Just seconds later, I heard the sirens.
The police had blocked off Libra Street, and I remember thinking, Oh, that’s my sign. Libra is the one with the scales of justice—the goddess of balance. Ironic, since my life was all about extremes. I pushed through the ring of spectators and saw the fireman sitting on the curb, his body slumped, his head in his hands. Then I saw those tiny black sneakers, the ones with the Velcro straps. JP was in kindergarten and hadn’t quite learned to tie his shoelaces yet, so I got him shoes with straps. I don’t know why he was having so much trouble learning how to tie laces; he just was. And now those sneakers were in the street, the Velcro straps still fastened.
I started running toward the sneakers, and two cops came forward and stopped me. “That’s my son!” I screamed at them. “Where is he? Is he okay?” One officer put his hand on my shoulder and tried to calm me down; the other one knelt and zipped up Sabyre’s winter coat.
“An ambulance just took your son away,” the officer said.
He didn’t say whether JP was alive or dead, or seriously injured, or anything—just that he wasn’t there. Behind him I saw a delivery truck and a motorcycle on its side. I had another thought, clear as day:
This is it. This is your punishment.
It took me many months to find out exactly what happened, and only then because I met someone who lived on Libra Street and saw the crash.
Steven and JP were cruising on the motorcycle; no one can be sure how fast. My little boy was sitting in front of Steven, not behind him. Up ahead at the intersection, a pizza delivery truck was approaching from the right. There was a yield sign there, and the truck’s driver should have yielded but didn’t. He was only a teenager himself. The truck blew past the yield sign, and Steven saw it coming into his path. According to police, Steven tried to swerve to the right, but it was too late. He hit the delivery truck head-on.
The first people on the scene saw Steven sprawled on the street, bleeding and unconscious. But there was no sign of JP at all. For a long time, they believed Steven was the only victim.
Then one of the responders crouched down to tend to Steven and happened to glance under the pizza truck. What he saw made him gasp and stagger to his feet.
“Oh, my God, there’s a child under there!” he yelled.
JP had been thrown under the truck. He was thrown at such a speed that his little head wedged inside the front fender well, and he dangled there, his legs and arms limp like a rag doll. The firemen arrived, and one of them crawled beneath the truck and sawed through the fender well to free him. That was the fireman I saw on the curb. The sight of my son’s skinny little body pinned and twisted inside the metal was just too much for him. He sat and cried for a boy he knew was somebody’s heart and soul.
Once I learned JP wasn’t there anymore, I grabbed Sabyre and drove like crazy to my mom’s house to pick her up. Then I sped the half mile to the hospital, blasting the horn. My mother pounded the dashboard in agony. I burst through the doors of the ER and searched frantically for JP. A nurse corralled me and asked me to fill out paperwork, but I just kept screaming and banging on a door, trying to get to my son.
“He’s just a baby!” I found myself yelling. “He’s just a baby.”
A nurse finally took me to the room where they had JP. I saw my son lying in a bed, crying, and I realized he was alive. His face was badly scratched and swollen, so swollen I could hardly recognize him. His tiny, delicate lips were mangled and streaked with blood. His right arm was broken and in a sling, and his left knee was sliced open and battered. Bits of asphalt and gravel were stuck on his face and in his hair.
I went to JP and put my hand gently on him and said, “I love you. I’m so sorry.” I said this at least twenty times while I picked the gravel out of his hair. He was in too much pain to say or do much besides whimper; he just lay there, busted and broken, slipping in and out of consciousness. It was one of the most helpless feelings I’ve ever had in my life.
At some point, a doctor came over and told me JP was, in his words, “fine.” I took that to mean he was going to survive, because he sure as heck wasn’t fine. Then the doctor explained Steven’s injuries were more severe, and he might not make it. I hadn’t paid much attention to Steven, who was in his own bed a few feet away. He needed brain surgery, and they were going to rush him to another hospital for an emergency operation. I wanted to be mad at Steven—I wanted to scream in his face, “How could you?!”—but I couldn’t be angry until I knew he would survive.
And then, once I knew he’d live, I could say, “I’m gonna kill you.”
Steven underwent emergency brain surgery and pulled through. In the end he sustained some brain damage but recovered more or less fully. The doctors told me JP had suffered a closed-head injury, meaning he got knocked around pretty good but there was no gash or opening. The worst, it seemed, hadn’t happened. JP was a mess and in a great deal of pain, but he was alive. He would live, and he would be okay.
On that day and in the days that followed, I talked a lot to God. You might think I cursed Him, but I didn’t. I knew in my heart the crash had been my fault. I’d made so many bad decisions in my life, and now one of those bad decisions had nearly killed my son. This was not God’s fault. I believed deep down this was a consequence of the life I was leading. I’d committed many sins, and now it was time for the price to be paid.
And so I didn’t curse God like I did when my grandmother died. I hoped, though He couldn’t possibly love me, that He would still love my innocent children. So I began praying again, this time begging God to heal my son.
A couple of days after the crash, I called JP’s father to let him know what had happened. I’d had very little contact with him, besides constantly fighting to get him to include JP on his insurance, which he was legally bound to do but kept putting off. Still, I felt JP should speak with his father, and I got them together on the phone. I stood beside JP’s bed and could hear his father’s voice through the receiver, but all JP kept saying was “Hello? Hello?” Then JP dropped the phone and looked at me and said, “No one is there.”
My heart sank like a brick. He couldn’t hear out of his right ear. My boy wasn’t “fine” after all. The punishment was just beginning.
THE DOCTORS CONFIRMED JP HAD LOST ALL HEARING in his right ear. It turned out his whole face was paralyzed on the right side, but no one realized that until the swelling went down. He couldn’t close his right eyelid, so they gave him a black eye patch, which he thought was pretty cool. The right side of his mouth just drooped, like half a frown. But the worst thing was how much pain he was in from his broken arm and mangled leg. Every movement caused him to seize up and moan. A physical therapist came by every day, but JP hated his therapy. He’d be alert when it was just me in the room, but as soon as he saw the therapist in the hall, he’d pretend to be fast asleep.
My sweet little boy, my fidgety little rascal of a son, could now barely move without terrible pain. I had to pick him up just to get him to the bathroom. “Mama, carry me,” he’d say in a soft murmur. It filled me with shame and sadness to see him this way.
As soon as I realized JP was in for a long recovery, I dropped out of my college classes so I could be with him. He spent ten days in the hospital, and in that time the doctors never gave us a good diagnosis of what was wrong with him. They wanted to wait six months and run more tests before they reached a conclusion. I brought JP home, and over time his swelling went down and his paralysis went away. But he still couldn’t hear out of his right ear, and walking was still a major challenge.
Because of his injuries, I had to keep JP out of kindergarten for several weeks. But not long after he got out of the hospital I took him back to his classroom so he could grab his books and say hi to his friends. I was getting ready to carry him down the long hallway to his classroom, but JP wouldn’t let me near him—he didn’t want anyone to see me carrying him. Instead, he limped his way down the hall all on his own. Had I carried him,
it would have been a thirty-second walk; it took JP thirty-five agonizing minutes. It was all I could do not to sweep him up and cradle him in my arms.
Finally we got to his room, and JP proudly showed off his cast to his little buddies. Once we were back in the hallway and the door to his classroom was safely closed, JP looked at me with his sad eyes and said, “Mama, will you carry me?” I picked him up and kissed him gently and carried him to the car.
Most of the time, JP couldn’t do much more than sit around the house with his leg propped up. Even taking baths was a nightmare, since he couldn’t get his right arm or his left leg wet. It was like playing a cruel game of Twister in two feet of water. But, you know, we actually laughed a lot during bath time. Keeping different sides of his body out of the tub was so ridiculously hard, we had to laugh. And I know JP got a kick out of how I usually ended up more sopping wet than he was. Seeing him laugh at his own predicament was, for me, a great sign. That’s when I realized he’d inherited my ability to laugh during even the hardest times. I’d passed something on to my son that was good and useful. It made me feel like JP was going to be okay.
However, something even scarier was going on. In the months after the accident, JP’s behavior started to change. He’d go from extremely happy one minute to angry and irritated the next. He’d wake up in a great mood, then suddenly start acting as if his dog had died. He’d always been a little hyper—when he was five, he was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder—but these new outbursts were something completely different. He’d throw horrible tantrums, hurling himself to the floor kicking and screaming. He would lash out and punch and kick at me, too.
He’d also get strangely fixated on things. Sometimes he’d tell me the same thing over and over—forty or fifty times. I’d say, “Yes, honey, I know,” and he’d say, “No, you’re not listening!” and tell me again. Or he’d remember seeing a particular sign at Walmart and talk about it nonstop and demand to see it again. He’d be so upset, I’d have to get up in the middle of the night and drive him to Walmart so he could see the sign and come back home and finally fall asleep.
For two years after the accident we bounced from doctor to doctor, searching for something that would make JP better. That was a really frustrating time. One doctor insisted the tantrums were caused by JP’s attention deficit disorder. I said, “No, this is not that. This is totally different.”
The doctor replied, “Well, how would you act if you got hit by a truck?”
It was like I was fighting the whole world. JP was supposed to be listed on his father’s insurance, but of course he wasn’t yet. Even though his dad knew how important it was for JP to have good insurance, he kept putting it off, month after month. As a result, I had only state-sponsored insurance, which wouldn’t pay for JP to see the specialists he needed. It took two whole years before we finally got in to see a doctor who gave me a good explanation of what had happened to my son.
The ear, nose, and throat specialist explained that the impact of the crash had jarred JP’s brain stem. At the base of that stem are bundles of nerves that control different functions. One of them controls facial movements, while another controls the ability to hear. The crash had damaged those two nerves, which explained JP’s paralysis and his loss of hearing. One of them had healed, and JP got his facial movements back. But the other wasn’t healing, which is why JP still couldn’t hear out of one ear.
There was nothing wrong with my son’s ear; there was something wrong with his brain. Now I was on a mission to find someone who could fix it.
In the end, JP’s diagnosis was much more serious than a closed-head injury. He had what they call a traumatic brain injury, which can mean all kinds of brain damage. I read everything I could about traumatic brain injuries, including a book by a woman who was an expert in the field and charged $20,000 to evaluate a patient. Well, I barely had $20 to give her, but I called her anyway and told her about JP. She was kind enough to let me read his medical records to her over the phone and to tell me what questions I should be asking his doctors. She helped me understand what was happening and what kind of tests JP needed. She was an angel who came out of nowhere and made me feel like I wasn’t fighting this fight by myself after all.
Through all that research I learned that JP really needed to see a neuropsychologist, but my insurance wouldn’t pay for that kind of specialist. A neuropsychologist became my personal Wizard of Oz—someone I had to find at any cost, no matter the hardship, in order to save my son. But try as I might, I was never able to get JP in to see one. All I could do was manage JP’s outbursts and fixations as best I could and keep searching for the elusive Wizard.
Finally things came to a head.
One day when I picked up JP from the day care where he stayed after school, one of his teachers came over to talk. From the anguished look on her face I could tell it wasn’t going to be idle chitchat. She said she’d tried her best to be patient, but she just couldn’t watch JP anymore. His outbursts were getting worse: he was throwing himself to the ground and punching himself, hard. His mood swings were getting more and more extreme. She was exhausted from trying to help him, and she was afraid he was going to really hurt himself. I begged her to give me a couple more weeks while I figured out what to do. Reluctantly she agreed.
By then, however, I was pretty much at the end of my rope, too. It was killing me to see JP struggle with himself so much and to see how he couldn’t understand what was happening inside him. We both felt so powerless and frustrated and angry. And, like his teacher, I was worried JP was going to harm himself. He was getting bigger and stronger, and his outbursts were getting more violent. Every day was another opportunity for something tragic to happen.
Finally someone told me about a psychiatric clinic about forty miles from where we lived. It was a hospital that specialized in children with behavioral problems, and to me it sounded like my very best chance of getting JP the help he needed. The downside, of course, was that I would have to commit JP for four or five months. He was still just a baby to me, and the thought of him locked inside a dreary hospital was horrifying—especially since I felt so responsible for what had happened to him.
Yet at the same time I knew I had to do something, and I just didn’t see any other option. JP needed help—that was clear. And doctors at the clinic assured me they had dealt with children like JP before, and that they would give him what he needed most of all—a neuropsychological evaluation. If getting that help meant sending my son away to an institution for four months, what choice did I have but to do it? Just a few months before JP’s ninth birthday, I arranged for him to go in for treatment at the clinic.
The day I dropped him off is one I will never forget. I stayed with him while a nurse drew blood, and I held his hand as we made our way to the children’s wing. After a few minutes, a staffer made it clear it was time for me to go. I bent down and squeezed JP as tightly as I could, and I kissed him and told him over and over, “I love you.” I don’t think he understood what was happening, because he didn’t say much—and that only made me hug him harder. Finally a nurse looked at me and mouthed the words, “Just go.” I got up and walked away from my baby boy.
I told myself, Don’t turn around; just keep going. Then I heard JP start to cry for me. “Come back, Mama!” he screamed through sobs. I knew I couldn’t turn around, because that would only make it worse. Instead, with JP’s cries echoing through the hall, I just kept walking. As soon as I turned the corner, I burst into tears.
That night in my suddenly quiet house I talked to a God I didn’t know was listening.
“How long?” I asked Him. “How long is my son going to have to pay for my sins?”
A FEW MONTHS before I took JP to the psychiatric clinic, I’d resumed my college classes and entered the Teacher Education Program at a local university. My life had become a blur of appointments, classes, pickups, and drop-offs. Take the kids to day care, go to school, get the kids, go to work, get home, study, sleep, r
inse, and repeat. I’ll never forget the frantic feeling of being two hours late to pick up my children at day care one afternoon. I found them with a saintly teacher who bought them ice cream and stayed with them until I showed up. To this day, JP and Sabyre like to tease me about it. “Way to forget about us, Mom,” they’ll say.
Money, to say the least, was tight. I was only a step or two ahead of the bill collectors, and I’d usually have to drive down to the electric company to pay a bill just hours before my power got shut off. On one of those trips—when all I had to my name was $75 in the bank, enough to cover the bill I was paying—my trusty little red Eagle Talon went and exploded on me.
That’s right, the engine literally exploded as I sat in the utility company drive-through, paying my bill. There was a crack in the engine, apparently, and I guess I was lucky I didn’t crash. What did I do? What else? I laughed my head off. I certainly couldn’t afford to get the car towed, much less fixed, so I had some nice people help me push it out of the drive-through. Then I called a scrap place and sold the smoldering wreck for $100. I remember taking all of my things out of the car and holding them while I waited for my mom to pick me up in the parking lot. My extra shoes and children’s toys and books and dolls—you know, all the stuff of my life.
But life, as it does, went on, and eventually I did graduate. That was one of the proudest days of my entire life. No one had given me that diploma. I earned it with a lot of sweat and tears.
Right around the time my car exploded, out of desperation I’d applied for a job at an insurance office in town. I’d quit working at the country-western bar, because I couldn’t stand being away from my kids at night. But I had to make money somehow, so when I heard about the insurance job, I jumped. I’d never learned to type, but my Grandma Ernie had encouraged me to take piano lessons. I guess my fingers were limber enough to bang out seventy words a minute on my typing test. My would-be boss, David, and I wound up being a perfect match: he was in desperate need of a secretary, and I was in desperate need of a job. He offered me the position, which came with a salary, steady income, and the chance to earn bonuses. Also, a normal schedule—no nights or weekends. It felt like I’d hit the jackpot.
Waking Up in Heaven: A True Story of Brokenness, Heaven, and Life Again Page 10
