Moving Forward in Reverse (39 page)

I gazed at the prosthetic arms, the left one frozen with the first
two fingers still pinched against the thumb. Two months from now it would be
‘any day now’: ‘any day now could be my last day with prosthetic arms
.
’
I wanted to laugh with giddy exuberance; to dance and sing and hug everyone I
saw at the thought of my ensuing freedom. But I couldn’t breathe. The air
seemed to have clogged in my chest somewhere between my lungs and my throat and
I couldn’t for the life of me get it flowing again. My days were numbered.

‘Okay, now if you will just set your elbows and forearms on the
table,’ Dr. Brandacher said. I focused on shallow breaths as I did as I was
asked, resting each arm on the cool wooden surface of the conference table. I
had a fleeting inclination to follow suit with my head – there was too much
heat suddenly accumulating in my forehead – but resisted the urge.

Dr. Brandacher shifted the chair to my left out of his way so he
could lay the tape measure alongside my arm. When he had murmured a number to
himself which I couldn’t hear over the thrumming in my skull, he asked me to
lift my arm towards him so he could measure the circumference of the
amputation.

‘The original surgeon was quite good,’ he commented, eyeing the end
of my left arm which had been neatly stitched together by the expert hands of
Dr. Mixter. I nodded, coughing on a sound that was meant to be affirmative and
fixed my eyes on Dr. Brandacher’s work.
This could be one of the last days I
see these as the ends of my arms.
Soon, Dr. Mixter and Dr. Henrickson’s
meticulous care of my limbs would be obscured by the minute stitches of
another.

What would Dr. Hendrickson think if he could see me now?
I wondered. I hadn’t spoken
with my old doctor since the medical trial and my spontaneous trek westward.
What a different man I had been then, with my ambitions and sense of self still
tied up in soccer. I had fancied myself to still be an athlete and losing
soccer equivalent to losing my self. How narrow-minded such thoughts seemed now
that my life had evolved into so much more. I still looked upon soccer like a
long-lost friend, but it was one I knew I’d never become reacquainted with. Yet
there was no longer any remorse at knowing such a thing. It was behind me; it
was ‘then’.

Back then, when I left everything behind in Wisconsin, I had
imagined soccer as the vehicle which would allow me to build myself back up
after breaking myself down. It was always soccer, in my mind. Soccer would save
me. Soccer was me. I was soccer. There couldn’t be a me without soccer. In the
end, although moving West had served its desired purpose, decimating the
remaining pieces of Old Scott’s identity to make way for New Scott, soccer
hadn’t played the leading role in my rebuilding. My children had. They were the
protagonists in this story. It was each of them who had slowly and tenderly
shaped me into the man I became – the man I was still becoming. What was soccer
compared to them?

‘All done, Scott,’ Dr. Brandacher said, crumpling his measuring
tape in his left hand as he jotted notes on top of the already-compiled notes
from my prior tests. ‘Thank you. You can put your prosthetics back on.’

I glanced to my right as Ellen drew the pull sock and stick from
her purse for me to don the myoelectric hands. Pinching them between the ends
of my amputated arms with a smile of thanks for my wife, I went through the
motions of sliding my forearms into the open sockets of the prosthetics with
robotic detachment.
This is one of the last times I’ll be doing this.
‘Putting my hands on’ will cease to have meaning in my life after this summer.

‘So, that’s it,’ Dr. Brandacher said as he closed the folder and
replaced his pen in his coat pocket.

I looked at him, meeting his green eyes through the lenses of both
of our glasses.

‘That’s it,’ I repeated.

‘You’re all done.’

I pushed my chair back and got to my feet, standing between
leather office chair and table as Ellen did the same. I looked from my doctor
to my wife and grinned.

‘Ho-ly cow.’

~~~

It was down to the grey, fourth generation UW-Oshkosh sweatshirt
(I had worn through three prior versions of the same sweatshirt already and by
the looks of the fraying collar and cuffs, this one was on its last threads) or
the navy blue, Seattle Sounders one. Nadia was patiently waiting for me. I
could see her pony-tailed head popping in and out of view from the master
bedroom window as she bounced on the trampoline in the backyard.
Good
, I
thought, reaching for the Seattle Sounders sweatshirt.
Let her warm-up for
the soccer match.

Her morning recreational soccer matches usually meant sitting on
the sidelines beneath a cloud-laden sky, but I didn’t care because this was sweatshirt
weather – my favorite.

‘Tata?’ I turned, the left myo still clutching the Sounders
sweatshirt as it hung on the hanger and catching me as off-guard as Andy’s
voice came from just outside the closet. I released the sweatshirt and turned
to face my son inquiringly.

‘Why will you need to take medication every day?’ he asked, a
dimpled furrow creasing his brow. He no longer had to peer up at me; it never
ceased to startle me when I found his eyes nearly in line with my own. He’d
grown so tall since he first came home seven years earlier.

‘Well,’ I breathed and leaned against the doorframe of the closet.
I could feel Ellen watching us through the mirror of the vanity, brushing her
teeth a tad quieter than before. ‘Because if I don’t take the medicine my body
could reject the new hands.’

‘What happens if your body rejects the hands?’ His head cocked
sideways like a curious pup as his eyes grew round.

He was trying to look merely curious, adopting an innocent façade,
but I could see some of Nadia’s disapproving frown and Lauren’s anxious despair
lurking in the depths of his expression. His eyes held the same uncertainty and
fear which had shadowed his sisters’ gazes during our last conversation on the
subject of the hands. Whatever concerns they were harboring, I wanted to be
made aware of them. June was halfway through and I was on the transplant list.
Any day could be
the
day, when I would get
the
call and have to
rush to Pittsburgh. After that, I wouldn’t be here to reassure them and put
their qualms to rest.

‘Here’s the short answer, buddy, ‘cause I need to take your sister
to her match: if my body rejected the hands I would need to go back to
Pittsburgh and talk to the doctors again.’ I looked over his head, catching
Ellen’s eyes in the mirror and raising my eyebrows at her. She watched me, the
faintest of shrugs twitching across her shoulder line.

Turning back to Andy, I said, ‘I tell you what, we’ll have a
family meeting when I get back from Nadia’s match. Everyone needs to hear the
long answer.’ I gave him a reassuring smile. He nodded, spinning on his heels
to dash out of the room. With a sigh and glance at my watch to let me know I
had made the right choice in postponing the conversation until later, I turned
back to the closet and grabbed my UW-Oshkosh sweatshirt. Old favorites die
hard.

~~~

I followed Nadia back into the house, watching that her
mud-and-grass-sodden soccer cleats were removed before she tracked into the
kitchen. She bounded towards the hallway, the black number 17 on the back of
her gold jersey flopping up and down with her steps before she planted her feet
to skid across the polished concrete.

17 had been my number, too.

Seeing her wear it always engendered a sensation of warring
emotions in me: the grief at knowing it would never adorn my back again, and
the pride and atonement at knowing it would live on regardless. Perhaps not on
Nadia’s back – I knew soccer wasn’t her strongest passion – but on some kid,
somewhere, 17 would thrive.

After a surveying glance of the kitchen and living room that
turned up no occupants, I retreated to the master bedroom. Ellen was reclined
against an affluent pile of pillows, her Seattle Mariners throw draped over her
legs and the crinkled spine of a novel between her fingers. She glanced up as I
walked in, looking at me as she lowered the book.

‘It was a tie.’ I leaned against the bed frame. She nodded and
reached towards the nightstand beside her.

‘Should we do it?’ she asked, slipping a slender bookmark between
the pages of her novel with the delicate flourish of laying a flower to be
pressed.

‘Yeah.’ I waited for her to extricate herself from the blanket and
settle the book on the nightstand so we could gather the gang together.

‘I’ll get them,’ I told Ellen when we caught site of the kids
bouncing on the trampoline in a chaotic jumble. I went to the double glass
doors opening to the backyard and cracked one enough to poke my head out.
‘Martin Kids!’ I hollered into the open air. They stopped giggling and let
their bounces drift lower as they turned their smiles on me. ‘Time for a family
meeting. Come on in!’

I left the door ajar and wandered over to where Ellen had settled
herself on the sofa facing the floor-to-ceiling windows to wait for the gang to
arrive. Lauren came in first, bounding across the Great Room (our name for the
expansive, conjoined living and dining rooms) to sit beside Ellen, followed by
Danny and Andy who plopped beside each other on the opposite sofa. Then came
Kali and Nadia, The oldest and youngest scurried in, taking up positions on the
armrest and end cushion next to their brothers. When all of our two- and
four-legged family members were scattered about the living room, I sat beside
Ellen and opened the conversation.

‘Your mother and I want to talk to you guys about what’s going to
happen over the next few months regarding the hand transplants. Andy asked
earlier why I will need to take medicine every day. The medicine will help my
body accept the new hands.’ I took a breath and met each of their eyes, trying
to think of a concise way of explaining how it all would work. I looked at the
myos, then back at my kids before saying, ‘It’s possible that the two won’t get
along. If that happens, the doctors will remove the hands and I’ll go back to
wearing the myoelectric hands.’

‘So if you don’t take the medicine, you’ll lose the hands,’ Danny
said matter-of-factly. I started to nod, smiling at his grasp of the situation
but wanting to frown at the circumstances themselves. Without the medicine, I
would probably lose the hands.

‘That’s right,’ Ellen assured him in my pause. ‘So we can’t let
your father be an airhead and forget. Right?’ I watched small smiles whisper
across the kids’ faces.

After a moment of breathing easier, Nadia looked at me and said,
‘I read about the medicine. Is it true that it may make you more vulnerable to
illness?’

I felt my eyes widen and that smile I had given Danny turn twofold
as I nodded in baffled surprise at these precocious children of mine. ‘Oooh,’ I
told her, turning my head slightly to shoot an assessing gaze her way. ‘So very
Perry Mason-esque. I’m impressed by your research. That’s correct. I have to
wash my hands regularly, watch for infection if I’m cut, and wear a mask if
someone else in the house has an illness.’

Andy jumped to chime in, ‘So your body will be unable to fight off
a more serious illness, right?’

And just like that the mood went still. Nadia shot Danny a look
from the armrest of the sofa, tipping her head down and to the side so all I
could see was a sliver of her profile and the top of her brow. Danny looked
back, his eyes, at first wary and questioning, turned uncertain before becoming
afraid. Whatever he was seeing in Nadia’s expression, it was bringing him no
amount of solace.

Danny turned to catch Andy’s gaze beside him, and Nadia followed
suit, eying both her brothers meaningfully. Silence burgeoned between us,
blanketing the room in a palpable tension. I could feel it accumulating in a
wall between me and my family. They weren’t telling me something.

I scanned the room again, hoping one of them would break the
silence, and found Kali and Lauren locked on each other. I followed Kali’s
apprehensive gaze to Lauren on the other side of Ellen where I was confronted
by such an intent and piercing expression on my daughter’s face that I could
take it no longer.

‘What’s up with you two?’ I asked my two youngest daughters.

When Kali turned to me, it was with teary eyes full of desperation
and heartbreak. ‘We don’t want you to die!’ she cried, her voice hitching on
the word die like a hiccup.

‘Oh!’ Ellen gasped softly. She hurried from her seat to the
opposite sofa and drew our youngest into her arms. I had no words. There was
but one coherent thought in my mind:
How could I?
How could I, when they
had already endured the losses of their biological parents, force them to live
in fear of losing me, too?

Lauren turned to me, her expression drifting from sorrow and pain
to thoughtfulness as she spoke over her sister’s gentle sobs. ‘Tata. . . Do you
wish you had never become sick and lost your hands?’

Tears pooled in my eyes, casting a watery haze over the scene of
my family – the people I loved most torn by anguish at the thought of losing
me. I stared at her through the burning in my eyes and the clog accumulating in
my throat. Something was clawing at my chest. But I ignored it. There wasn’t
enough oxygen in the room. But suddenly I didn’t need as much. I scooted over
to sit beside her, wrapping my left hand around hers with minute care as I drew
my right hand across her hair then reached up to tenderly stroke the worrisome
dimple in her brow. I watched her smooth the concern from her forehead as my
prosthetic fingers fell to her shoulder. This was all I needed: right here, in
this room. How could I ever have believed anything else mattered?