A Leg to Stand On

by Colleen Haggerty

  “Colleen, since your jacket is a pullover, I need to cut it off, so I can take your blood pressure.”

  My new down jacket from Eddie Bauer. I had wanted that jacket for months. It was Mom’s Christmas gift to me. Knowing it was expensive made it even more special. I had owned it only nine days, and now I was watching it being cut away from my body. The small, white, downy feathers from the jacket floated lazily among the dainty little snowflakes that were falling softly from the sky. I looked at these snowflakes the way I had as a kid, when I would throw my head back to the heavens to allow them to fall onto my outstretched tongue. I was embarrassed these snowflakes were making my mascara run as they hit my eyelashes. I worried about having black mascara streaks in front of Byron.

  God, I’m ugly. The thought came to me with such force that it felt physical. I had no idea how the ugliness I felt in that moment would become a central refrain in my life. All I knew was that I was ashamed. I turned away from Byron to try to pull myself together.

  I craned my neck, looked behind me, and saw cars slowing down, faces pressed against windows in shocked fascination. A Greyhound bus crept by. I wanted someone to stop the bus and ask the driver to radio the hospital for an ambulance. One hadn’t arrived yet, so maybe they should call again. The passengers had an aerial view of my wracked body. I knew they were trying to catch a glimpse of the person who was hit so they could tell the whole busload, with an air of superiority, what they alone had seen. My five siblings and I had done this often: creeping by the scene of an accident, we’d all stretch our necks, often our whole bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse. The lucky one could tell everyone else about the gruesome details, embellishing to his or her heart’s content, until Mom’s admonishment quickly stopped the narrative.

  I knew they were all looking at me equally detached. I wanted to shout at them to stop staring, to leave me alone. I had never felt so exposed in my life. I looked at my chilly crotch again to be sure it was covered. It was. Good.

  The need to urinate was intense. I was tempted to let my bladder loose, but I couldn’t mortify myself any further by peeing on the side of the road while I lay in a bloody heap next to our car with a part of my body “over there,” and a cute guy by my side.

  The sound of cars driving through the crunchy snow just a few yards away couldn’t drown out my sister’s continued screaming. She and David were both standing about fifty feet away in the median along with the man who was taking care of them and the man who’d hit me. I must’ve looked pretty horrible if Mary Beth and David weren’t allowed to be near me. Mary Beth slammed the driver of the Pacer with her words. “Goddamn you! You took off her leg.” I saw him wrap his arms around himself, but I didn’t think he was protecting himself from the cold. I wanted her to shut up. I needed quiet, but I couldn’t muster the energy to tell Byron to ask her to calm down.

  My thoughts start to swirl out of control. Now Mom wouldn’t be able to go to Europe this spring. Now I wouldn’t be in the school production of Funny Girl. Now Rob wouldn’t like me, and we’d never get together. Now I wouldn’t be able to go to college …

  I wanted to hold on to something. I reached for Byron’s hand. My legs hurt so much, like they were on fire. I wanted to break down and cry, but I couldn’t. I knew that if I started to cry, all that emotion would get caught in my throat and my head would explode from my body, just like my leg had. So I couldn’t break down. I had to hold on until the ambulance got there. I squeezed Byron’s hand, but then I realized I was squeezing too hard. I loosened my grip, but still, I held on. I held on. He squeezed my hand back.

  The faint sounds of the siren gradually increased as the ambulance finally approached. It’s coming, I thought. I’ll be okay. I became confused when the sound started to recede. Don’t they know where I am? Is it for someone else? My eyes reached Byron’s and asked the question.

  “The ambulance has to go south on the freeway, exit, then come north to where we are. But because of the snowy conditions, it has to go slow,” Byron explained. “Hang in there, Colleen.”

  I knew getting to the hospital was vital. In Emergency, the ambulance always arrives at the scene quickly—but this was taking so long. I fought off sleep while I waited, knowing it was important to stay awake to answer any questions the ambulance drivers would have.

  When the ambulance finally arrived, the paramedics scurried out carrying their portable phone—just like on Emergency. This, I thought, was a story to tell my younger brothers, who liked watching the show as much as I did. I started to relax as I heard Byron talking to one of the paramedics. I looked to my left and saw the other paramedic pick up and cradle the remains of my leg. I was surprised and touched by how gently he held it, as if he were holding a baby. Is he going to throw it away in an ordinary garbage can, or do they have special garbage cans for dismembered body parts? I wanted to say good-bye to my leg, but I didn’t want to appear stupid.

  “Hi, Colleen, we’re going to get you to the hospital. We need to get you in the ambulance, so we’ll slide you onto our bed,” the paramedic explained. Though they slid me effortlessly onto the ambulance bed on the count of three, every inch of my body from the stomach down joined my voice in painful screams. They rolled me into the truck. I looked around, amazed at how lifelike the show really was. I’d seen the inside of this ambulance on TV every week. Its chrome walls were so clean they looked like a mirror. All the supplies were neatly stacked against the walls, and the bed fit on the left side of the bay. There was room next to the bed for one of the paramedics to sit next to me. I knew he would need to monitor my vitals.

  I glimpsed my sister as she ran to our car and fetched my book bag, another Christmas gift. Then I heard her voice in the front seat of the ambulance next to the driver. David tentatively stepped up into the back of the ambulance next to me. I attempted to smile at him, but he wasn’t looking at me—he was looking for a place to sit. The other paramedic, the one taking care of me, cleared a spot for David.

  The paramedic poked a needle into my arm while the driver called us in over the radio, “St. Luke’s, we’re coming in.”

  I knew I could let go and sleep. I shut my eyes, but they snapped open as I realized I hadn’t yet prayed. How can I have gone this long without a prayer? I had been attending mass every day before school. My relationship with God was intact and strong, wasn’t it? Guiltily, I wondered why prayer wasn’t my first act.

  The ambulance doors banged shut, and I began: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

  2

  SEPARATION AND ISOLATION

  My eyes popped open, but it was still dark. The hospital was cold and quiet save for the distant hum of this huge edifice working around the clock. Flowers packed the room, masking the antiseptic odor. I didn’t need to look at the clock; I knew what time it was. For the last week, I’d woken up every morning at three a.m., my body needing its next fix of pain medication, which I still insisted be given by injection instead of orally. The act of taking a pill—putting it in my mouth, holding a cup of water, and swallowing—required too much effort.

  I lay with my arms bent at the elbow, my hands resting palms-up beside my ears as if in surrender. I couldn’t sleep any other way. The cast dug painfully into my crotch, and any attempt to readjust my position served as a nauseating reminder of my missing leg. It was unnatural and disturbing how nearly weightless my abbreviated leg felt now. The doctors told me I’d lost about twelve pounds of leg. I was reminded of how I’d felt after taking a long hike while carrying a fifty-pound backpack. Upon reaching camp, I’d take off the pack and walk around, reacquainting myself with the sudden lightness of my own body—yet feeling it was missing something, so familiar had I become with the extra weight.

  I looked out the window toward the Space Needle, still decorated with Christmas lights. Christmas, the day of Jesus�
�s birth. For the first time in my life, I felt a twinge of uncertainty and doubt about my faith. The story of Christ’s salvation had sustained and comforted me during even the hardest of times—my father’s death. But now I felt betrayed by God. I’d spent my life being the “good girl.” I was reliable, I was responsible, and, for the past six months, I’d gone to mass every day before school with my mom. I loved Jesus, I praised God, and I adored Mary. My reward for my goodness would come later, I’d been promised—it would come. But this was no reward. Doubt’s door had been opened.

  As I lay silent and still in the midst of this new dark doubt, I struggled to understand why this might have happened to me. Up to that point, my only framework for making sense of difficult things came from my youthful faith in cause and effect. If I did right, God would do right by me. Was this accident God’s message to me about something I had done?

  Perhaps I’m being punished! I thought, feeling a tight panic. For what, though? There was a boy in my choir class who had a deformed hand. When I first noticed it, my stomach lurched, and I had to keep the bile from exploding from my mouth. I couldn’t bring myself to sit next to him, let alone talk to him. Whenever I found myself near him, I was certain his deformed hand smelled like a garbage dump on a summer’s day. Was God punishing me for being disgusted by that boy’s deformity by making me deformed, too? Somehow, the punishment didn’t seem to fit the crime, but what other reason could God have for doing this to me?

  The ache I felt in my heart now was worse than the one I’d felt after Dad’s sudden death four years earlier, when he had drowned in a boating accident. The pain and shock I’d felt then was placated by assurances that it was simply “Dad’s time to go”—that “God wanted Dad with him.” My faith assured me that my relationship with Dad was not over, it was merely changed: he was now my personal angel. After his death, I talked to him every night before sleep. I needed to believe he was still with me, or I wouldn’t survive my sadness. Thus, although I missed him terribly, my life carried on without him, my faith in his altered existence intact. But this felt different. How could my life possibly go on now, with a part of myself missing?

  I wasn’t ready for the fact that there are some things faith can’t explain. But here I was, ready or not.

  I hadn’t been ready six days ago, either, when on the day after the accident, while I lay in the intensive-care unit, groggy and in shock, Mom read me my acceptance letter to my first-choice university. The relief in her voice was palpable. In my medicated daze, I mimicked her smile. Nor was I ready a few days later, when my drama teacher visited me in the hospital and handed me my script for Funny Girl. On the last day of school before Christmas break, I had quickly scanned the casting list posted in the hallway near the drama department. Next to “Mrs. Strakosh” was my name! I’d spent the break thrilled that I landed a singing role in a musical. I didn’t expect to still be in the play, which was just two and a half months away. But there she sat, smiling, eyes determined, like she was doing me a favor. Didn’t they realize everything had changed? How could they expect so much from me? College? Acting? The accident, with its terrible cost, had ripped something more from me than half my leg; it had torn a hole in the fabric of my being. I felt frayed around the edges. Why did God do this to me? How could I go on with life—be the overachiever I was expected to be—when I was mad as hell and doubting everything I’d ever believed in?

  I’d have to find a way, because my situation wasn’t going to change.

  I turned my gaze down at my stump. Yes, this is what it was called, like having a new body part altogether. Only those of us with appendages that have been whacked off, like a fallen tree, get the honor of using this ugly term to describe a part of our body. I was reminded of the tree stump outside the kitchen window at home. I was told Native Americans had cleared our land, and in our family’s view, this stump was a prized reminder of their existence before our arrival. Now I felt a kinship with the lost tree. I wondered if it had been as painful for the tree to be whacked by an axe as it had been for me to be hit by a car. The tree stump was camouflaged by salal, so it was actually pretty now. My stump would never be pretty. The small lump under the white blanket ended too quickly. The small lump, enclosed in rolls and rolls of casting material to keep the swelling down, was too wide. The small lump made me sick. I quickly turned my eyes away.

  I’d never thought I was pretty. I was a pear-shaped girl with small breasts and a big butt, which I jokingly referred to as my “child-bearing hips.” Attempts to find a cute hairstyle always failed me; my straight, shoulder-length red hair would quickly lose body in the damp Seattle weather. My defining feature was my vibrant blue eyes, and people often commented on how they sparkled. But I knew sparkling eyes couldn’t carry me through life, now that I had lost a part of my body. Any feeble fantasies I’d had about developing long, sexy legs were dashed. Now I wouldn’t be wearing the fashionable hot pants. High heels were out of the question. My physical therapist would later inform me that freckles could be added to my prosthetic leg to match my other leg. She’d laughed when she said this. Was she being funny? I couldn’t tell, so I had laughed along anyway.

  But freckles were only part of what would be needed to make a prosthetic leg look natural on me. In fourth grade, I had to give an oral report in front of the class. I was wearing my school uniform: a plaid skirt and a white blouse. In the middle of my report, I looked up and saw the two popular girls pointing at me and laughing. I searched out my best friend Patty and looked at her beseechingly. She pointed to my legs. I looked down and saw the purple veins, like the roots of a tree, climbing down my thighs. I was so white and so cold that the veins showed through like my skin was tissue paper. With teary eyes, I looked to my teacher to make them stop laughing. She flicked her hand swiftly at me instead, as if to say, “Continue.” Could the prosthetist replicate purple veins, too?

  Every night I was haunted by thoughts of God, normality, beauty, and what my future could possibly look like with only one leg. Everything I’d ever imagined for my life was slipping away, and I needed some kind of control, some sense of choice in all that was happening. I finally made a decision that gave me just the tiniest feeling that my life belonged to me—that it was not God’s to play with anymore. I kept the decision to myself at first, but knew I would need to say it out loud sooner or later.

  One day, Mom was looking out the window of my hospital room, which overlooked the steeples of the nearby Catholic church. The gray January light streamed through the window, filling the room with the same heaviness that rested in my heart. She turned and looked at me with a mixture of sorrow, strength, and pain in her eyes. They told me I could tell her my thoughts and I wouldn’t be admonished.

  “Mom,” I said, tentatively, “I need to talk to you.” She came over, sat near my bed, and held my hand. Dad’s death had been so hard for her to bear. I didn’t want to add to her pain, but I had to tell her the thoughts I had been plagued by since the accident—and tell her about my decision.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “Mom,” I told her, “I think you should know I’ve decided to have sex before I get married.” Now, I was quite proud of my Catholic upbringing and my good-girl status, so this wasn’t something I took lightly. At my public high school, I gallantly referred to myself as “Colleen Wait-Until-Wedding-Night Haggerty.” Everyone, including myself, laughed when I said this, but we all knew I meant it; there’d never been any confusion about my stance on premarital sex.

  I didn’t know a lot about sex. I had only kissed a few boys and still considered kissing, especially French kissing, a bit gross. But I knew enough to know I would be naked during sex. I knew legs wrapped around bodies in moments of passion, and I’d have only one leg to do the wrapping.

  “My future husband needs to know what he’s getting into. It’s only fair to let him see me and know what having sex with me will be like, so he’ll know if he’ll be grossed out.”

  Mom quietly nodded her h
ead and said, “Okay.” This only confirmed I was right to think men would be repulsed by me. But something deeper nagged at me, a thought that was hard to acknowledge, let alone admit to my mother: I was terrified that my family dream was shattered. I’d built a fleshed-out fantasy of my life as a mother to a happy brood of redheaded children, married to a kind and funny man, living a life of beautiful chaos, not too dissimilar from my own. Marriage, motherhood, babies, children—this seemed suddenly as remote a possibility as getting my leg back. Who would ever want to make love to me now? I wondered, desolate.

  My mother’s one-word answer, her “okay” in the face of my announcement, spoke to an affirmation that the life I’d counted on was going to be out of my reach. Maybe if she’d argued with me, or even shamed me for my decision to forego virginity before marriage, I would have known she hadn’t discarded the dream for my life we had both shared. But she didn’t fight for that dream, and so neither would I.

  In the fantasy future I’d spun, there was only one boy I’d ever imagined playing the part of husband and father: Rob. When I met him my sophomore year of high school, my heart melted to my knees. He was a boy of medium build, with piercing dark-brown eyes, a sharp nose, and high cheekbones. His silky brown hair, cut in the fashionable Bruce Jenner style, looked so soft that I wanted to touch it. He had a jolly kind of walk, causal and carefree. There wasn’t a macho bone in his body.

  He was a year ahead of me in school, and my crush on him was hard to hide. We were both involved in the drama department, so there was plenty of opportunity to be around him. While we never spent time alone together outside of school, I occasionally found myself alone with him while working on a drama project. I giggled nervously and laughed too loud at his jokes, all the while trying to hide my feelings for him and the nervousness I felt just being around him.