Gone

by Linda K. Olson

  After six months, we finally found a piece of land we thought suitable for building. After working hard, studying every night, and trying to stay healthy for our unborn baby, I’d get off the train, go to Dave’s parents’ house, eat a quick supper, then sit at the dining room table with Dave and our architect, Jim.

  It would start out amicably and then work its way to a fracas of some sort by the end of every meeting. We wanted something simple and affordable. The architect wanted an accessible showplace that would make the cover of an architectural publication, maybe San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles magazine. We’d have preferred to move into a ready-made home; instead, we were obsessing over minutiae.

  “Let’s start with the living room tonight,” Jim said as he pulled out new sketches.

  “I don’t think we need a living room. No one ever goes into living rooms anymore. Let’s just have one big family-room space,” I said nicely.

  “I think you’ll really like these windows,” he said, ignoring my comment.

  I leaned over the table to get a look at the plans. What I saw made no sense. Little, slit-like windows about twelve inches below the ceiling would provide the only light in the room.

  “What are those things?” I asked. “They look like arrow slits in a fortress. They’re really ugly.” I minced no words. How could he be so stupid?

  “Well, they’ll give you privacy, and they’re different, kind of cutting-edge-looking,” he said, as if he were an architecture god.

  “That’s not happening,” I said. I gritted my teeth and made a fist with my left hand under the table. Dave and I traded off trying to be civil as each encounter wore on.

  As an amputee, I operated in two modes: one with my legs on, when I could walk using a cane in the house; the other when I left my prostheses off and rolled myself around in a manual wheelchair. This was very different from work, where I always walked with a cane. None of this appeared to be intuitive for Jim, so we put in hundreds of hours over the next several months, planning and making lists:

  • things I did in my wheelchair;

  • light switch placement;

  • turning radius in every room;

  • hallways and doorways wide enough for a wheelchair;

  • pocket doors where possible;

  • windows I could reach from wheelchair height and could open/close and lock/unlock with one hand;

  • placement and distances for parts of the kitchen;

  • lowering parts of the kitchen for me to work at;

  • optimal height of the kick space under cabinetry, so I wouldn’t catch my feet when I had my legs on;

  • tile flooring choices, so I couldn’t slip when walking;

  • commercial-grade carpets, so my wheelchair would roll more easily;

  • built-in bench seating on two sides of the kitchen table, which had to be bolted to the floor;

  • flat doorway thresholds with adequate outdoor drainage so water wouldn’t enter the house;

  • and that eternal toilet problem—the right height, and something I could push off from so I could stand up.

  After a full day strapped into my legs, I’d come home and ditch them as soon as possible. My wheelchair was best when I was at home. That at least made our building choices easier in some ways, but we were forced to put in an elevator because the lot we bought was so narrow that we had to build a two-story house.

  While we prepared to build, I was incubating the baby that would make us a family. I couldn’t wait for the house to become our home.

  As I entered my last month of pregnancy, it became hard to concentrate and even harder to maneuver. I tried to be nonchalant when I talked to Dave during our nightly phone calls, but I knew he was worried about me, so I kept the calls short, hoping to sound cheery and upbeat.

  “How’s it going?” he asked one evening.

  “Fine,” I said. But, after a long pause, my stoicism crumbled, and I started to cry. “I can’t do this anymore.” My voice cracked, and I gripped the phone so tightly that my palm burned. “My legs itch all over, and my prostheses are so tight it’s killing me to have them on all day.”

  “Olsie,” Dave said in a firm voice, “it’s time for you to come home. Your due date is a week away. I’m coming up tonight. I’ll be there in a couple of hours. Pack your stuff, and we’ll drive back down to San Diego in the morning.”

  I wanted to argue with him, to be tough, but I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to go home—or, rather, go to where Dave was living, the place where I could get lots of hugs while we waited together for the big event.

  “Dave, wake up. What is this?” I whispered.

  It was five o’clock in the morning on Thursday, March 12, 1981. My belly was big; my boobs were big; the baby rocking and rolling around in me felt big, too.

  Dave turned on the bedside lamp and turned toward me.

  I ran my hand across the warm, wet bedsheets. No odor and no color. Amniotic fluid. Not much, just enough to know that today would be the day. We lay there a while longer, holding hands and squeezing our eyes shut, excitement and trepidation mounting.

  “Come on. We might as well get up and see what happens,” I mumbled.

  Dave shoved me just enough that I didn’t roll off onto the floor: turning over without legs while pregnant is like rolling a beach ball. We acted as though we were in a slow-motion movie, pretending to be calm, cool, and collected but all the while knowing that our lives were about to be changed unalterably again.

  He called work and arranged to have someone else see his patients for the day while I showered and struggled to gussy up.

  Just before we left, Dave got down on the floor to help me put on my legs, with the always-on brown knee-high leather boots that complemented the dark blue maternity dress stretched tightly over my abdomen.

  It was late in the morning when we arrived at the labor-and-delivery deck of the Navy hospital. Only in the Navy would a pregnant woman go to a deck.

  “Hey! Stop that lady with the boots! No boots on the labor deck!” the charge nurse yelled.

  I looked around. She’s talking to me? You’ve gotta be kidding. I didn’t want to lose my balance by turning to look for her, but in my imagination I saw a stocky, militant woman with gray hair knotted tightly in a bun, surveying the mayhem with her clipboard as she roamed the hallways.

  “Sorry. She’s going in, boots and all. She can’t walk without them.”

  Down the hall came a grinning Hugh Lacey, the ob-gyn chief resident who was scheduled to deliver our baby. His mild Southern drawl was disarming and always made me smile.

  “Come on. Let’s see how we’re going to get this baby out!” he said as he greeted us in green scrubs and cap. His mask hung in front. Uncharted territory lay ahead.

  A cheery young nurse created my room by yanking a yellow nylon curtain around the bed. Dave helped me pull off my dress and put on a hospital gown. Once dressed, I stood there looking at the nurse while I fiddled with the thin cotton covering that kept sliding off my armless right shoulder. The nurse waited for me to get up on the gurney bed, but it wasn’t as if I could just rise up onto my tiptoes and slide backward, like most people. I’m not helpless, but I do need help with some things.

  As if I were a feather, Dave set me up on the bed and kissed me at the same time, a skill he’d honed over the past year and a half. Now the experiments started. Because we were living one hundred miles apart, we did not attend any birthing classes. And there was no chapter in the obstetrical books about how to deliver a baby whose mom has no knees and no feet. I could hold my breath and grunt and exhale and create a great force, but without legs I had no way to translate all that hoopla into an effective push. It wasn’t going to work if the stirrups at the end of the bed were empty. I guess these fake legs are somehow going to have to come to life and do the job.

  For the first hour or two, it was relatively straightforward: blood pressure monitoring, manual cervical exam, normal stuff. As usual, I had a book
with me, but it was hard to find time to read. Dave and Hugh hovered over me, stroking their chins, trying to imagine the perfect scenario for getting the baby out of me.

  Then I started to squirm. I didn’t want to sound wussy, so I just held my breath every time I felt a twinge. That didn’t work for long.

  “Dave, I’m getting a little uncomfortable.”

  “Breathe in and out through your mouth,” he said, calm as could be. Where does he get off telling me what to do? What I really want to do is YELL. AT. HIM. for getting me into this mess!

  “Ohhh-kaay,” I said as I grimaced and grabbed the edge of the bed, looking down at the little mountain topped by the protuberant belly button that had replaced my flat abdomen. Below that, my boot-clad fake legs stretched out flat, the rigid, curved tops of my prostheses extending all the way up into my groin. Thigh-high nylons with lacy, patterned elastic tops added to the incongruity. I alternated between embarrassment and giggles, imagining how this appeared to other people.

  Although mine was not technically a high-risk pregnancy, Hugh decided to give me an epidural, so I’d have energy to push later, and moved me into the delivery room “just in case.” As they pushed me down the hall, my mind raced ahead of the gurney. Will this be a pink or a blue? What if it’s abnormal? I can barely take care of myself. . . . What if it dies? What if I die and Dave is left with it? I should never have agreed to keep it. I should have had an abortion. I shouldn’t have added to Dave’s lifetime burden.

  The physical demands of the present soon forced aside thoughts of the past and future.

  “Push, push, push!” Hugh said. One man per leg, they leaned into my thighs, my left leg draped over Dave’s shoulder, my right over Hugh’s.

  “Here, take this,” Hugh commanded the attending nurse as he handed her my right leg. “I can feel the baby’s head coming through your cervix, Linda. One more push for me. . . . Push!”

  Within seconds, I heard a squeak of a cry as our new baby’s lungs took over from the work of the placenta. I was an exhausted blob of happiness.

  “You made a beautiful baby girl.” Dave grinned at me through a veil of tears.

  I smiled weakly.

  “Cut the cord, Daddy,” Hugh directed.

  “Thank you, Hugh,” I whispered. I was exhausted but managed a grin.

  Baby Girl Hodgens was whisked off to the nursery, and Dave and I were spun down the hall to Recovery. Dave went out to accept hugs, cheers, and kisses from his family and Adrian and Johnny and to make the joyful call to my family. Tomorrow, the three of us will start another life. With that thought, I fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  A couple of hours later, I was startled from my postpartum slumber by a nurse standing next to my bed. I blinked and tried to focus on what she was holding out to me. It was wrapped tightly in a blanket and wasn’t very big. I strained to sit up but flopped back down.

  The nurse looked at me, as if wondering why I wasn’t reaching for the bundle. I gasped when I saw the gap between the bundle and my body.

  “Wait! Can you pull the railings up on this bed? How am I going to hold that? It’s going to roll off.”

  I felt as if she must be thinking, My hands are full. Why don’t you do that, lady?

  Frustrated, I grasped the right side of my gown to show her the emptiness where my arm should be. Her jaw dropped, and she stopped midtransfer.

  “Oh! I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t know. I’ll be right back.”

  Before I knew what was happening, three angels in white uniforms appeared by my bed, straightened the sheets, surrounded me with pillows, raised the side rails, then tenderly propped a little baby girl on my right side while helping me turn so I could snuggle up to her. I wrapped my arm around her and buried my face in her neck.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled as they beamed at me and backed out of the room. I didn’t move. I didn’t know what to do. I was in limbo land. My pregnancy had been easy. I’d loved having that kicking, rolling baby inside me. In fact, I’d often thought it would be cool to have that sensation for the rest of my life. It was soothing, entertaining, and comforting all at once. I already missed it.

  The baby squirmed and made a tiny sound. I felt frozen in place. What is this thing? It’s breathing, it’s warm to the touch, it smells good. Why don’t I know it? What’s wrong with me?

  I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. My heart raced, and I felt faint. Why did we do this?

  I looked down at her and whispered the name we’d chosen: “Tiffany.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, maybe not. She looked as if she’d heard me.

  A little more loudly, I said, “Hi, puppy, it’s your mom. How are you?”

  Her eyes fluttered, and she puckered her rosebud lips. I reached over and gently pulled her onto my chest. Both of us closed our eyes and slept. We’d get to know each other in the morning.

  “Come on, hon. I’ve got to get you out of here,” Dave said.

  With the charge nurse’s permission, he parked illegally outside the maternity ward, ran up the stairs, swooped me into his arms, and carried me down the back stairs to the car. He then ran back up the stairs and returned with a nurse, who was carrying Tiffany and handed her to me.

  Dave leaned over and kissed both his passengers before he started the engine. There were two new legs and two new arms in the car. We’d done it. We were going to have a normal life as a family, just like everyone else.

  Five days later, Dave packed the car and took the first of thousands of trips to the beach at Scripps Pier. He parked at the top of the steep cement ramp that led to “our” beach. While I sat in the car, holding Tiffany, he hauled a diaper bag, two beach towels, and two chairs down to the sand and then returned to the car for us.

  “Dave, how are you going to do this? We can’t leave this tiny baby in the car while you carry me down.”

  “Hon,” he said with a big grin, “lay Tiffany on the seat and put your arm around my neck.”

  Obediently, I put her down and reached up to encircle his neck with my left arm as he slid his right arm under my butt. In one deft move, he cradled Tiffany in his left arm, straightened up, and kicked the door shut with his foot.

  “Wow, what a stud!” I said as he transported his family to their little beach sanctuary, where Tiffany would drink formula from a sandy bottle.

  Two weeks after Tiffany was born, I returned to Los Angeles by myself to finish the last three months of my residency and take the American Board of Radiology oral exam.

  Oral boards. The hardest, scariest, sweatiest, most gut-wrenching, most unpredictable examination of them all. Twenty years of studying and a couple hundred thousand dollars on the line. Your whole future hanging on this half-day test given once a year in Louisville. You walk into a hotel room and sit in front of a light box. The radiologist examiner gives you films and waits for you to describe them and then provide the correct diagnosis. In 1981, you did this seven times, then walked out and flew back home, chewing your nails and having stomach aches for a week while awaiting the results in the mail. I shrieked with joy when the letter arrived informing me that I’d passed. Tears of joy ran down my cheeks as I threw my arm around Dave and kissed him again and again. Thanks to him and our colleagues and friends, my dream had come true.

  As a newly minted, board-certified radiologist, I had to find a job—a job in a specialty that had very few women. Of the 1.9 million people in San Diego County in 1981, there was only one woman in private-practice radiology and three at the University of California, San Diego. The prospect of a triple-amputee woman getting a job was almost nil.

  Dave still had a two-year obligation to the Navy, so San Diego was the only reasonable place for me to look for a job.

  In the two years since the accident, people in the radiology community had found out about me and were sympathetic, but sympathy doesn’t get a contract. It just gets sympathy. And then one day, Jack Forrest, one of the senior members of the radiology department at UCSD, offered to share
his office and suggested that I sit in on readouts in the chest section. About the same time, Dr. John Byfield, a radiation oncologist at UCSD, scrounged around and found $5,000 in an American Cancer Society grant, which became my salary that first year. The diagnostic radiology department worked with me to turn that into a year of computed tomography training.

  During that year, I was given the chance to become part of the chest section. I will never forget watching a resident diagnose a small pneumothorax that I hadn’t seen. I closed my eyes tightly, hoping to burn the image into my brain so I’d never miss a pneumothorax again. Back to the books I went, determined to become a good pulmonary radiologist.

  I guess it worked, because in 1982 I was offered a full-time appointment in the radiology department at UCSD, a wonderful job that lasted for thirty years.

  The end of my residency was also the end of my independent living in LA. While I adored our new baby and wanted to be with Dave full-time, the move back into his parents’ two-story house was an ordeal. The only places open enough for me to maneuver in my manual one-arm-drive wheelchair were the family room and kitchen. No one in their right mind was going to carry that heavy wheelchair up and down the stairs every day. The bedrooms and full baths were on the second floor, which meant that when I had my legs on, I had to lever myself up and down the steps. Once I took them off at night, Dave had to carry me to the bathroom or from place to place, or I had to butt-walk around in the bedrooms. For me to change Tiffany’s diaper or feed her or play with her, someone had to get her out of the crib and hand her to me while I sat on the floor or on the bed.

  It became obvious that my new ticket to independence was now a wheelchair.

  “Look what I can do,” I said.