Blood on the Threshold

by Karin Richmond

  I consciously held the Light in my mind’s eye for as long as I could. It felt as if time had stopped, and it very well may have. I could not hold on to the Power for long—perhaps only moments. But this time when I opened my eyes, I did not fall to the ground, and I was astonished and exhilarated that the Light had chosen to come back to me again—this time in a profound way, not in the midst of pain, blood, and anger. There was no voice this time, but the message I heard was an affirmation that all was well on the other side and the Light was still waiting for me—when the time was right—exactly as I had heard on that long night that was not nearly far enough away.

  For me, this humble ancient portal of God’s Light was very much alive and functioning. But what do you say to someone about the Light coming toward you—again? twice?—and not be discounted as crazy? Or worse? I waited for a quiet moment, some days later, to describe to Pastor Gerald what happened. I trusted him and needed him to talk to about this extraordinary experience. He listened carefully and without judgment to my story about how the Light came to me then and now. As a man of faith and good humor, he quipped, “Mirabelle, take the light into your life and be glad that God reached out and touched someone—you!”

  28

  DID IT MAKE MY BROWN EYE BLUE?

  Since my assault in 1983, I have been able to regain virtually all of my movement. A little follow-up cosmetic surgery lifted my droopy left eyelid, which was stretched out of proportion from the excessive swelling that resulted from the glass bottle cuts and deep bruising. I did get a straightened nose out of the ordeal. The one scar that did not heal—worsened over time, in fact—was the cornea in my left eye. The Tabasco sauce that saturated my eyeball left deep chemical burns on and around my cornea. Gradually, the scarring overtook my cornea and slowly grew across my line of vision. For the last ten years or so, I have not been able to see out of that eye. In the fall of 2010, the scarring became acutely painful at times, so much so that I was unable to get out of bed from the blinding hurt. Other days it would be better, and I was more stable.

  Searing pain and a Newsweek article—forwarded to me by my handyman—that heralded an intriguing new procedure, motivated me to investigate a way to heal my pain and depression. But I proceeded with pessimism. For twenty years, the answers I received from many, many ophthalmologists were disappointing. The prognosis was consistently bleak. My eye was too battered, too scarred for a cornea transplant. The pain had become so intense I had even had a serious discussion about removing my left eye completely. A prosthetic might have to do. I was at the end of my options and twenty years of being so tired of looking at the mirror every morning and seeing the last physical reminder of my assault.

  I backtracked and discussed this procedure with the original ophthalmologist who helped me heal from the beginning. Dr. Lee cared for my eyes for months until the right eye cleared and the left eye stabilized. Later, he was elected president of the Texas Ophthalmological Association and became an American Academy of Ophthalmology fellow. I saw him occasionally at the state capitol complex when we were both doing our “rounds” as lobbyists. So I knew he was connected to the premier physicians in the field.

  It was a good call. In twelve days’ time, I was in the office of Dr. Steve Pflugfelder, a rock star in the field of cornea surgery. I was immediately taken with his calm, confident manner. He was patient with my stream of questions based on my myriad file notes. He was patient with my skepticism. He calmed my anxiety. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I was so accustomed to the well-meaning but sorrowful look they wore when doctors told me nothing could be done, I had to double-check Pflugfelder’s face when he gave his answer.

  “You are a perfect candidate.”

  “What?” I was confused with this unexpected diagnosis.

  “Your eye is indeed damaged, but the stem cell transplant procedure should work very well for you,” he explained, still calm and steady.

  I frankly was afraid to believe him. But he carried on his explanation of the surgery.

  “We take limbic stem cells from your good right eye and place them in your left eye. We next add some donor limbic stem cells to act as a conduit for your own stem cells to grow toward—like a bridge. We will put a little placenta tissue over your eye, sew it up, and wait for about ten days.”

  “What is your success rate?”

  “It’s about 90 percent. Your eye should heal through this and you should be able to regain your sight.”

  I left his office afraid to feel excited, but I grasped his business card with all his contact numbers tightly in my palm. I would consider this and call back.

  My mom was enthusiastic about this new option and played the role of the Great Encourager! She knows how I think and helped me address all my concerns and objections.

  We scheduled the procedure for two weeks hence. I was ready. Dr. Pflugfelder gave me the confidence I needed to endure this arduous and painful procedure.

  After some pre-op routines, my mother and I arrived at the outpatient surgery facility at 6:30 a.m. I was first up for the day. By 7:00 the nurses had completed their duties, and “Doctor Flug” (the nickname I learned he went by) arrived with a smile.

  I really wanted to be knocked out of the ballpark. There was nothing in the procedure I thought I would want to remember, so I received permission to keep my earbuds from my iPod in my ears and the drugs washed me out in a second or so. Quick.

  About two and a half hours later, I was awake with a big eye patch on my left eye and a smiling anesthesiologist hovering around my bedside.

  “All done!” she announced. Still full of good loopy drugs, I nodded slightly.

  I rested the remainder of the day and returned the next morning for a look-see and medicine check. I was still physically overwhelmed and in a great deal of pain.

  My brother flew into Houston to be my chauffeur. We stopped in Crockett for lunch. As I expected, the convenience store where my assailant had committed his first crime was long gone. But the courthouse where he was found guilty of that vile offense was still standing. My brother took some pictures for my book. We returned to Austin, and the healing process for my cornea began in earnest.

  I was surprised by how long it took to heal. I have also been surprised at how closely I had to monitor my pain medications. If the lapse between doses was too long, my eye started to sting in a million places and to tear copiously. My grandmother’s handkerchiefs came in handy. They are always close to hand and remain damp with my tears. Applying the three eyedrops twice a day is also a challenge. My left eye was sewn nearly shut, so there is only a tiny space through which to apply drops. At first, my eye was so swollen I could not manage well at all and needed help from friends and family. And I dared not press too hard on my eyelashes to clean out all the dried drainage. The drops had a lingering sting to them.

  Nearly ten days into recovery, I had a real relapse and nearly collapsed on my kitchen floor tiles. A wash of pain came over me and my eye began to tear profusely. I stumbled downstairs to my bed to wait out the sensation. I popped another Percocet. Dreamy time until nearly nightfall.

  I listened to an audio version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. Such a great play. My favorite lines are: “There you have it, the truth, pure and simple. Ahh, but the truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Indeed. Through my ordeals, sometimes I can only glimpse at the whys and wherefores of the truth.

  I felt better the next morning and was paying closer attention to the timing of my pain meds. I thought about chronicling this adventure but could not begin to gather my thoughts, much less type them coherently. I started to fade that evening but then rallied when some friends picked me up to attend a mutual friend’s Valentine’s Day party at his home across the Barton Creek gully. I played along by taping a heart onto my glasses and wearing a name badge that read “Call me stem cell transplant Mirabelle. One-eyed lovers are more focused!” You’ve just gotta laugh at yourself sometimes!

  I really thought I would
be healed, or close to it, on the second morning after my near-collapse. But I guess healing can take a zigzag course, not a linear one. So I returned to my bed and meds and stayed still, though was—and still I am—tired of staying still.

  Three mornings after the crisis, at 4:30 a.m., I awoke because of the pain in my eye. Popped half a Percocet and went back down. Dreamy time again. Finally coaxed myself up mid-morning. Up to that point, ibuprofen was enough to tame the pain beast. But I felt cooped up and wanted to get out. My muscles were sore from not working out. “Something has to give,” I shouted to my empty room.

  Through it all, I have been contemplating how I feel about having two other people in my eye. I am thankful for the decisions each of them made: one donated his eye from which the stem cells were harvested, and the other, a mother of a newborn, donated a small—tiny even—piece of her baby’s placenta. Yes, this was another part of my journey made possible through the gifts of strangers. I am not alone in my soul journey and now an understanding has evolved within me to recognize that none of us is alone. Sometimes we feel desperately lonely, but we can reach out, call out, scream out if need be. We each have helping hands and eyes and smiles and love to guide us along our ways.

  Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, I awoke with no pain. No meds. That lasted about an hour. Then back to Percocet bits.

  V-day, February 18, 2011! My body urged me forward to work out, get out, walk out. It was a beautiful Austin day, 72 fair degrees. A good day. Come evening, my muscles began to feel pleasantly, reassuringly sore.

  Feeling less pain on the weekend, I spent much time online catching up with bits and pieces of work—yes, work. Actual work. I was monitoring my legislation progress, grateful that no hearings at the capitol were scheduled for me that week. I did not want to testify wearing an eye patch. But wait a minute; maybe I could wear the Red Cross version that Daryl Hannah’s character Elle Driver wears in the Kill Bill movies or the sinister pitch-black model Angelina Jolie’s Captain Franky Cook brandished in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow!

  To celebrate that productivity, on Sunday evening, my buddy James and I went to a movie, then to dinner. We sat with some mutual friends at the Café on the Run because the place was full, full, full. My favorite local crooner Dale Watson was playing “Route 66.” James was on my left side, and we sat arm in arm. I was sharing the story of my way cool high-tech stem cell transplant eye surgery and brought up Crockett and a nurse.

  Melinda, Larry’s wife, shared, “That reminds me of a Catherine that I know—she was from Crockett.”

  “She used to be a nurse?”

  “Yes, now she works at the Texas Railroad Commission.”

  “Wow, will this story never stop?” I said to myself.

  My face registered honest surprise. I felt my body go weak. I glanced at James, who was listening with great attention.

  “That’s her! She was the nurse in the emergency room who recognized Leroy as the assailant who attacked her a year before! It was her ER surgeon who demanded that the police return to my hotel room and find the knife because they were about to release him since they did not find a weapon on his person.”

  Shortly after that evening, I wrote to Catherine at her work address. It will be interesting to reconnect with her after all these years.

  A week later and she still had not contacted me. I could only speculate on the reasons for her hesitation.

  Meanwhile, my left eye had progressed nicely. On my second follow-up appointment, I complained to the surgeon that my eye felt as though an eyelash or something was under the blank contact lens acting as a Band-Aid on my cornea. Very annoying, especially since I knew I could not rub my eye nor fiddle with the contact.

  “Maybe it has something to do with the sixteen stitches left in your eye,” he replied with just a bit of mischievousness. “Want me to take them out?”

  I looked at him with a little attitude. “Yes, right this minute!”

  So the numbing drops went in and the stitches came out, one at a time. Ugh. Each time we took a break I had to shake my hands and fingers from the nervous tension I was experiencing. After the tiny shreds were safely on a little glass dish and out of my eye, he took a photograph to show me how the cornea healing was progressing.

  “It’s about 85 percent grown back; see the blue patches? Those are the areas that have returned. These green areas still need the stem cells to grow over them.”

  I had yet to see much improvement in my vision, but at least I knew that the pain I was enduring was in the promotion of my healing progress rather than just the pure pain that preceded the surgery. Because in a few weeks’ time, my journey would take a hard turn, and I would need all my emotional and physical strength to confront what was to stand in my path.

  29

  MY PREDATOR IS RELEASED

  A swirling sensation comes over me. I blink several times to keep my focus on the discussion that is unfolding as I slump in my dining room chair. A sense of déjà vu eerily settles in around me. Almost like a slight fold in the curtain of time. I am there, yes. The officer is there, yes. His words are clear and audible. But I know what he is going to say just nanoseconds before his words reach me. My assailant will be released from incarceration in a few months. This reality has not sunk in. But it is catching on fast. Slowly the time warp dissipates and I begin to discuss in earnest what the criminal justice system has in store for me. And him.

  Leroy Johnson has served for thirty years and he has earned two days for every one day of incarceration. Therefore, his ninety-year sentence is considered served, and he is expected to be released, soon, under Mandatory Supervised Parole as defined in the Texas Code of Criminal Procedures. The alternatives to keep him in prison have been exhausted. There are no means that I—or anyone else, for that matter—could muster that will change his scheduled release date.

  A visceral fear begins to seep into my skin as the victim services analyst goes through the details. He is calm and practiced in this situation. We talk about what conditions I can request of the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, and it boils down to two pretty basic parameters. The first is that he is going to be released in a county other than where I live, and the conditions of his parole can specify that he can never enter my county. If he did and he was caught, that would be considered a violation of his parole and he could be sent back to prison.

  I am not comforted by this.

  The second option the analyst describes is a Super Intensive Supervised Parole where a parolee’s location is monitored with GPS technology via an ankle bracelet secured on the parolee’s leg. But, as a victim, I could not know where he lives or where he might be traveling. Local and state law enforcement officers would know if the bracelet was forcibly removed or he broke from his approved area or “inclusion zone.” If he is assigned an “active monitoring” system, police and surveillance personnel should know within minutes of any movement beyond the inclusion zone. Under a “passive monitoring” system, his movements would be tracked and reviewed weekly by a parole supervisor to determine if he has literally lived the straight and narrow parameters approved by the supervising parole officer: namely, his work, the grocer, his church, and a few other locations. But again, his movements among those locations will not be monitored in real time in a passive system.

  So the fear continues to sink deeper in my blood. I have wondered over the years if Leroy Johnson has been darkly fuming over the years and secretly preparing his revenge. “One must hope for the best, yet plan for the worst,” my grandmother would often say to me. I suddenly realize I do not even know what he looks like. “How am I to even recognize him on the street? Or breaking a window? How can I protect myself in the most basic way possible if I do not even know who to look for?” My mind is full of so many unanswered questions, and I take a deep breath and take my time to ask Officer Guerra each and every one.

  “Well, there is one way you can get a hard look at him,” explains the victim services analyst
. I perk up with some level of trepidation. “The Texas Department of Criminal Justice offers a Victim Offender Mediation/Dialogue program, with the end result—if and only if both parties agree and I believe that the meeting will be good for both parties—being a face-to-face meeting while Johnson is still in prison.”

  This idea was not totally new to me. A few years after my assault, friends and counselors had begun to suggest to me that I consider forgiving my assailant. Yvette, with the Victim Services Division, related how some—not all—victims had found solace and strength for themselves after facing their offender and getting answers to some of their questions. Some had chosen to participate in a program administered by Victim Services where the victims ask to meet their assailant face-to-face in prison and speak to the criminals about the motivations of their actions. Sometimes the victim and the assailant are able to find some kind of peace between them.

  “Forgiveness is a process” she shared with me. “It may take years, or it may never come at all. You will make that choice and no one will disparage you if you do not want to forgive him. He committed a vicious, terrible act against you. He is in jail and will stay in prison hopefully for a very long time. He did get ninety years, right?”

  Frankly, at that time—very early in my journey—I was having nothing of it. It was not even in the realm of possibility. In fact, imagining a means to kill him inside prison was far more appealing in a primal sort of way. I imagined ways to set up the deal, how much it might cost, how it might play out. This was all fantasy, of course, but it felt far more satisfying than forgiving the asshole.

  Now, as I listen to Officer Guerra, the concept of forgiveness enters my mind once more. I let the prospect of a face-to-face meeting sink in before I speak. The calmness in my voice belies my trepidation. “So I might sit across a table from Leroy Johnson and try to understand what kind of human being he is? And why he tried to kill me?”