing, ‘That’s great!’ as she released my head. Lauren twisted on her end of
the sofa, shooting a curious glance our way.

‘What’s great?’ she asked, eager for anything other than the
evening news to focus on. I looked to Ellen, who shrugged concisely and glanced
meaningfully down at the remote resting in her lap. The ball was in my court.

We hadn’t told the kids about my opportunity for hand transplants
yet, not wanting to create unnecessary drama in their lives before any actual
steps had been taken.
I guess being invited for the first round of tests
qualifies as an actual step,
I mused and nodded for Ellen to mute the TV.

When everyone’s eyes swiveled to me, our Boston Terrier, Yaz,
releasing a contented sigh and flopping over so his back fell across the front
of my slippers, I told them about the study. I watched their mouths grow round
and eyes shift to Ellen for clarification – or perhaps verification – as I told
of the medically-advancing program I might be a part of.

They all had a solid understanding of English by now, but
transplants may have still been an unfamiliar word. I opened my mouth to
explain further, but Andy beat me to it.

‘Will you be able to play basketball with us?’ he asked, getting
to the real heart of the matter. I smirked at him, his eyebrows two hopeful
peaks above dark brown eyes.

Nodding, I vowed, ‘And I’ll kick your butts doing it.

42

Ellen and I returned home after my first round of tests in
Pittsburgh to frantic tongue baths from the dogs and a well-intentioned inquisition
from the kids.

‘Where are your new hands?’ Kali asked as I scooped her up for a
welcome-home hug.

‘That won’t happen for a few more months, kiddo. This was just a
doctor’s visit.’

‘Oh,’ she replied, settling back onto her feet as I grabbed my bag
to head to the master bedroom. She sounded dismayed, as if I had just walked in
on my surprise party unannounced.

I only made it as far as the bed before I was bombarded with more
questions from the rest of the gang. Content to weather my final examination, I
settled onto the bed, pillows propping my back and Kali snuggled by my side
with our new white Chihuahua puppy, Luna, laying in her lap.

‘Did any of the tests hurt?’ Danny asked, slumping across the foot
of the bed. In two packed days, I had met most of the Pittsburgh team, had
sixteen tubes of blood drawn, x-rays taken; and undergone a Pulmonary Function
Test, abdominal ultrasound, and MRIs of both hips. I was beat but otherwise
unharmed.

‘Nah. They were a breeze.’

‘We also ate at some very nice restaurants, didn’t we, Scott?’
Ellen interposed as she sorted her luggage into ‘laundry’ and ‘not laundry’. I
knew she was trying to divert the discussion to a lighter topic for my sake. I
appreciated the gesture, though I wasn’t nearly as harried by this juvenile
interrogation as she might suspect.

‘Sure did.’

The kids didn’t bite.

‘So now what?’ Andy asked, idly tracing the outline of a blotch of
black fur across Yaz’s back from where the two lay on the floor side-by-side.

I sighed and shifted my legs, earning a deprecating glare from
Luna who was delicately jostled in the process. ‘I have to do one more round of
tests then –’

‘More tests?’ Nadia butted in. I looked across the room to where
she was perched by the window, her brows puckering in the middle and a
disapproving frown curving her lips.
My little mother hen,
I thought
with a smile at her protective nature.
Not so little anymore, though.

‘Unfortunately. But they’re nothing to worry about. Standard
procedure. Your Tata is in good shape,’ I told her with a smile as I flexed my
biceps in a mock-bodybuilder pose. Her lips flickered upwards, but I could
still see the concern shadowing her eyes before she glanced away.

‘Then surgery?’ Lauren piped up, turning from where she’d been
helping Ellen sort clothes.

‘Yup. Then the surgery.’ I tried to keep the feeling of impending
dread out of my voice. No matter how favorable the odds or talented the surgeons,
surgery would never cease to be an adverse and macabre undertaking. And I had
had more than my fair share of it already.

I must not have been as inscrutable as I had hoped because Nadia
narrowed her eyes and asked, ‘How long will that take?’

I turned to meet her gaze, trying to hide the wince I felt tugging
at my expression. The length of the surgery wasn’t one of the pleasanter
aspects of this whole ordeal. Heck, next to the rejection medications and three
months of physical therapy, it was probably the worst. I didn’t like to worry
them, but I liked the idea of lying even less.

‘Twelve hours,’ I told her softly. It was rounding down on what
the true timeframe was likely to be but I couldn’t bring myself to leave it
open-ended the way Dr. Brandacher had.
Upwards of twelve hours
just
sounded too ominous and vague; I feared to their young, overly-imaginative
minds it could translate into a surgery which lasted days.

Silence followed my admission. Nadia pursed her lips, considering
this number. Andy slowly turned to his perusal of Yaz’s splotches of white and
black fur, a worried furrow to his brow. I lifted my eyes to Ellen, catching a
glimpse of Lauren’s confused expression, her eyes frantically scanning each of
her siblings’ faces as if questing for answers. I watched her eyes rove from
the back of Andy’s head to Danny’s profile on the edge of the bed and Nadia’s
disapproving frown from where she leaned against the window, her face turned
towards the glass and the trees visible beyond it. Ellen offered a
what-can-you-do shrug as she gazed at the quiet, troubled faces of our children
from behind her splayed suitcase, carefully shifting folded piles of
cold-weather attire to a shelf in the closet.

‘Tata is going to be in the hands of some of the best surgeons in
the entire world,’ she said when I shot her a help-me glance. She drifted from
the closet to sit on the edge of the bed between Danny on the mattress and Andy
hunkered on the floor. She ran a loving hand across Danny’s back. ‘These
doctors are very, very good and have done lots of surgeries on lots of
different patients.’

‘Surgeries like the one Tata is going to have?’ Nadia asked,
surprising me with her acumen in the face of Ellen’s casual ambiguity.

‘No, not many like Tata’s,’ Ellen conceded. There were other
patients in the program, but none had been matched with donors as of yet and
thus remained in the same boat as me. ‘But they have done lots of surgeries,
giving people new livers,’ Ellen said, reaching down to touch Danny beneath his
chest where his liver was located, ‘and even hearts.’

‘They can do that?’ Danny asked, his curiosity suddenly piqued. He
twisted on the bed to peer up at Ellen. ‘They can give people new hearts?’

‘They sure can,’ Ellen replied with a smile. ‘They can give people
almost anything they need now.’

‘Wow!’ Danny whispered wistfully, reminding me of the toddler he
once was. I smiled in remembrance of his enthusiasm for planes and big trees,
James Brown and learning how to swing.
How different his early childhood
would have been had I found this surgery back then,
I mused.
How
different all of their childhoods would have been.
Swinging would have been
just the beginning of the things I could have shown them.

Before the illness, when friends had commented on how my children
were sure to be soccer players, my response had always been the same: ‘I will
never press my kids into soccer. They need to find what makes them happy.’ Then
came my illness and kids fell out of the picture. Until Ellen.

Now, as a father of five, I was keeping true to my word. Even
though they each dabbled in soccer, it was just that: dabbling. None of the
kids had fallen in love with it the way I had and I was fine with that. It was
my passion; it didn’t have to be theirs. But still, I would always wonder if
perhaps,
had I only been ‘complete’ with hands and feet, and continued
to play as they grew, they might have picked up the nuances and challenges of
the game from me in the backyard. Worse than not being able to play soccer,
though, was the simple fact that my father hadn’t been around to show me how to
throw a curve ball and now I wasn’t there to show my kids. It stung me to the
core; left me weak and riddled with thoughts of not being good enough because I
wasn’t whole.

I swallowed the knot in the back of my throat and squeezed my eyes
shut to obscure the pain.
You know better than this, man,
I mentally
scolded myself.
What’s done is done. All you can do is try to be the best
father you can be with what you have.
I was intimately aware of our
inability to change the course of past events and that any time spent wishing
otherwise was an exercise in futility. It was the future we were still fighting
for; the future which still held hope for change.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and found myself peering at Lauren. Her
frown was bordering on a pout as anxiety drew shallow creases in the soft skin
of her forehead. I started to lift a hand, thinking only of smoothing those
lines away before they became any deeper, but when it was the myo and not a
tender, human hand which hovered into my peripheral view, I quickly subsided.

Ellen must have perceived at least some of the torment coursing
through each of us because with a clap of her hands on her legs, she cheerily
asked, ‘Should we order pizza?’

This proposition drew enthusiastic approval from around the room
as Kali leapt to her feet on the bed, tumbling poor Luna onto her back, and
cheered for pepperoni. I kept my eyes on Lauren, hoping she would share her
concerns with me. When she finally met my entreating gaze, she had already
blinked the thoughts from her eyes.

I offered her what I hoped was an understanding and reassuring
smile as I sighed and hoisted Kali over my lap and onto the floor to help with
the topping selection. Maybe we had had enough serious conversation for one
day. We could resume this discussion later, after pizza and a night’s rest.
There was still time.