Gone

by Linda K. Olson

  GONE

  Copyright © 2020, Linda K. Olson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2020

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-789-0

  ISBN: 978-1-63152-790-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020907892

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

  Dedicated to:

  Dave—for making me feel like a woman, allowing me to become independent again, and loving me unconditionally.

  Tiffany and Brian—without you, my life would have been incomplete.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE: A Daughter’s Perspective

  CHAPTER 1: The Day Our Life Went Off the Rails

  What Kind of Life Would That Be?

  CHAPTER 2: The Pact

  CHAPTER 3: A Room with a View

  CHAPTER 4: (In)dependent Wife

  Cry My Eyes Out

  CHAPTER 5: Climb Every Mountain

  CHAPTER 6: Independence Day

  CHAPTER 7: Building a House and Family

  The Night Shift

  CHAPTER 8: Look, Ma, No Feet

  CHAPTER 9: Tits and Ass

  CHAPTER 10: Get Out and Go!

  CHAPTER 11: Stopped, Dropped, and Rolled with It

  Carry On

  CHAPTER 12: Save Me!

  CHAPTER 13: Eighty Thousand Miles

  EPILOGUE: A Son’s Perspective

  PROLOGUE:

  A Daughter’s Perspective

  I thumbed the worn edges of the envelope Adrian had given me. For three weeks, I’d refrained from examining its contents, knowing that I would need some time alone to process what I would see. Adrian, a dear friend of my grandparents, and I had hoped to get a chance to sit down and record her memories of the past thirty years but had not been able to find time. Instead, she’d offered to dig up some photographs for me, promising a detailed discussion in the near future.

  I slid my thumb under the flap and pulled out a thick card. Inside it were eight photographs and a note written in Adrian’s impeccable cursive. It read:

  Dear Tiffany,

  Here are the photos I promised you. The one of your mom taken the evening before the trip is not good, but it is a treasure. We were all having drinks in our house. All of our lives changed the next day. It has been a privilege to be part of your family and this incredible journey.

  Love,

  Adrian

  I have always loved looking at photographs taken of my parents and grandparents when I was a baby, toddler, and adolescent, not to see how I’ve grown, but to see the transformation in these people who have always been old to me. It is jarring that they were young once.

  I picked up the stack of pictures and examined the first one, taken on Sunday, August 26, 1979. In it, my mother is twenty-nine years old, three months shy of her thirtieth birthday. Ten months younger than I was sitting there that day.

  Adrian was right: the photograph is rather poor quality. It was taken haphazardly, as though the photographer were unaware of the moment he was memorializing, which he was—they all were. There are three people in the frame. My mother sits on the floor in front of an empty fireplace, facing the photographer. She is slender, dressed in a dark blue, long-sleeved shirt and white pants, her legs tucked under her, right hand resting in her lap. My Uncle Mark sits to her right, dressed in jeans and a yellow T-shirt, staring absently at the brown shag carpeting covering the floor. The third person sits with her back to the photographer, legs outstretched, gin and tonic in hand.

  The photograph was taken in Stuttgart, Germany, in the apartment that Adrian and her husband, Johnny, occupied at the US Army garrison. My grandparents were stationed there as well. The subjects of the photograph, those whose faces were captured, appear tired and have probably just finished one of my grandmother’s famous gourmet meals. Travel guides spread in front of them, they are finalizing the details of their trip to Berchtesgaden, planned for the following day.

  As my father tells it, the morning of the trip was overcast, with occasional light rain—typical Central European summer weather. My parents, grandparents, and uncle, with his then wife, piled into a Volkswagen van for a leisurely drive through southern Bavaria. Stopping in Ulm for lunch, my father, my mother, and my uncle made the dizzying climb to the top of the tallest steeple in Europe. My mother—strong, lithe, and athletic—had no problem keeping up with her husband and his brother, both marathon runners. My father recalls that this was the last time his wife of almost two years would use her lovely, slender legs.

  Continuing on their journey after a few wrong turns, they found themselves on a steep, winding road, trying to find their way back on course. The road flattened to cross the railroad tracks, and my grandfather downshifted. The van stalled. The men piled out the front door facing away from the oncoming train. The women failed to open the side door in the back seat, but my mother scrambled into the front and fell out onto the tracks. My father automatically turned midstride to go back to help her, certain they were going to die. Straddling the tracks, he managed to grab her under her arms. As he turned away with her in his arms, the train made impact with the van. He felt his arms pulled downward as my mother was crushed underneath the van. He was tossed aside, unconscious.

  My mother lost both legs, amputated a few inches above the knees, and her right arm, amputated at the shoulder. This is how I have always known her. I spent the first few years of my life thinking that was how mothers were supposed to be. I felt sorry for the children who didn’t have a nightly wheelchair ride or butt-walk races on the weekend. They missed playing with canes and prostheses and may never have known how far a wheelchair can slide on an icy sidewalk.

  As I got older, her disability became a source of a sort of pride for me. I hated other people staring at her as she rolled by in her wheelchair or marched along with her awkward tin-soldier gait, their heads on a swivel as she passed. I wanted everyone to know that her disability was only physical, not mental, and that she could do everything that everyone else could do. I would stare just as hard right back at them until they turned away uncomfortably.

  I was and still am possessive of her. As a child, I could not wait until I was strong enough to carry her and put her legs on. My father would patiently stand by as I tugged and pulled fruitlessly on my mother’s stockings, trying to yank them off her legs and out through the hole of her prostheses. The day I was able to get her legs on was as exciting as my first trip to Disneyland. My father made lifting her eighty-pound, legless body look like picking up a sack of feathers. It wasn’t. I tried and tried until I could finally, at about age fourteen, carry her down to the beach. Next came carrying her with her legs on, usually up and down stairs. Her legs added about twenty pounds but gave me something to hold on to. “No, thanks. I don’t need any help” became my mantra when going places with her. I became a pack mule of sorts and relished the role. I felt needed and
important, able to help my mother go places and do things that would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, for her to do on her own.

  Looking at the photograph from an adult’s perspective, I was humbled by this young woman whose life was destroyed and re-created in a matter of seconds. I wondered if I would be able to pull off such a resurrection with as much élan as she did and still does.

  That was the first photograph I’d seen of my mother as an adult before the accident. I do not know the person with legs in it. That image and my current image of my mother are incongruous. I was frustrated that the photograph was so subdued and still. I wished that it showed her midrun, midjump, or midkick, any demonstration of her boundless energy innervating her real legs. I wanted to poke at the photograph and force her to stand, to show me that those legs really did work.

  The second photograph in the bunch shows my mother and father, both sitting in wheelchairs in the courtyard of the hospital in Salzburg. It shows the mother I recognize. She is wearing a lacy white camisole nightgown and is cocooned in billowing white sheets. Her sternum is supported by a cruciform brace, and the bruised and stitched stump of her right arm is exposed. The part of the photograph I recognize most is her grin. Holding the armrest of her wheelchair with her left arm, she sits straight up, laughing at someone or something in front of her. My mother’s being serious is a rare sight for me and usually means trouble. Her high spirits clearly were not lost with her limbs. My father sits to her left, looking as though someone has just gotten hit by a train. No doubt he had already mentally rearranged his life and was regimenting the next few months of rehabilitation boot camp. This is typical. My father’s seriousness almost balances my mother’s ridiculousness. His intensity and drive, coupled with my mother’s energy and positivity and their combined determination, are what got them through it all. My grandmother, smiling, leans with her arms around my father’s neck, her right hand midpat on his shoulder. Adrian’s long arms span all three of them. That photograph exemplifies the attitude that our family and those close to us have always adopted about the accident: “If you can do it, I can do it.”

  I thumbed through the rest of the photographs, which must have been taken a week or so after the accident. My mother’s family had arrived, and everyone had begun the process of healing and trying to return to a semblance of normalcy. I sensed a heaviness in the subjects and not for the first time wondered how this incident truly affected them.

  The last photo shows my father kissing my mother, a smile playing at her lips. It is a glimpse, early on in the struggle before them, of the happiness and strength they would share with everyone around them. It is my favorite.

  CHAPTER 1:

  The Day Our Life Went Off the Rails

  “We’ve gotta move,” I screamed at the driver as I shook the back of the seat. “Get off the track, Jack. A train is coming!”

  I saw the monster bearing down on us through the left-side windows of a borrowed VW van. The whistle’s crescendo was deafening. We’re going to die. I’m only twenty-nine. I’m not ready to die. In seconds, the men had clambered out of the front passenger-side door. I clawed at the metal sliding-door handle next to me and yanked it back. Nothing happened.

  Dave, his brother, and their dad had been riding in the front seat. His mother, sister-in-law, and I were in the middle seat behind them. The sound of my pounding heart blocked all noise except the voice in my head. Dave is out there somewhere.

  I grabbed the handle again and jerked hard. Nothing.

  The front door. All I had to do was jump forward, slide out, stand up, and run. I can make it!

  I catapulted over the front seat, landed awkwardly, and, before I could catch myself, tumbled out the open passenger door onto the tracks. The only thing standing between me and the train was the van, with my mother- and sister-in-law still inside. I scrambled frantically to right myself.

  Suddenly, my chest felt tight and I was lifted off the tracks. I opened my eyes. Dave’s face was inches from mine; his strong arms were wrapped around me. He’s going to save me! I could hear again. Dave was gasping for breath. His arms tightened around me, and then he was gone.

  In one earth-shaking, deafening instant, the locomotive smashed into the van, pushing me down onto my back across the track. The blue sky above me disappeared as the van folded over me, blocking the color and light as the train hit it. Time morphed. Seconds jumbled and tumbled. Time ran away and disappeared.

  I took a deep breath and held it. If I let it out, I might never breathe again. I must hold it . . . hold it . . . hold it. Till death do us part . . .

  The train pushed me down the tracks. I felt nothing.

  When it stopped, I heard new sounds. Human voices. Indecipherable words. I didn’t care what they were saying. If I could hear them, I was still alive.

  The hands of time began to move again. Something was happening. I heard the scraping of metal on metal. The train was backing up. Someone shouted. People grunted and strained to lift the van. The terrible weight pressing down on me lessened. I found myself squinting against the late-afternoon sun.

  I took a deep breath and felt a sharp pain in my chest. Pain is good! Breathing is good. What are they saying?

  Then I remembered. I was in Germany. German! They’re speaking German! That’s why I can’t understand them. Maybe I don’t have brain damage. They pulled the van off me. I’m alive!

  I smiled at the panicked-looking faces hovering over me. They did not reciprocate. Heads turned away. Hands held me down. My mind raced. Am I paralyzed? I was afraid to move. I didn’t want to know. But I smiled. It’s what I always did, and the only thing I could do for these horror-struck strangers. I’m okay, I tried to convey. Don’t worry; I’ll be okay.

  No one was speaking English, so I had to work it out on my own: I was conscious, my glasses were still on my face, and I could see clearly. People swirled around me, some with purpose, others plodding mindlessly, as if through movement they could somehow make sense of the scene before them. I didn’t feel part of it either; it was as if I were watching a movie.

  The scream of a siren got closer and closer. I looked around, wondering if there were other people on the ground. Who is the ambulance coming for? There were six of us in the van. Where is everyone?

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shoe, then, farther away, another. One was Dave’s. Where is Dave? The other was light tan with a rubber sole. It looked an awful lot like the new ones I’d bought for the trip.

  An ambulance stopped abruptly very near where I lay against the hot tracks. Its doors flew open, and medical personnel rushed over. They tied tourniquets around my right shoulder and high up on my legs. I heard the whooshing air of a blood pressure cuff as it tightened around my left arm.

  I stared at each face. They looked at each other and shook their heads. “My blood pressure is always low,” I said. Why do they look so worried?

  I knew from my medical training that if blood pressure got too low, the team responsible for saving my life might start to lose hope and motivation. I smiled and repeated, more slowly and more loudly, “My . . . blood . . . pressure . . . is . . . always . . . low! It’s okay!”

  Big men gingerly slipped their arms under me and transferred me to a stretcher. An attendant picked up my still neatly tied shoe and walked toward me. He placed it at the end of my gurney. Conveniently, my foot was still inside it. Someone else put part of a leg next to it. The knot in my stomach twisted tighter.

  I tried to sit up but couldn’t. I pushed again. Nothing happened. Why can’t I raise my arm? The right sleeve of my dark green velour shirt looked fine, not so much as a tear. My right hand, attached to my arm, lay motionless beside me on the gurney. My arm looked perfect as it protruded from the sleeve cuff. It was, however, hanging loose inside, unattached to my body.

  I closed my eyes.

  The ambulance swayed as it sped around mountain curves. The paramedics rocked back and forth in time with the motion of the vehicle
, silent as they steadied my gurney. Time seemed to fly away again until we slowed and stopped. The ambulance doors were yanked open, and the low-hanging sun temporarily blinded me. A man in a US military uniform poked his head in toward me. “I’m Dr. . . .” His eyes quickly scanned the scene in front of him. “Let’s get her out!”

  He’s speaking English! He leaned over, pulled the sheet off me, and pressed his fingers against my neck, feeling for a carotid pulse while he looked at the bloody tourniquets tied on three of my extremities.

  “How are you?” he asked curtly.

  Not wanting to state the obvious, I flashed a smile and said, “Fine.”

  The doctor in me assessed my situation: foot in shoe, leg on gurney, loose arm in sleeve. I’m going to die. I’m going to bleed to death. In some ways, I was fine—fine with dying. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live like that.

  There was a brief silence as the doctor stepped away from the door, then an exchange of words that floated over my head. He pulled the sheet back over me as he said, “We can’t keep you here. You need to get to surgery as fast as possible. We’re calling ahead to the trauma hospital in Salzburg and alerting them to prepare for your arrival.” He looked deep into my eyes and squeezed my remaining hand tightly. “Hurry and good luck! We’ll be praying for you.”

  I watched the doors slam shut. I did want to live. Maybe they’ll get me to Salzburg in time. Surely they wouldn’t have sent us off if there wasn’t any hope. I looked at the faces of the men in the ambulance. If they have hope, I have hope. I’ll fool them as long as I can.

  “I’ll be okay. My blood pressure is fine. It’s always low,” I reminded them. Don’t give up on me, guys. Please don’t give up on me.

  It was a twenty-minute race to the trauma hospital across the passport-controlled border between Germany and Austria. The rapid, deep, up-down, two-note sound of the siren provided the soundtrack for the scene as the ambulance sped me toward my date with a room full of surgeons. I’m going to die; I’m going to live. I’m going to die; I’m going to live. I’m going to die; I’m going to live.