Woody's story arrived on the ward before he did. It often happened that way, rumor and gossip preceding new admissions, as if patients were equal only to their injury details and on-going medical stats. Woody's most serious condition, a traumatic brain injury [TBI], would earn him a bed at the Patricia Neal Rehab Center. At the time, the facility housed my nineteen-year old son Bryan [frontal lobe damage, facial reconstruction, injuries due to a 30-foot fall] and 50+ other battered souls. Woody's story was more dramatic than most because the details ran in the local paper and later on the evening news.
He was almost famous.
Woody had been working a construction site, the endless renewal program on Route 40 outside Knoxville, TN. An elderly driver, approaching the temporary highway barrier, hit the gas pedal rather than the brake. The old man plowed through traffic cones and multiple wooden signs. The rest of the road crew ran to safety, but clearly Woody zigged when he should have zagged. Hit from behind, he flew across the highway, and then skidded along the road's rough shoulder. He struck his head repeatedly. He skinned his buttocks, thighs and hands, sites later ripe for a staph infection.
A burly thirty-five year old, Woody was wheeled onto the ward, flat on his back, gurney squeaking. Fairly typical. Not so typical were the gauzy tents protecting his hands, arms and legs. Though healing, his skin was still red and oozy, open to additional infection. He had the raw, disfigured look of a burn victim. Or newly hatched bird.
Woody's arrival caused a general hush on the floor. Even to patients and family members who had now seen a variety of open wounds, amputations, catheters and drains of every shape and size, Woody looked bad, really bad. It was a chilling reminder of how fragile we are as human beings. It was a reminder no one cared to entertain because we were fevered devotees then, true believers in functional recoveries--abandoned wheelchairs and leg braces; discontinued IVs, trachs and feeding tubes. We believed in cathedrals of the rehabilitated, shrines of the nearly cured. Our loved ones were working through the various levels, the Rancho scale, a sliding gauge of recovery that had frightening, blank-eyed beginnings but winning resolutions: the resumption of ordinary, every day lives.
Woody made us doubt the Get-Well Gospel. Woody turned our faith upside down.
Days turned into weeks that turned into grueling months. Three to be exact. That equaled twelve weeks of therapies or approximately 300 in-house hours devoted to regaining skills most people take for granted. Therapies were custom-fitted to patients but progress was measured by physical challenges overcome-breathing, swallowing, speaking, controlling bladder and bowel, rolling over, sitting and for the truly blessed, standing up without falling down which carried the additional promise of walking.
Discharge dates were received from the team's head neurologist along with out-patient schedules and multiple prescriptions. Physical limitations and cognitive and memory lapses were common, but there was one thing every patient easily mastered and recalled: home, home, home.
For Woody, the news was dismal. Instead of a discharge to out-patient therapy, he received a transfer to Nashville, secretly known among patients as the Gulag for Head Injury. There had been other transfers — Lillian, a brain tumor patient, who had nearly set her room afire, and Kerry who developed TBI-induced diabetes along with a dangerous, unquenchable thirst.
Nashville was a facility for the hard cases, we whispered nervously, crossing our fingers, saying that extra, good luck prayer. Nashville was for patients who might never come back.
My son's discharge fell on the day before his birthday. He was elated but edgy. He said goodbye to the nurses. He shook the doctor's hand, and then with a metal cane hobbled down the hallway to say "hasta luego" to several friends.
He found Woody in the day room strapped in his wheelchair. Woody's hands were splinted. His head was braced with a forehead strap, a soft, elastic halo. Bryan hesitated at the threshold then turned awkwardly and said he was ready to go.
The nurses buzzed us out. We left the lock-down unit and took an elevator that would deliver us to a first floor lobby, beyond which the world bustled and the sun shone brightly. It was a fine April morning, filled with promise and undeniable relief, yet we rode down with barely a word between us.
We couldn't speak just then. We didn't know what to say.
Margaret A. Frey writes from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Her work has been published in flashquake, Cezanne's Carrot, Notre Dame Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, ByLine Magazine, Thema and elsewhere. Most recent or forthcoming work appears in Birmingham Arts Journal, Bent Pin Quarterly and Trillium Literary Journal. Margaret was a 2003 finalist in the Erma Bombeck writing competition and a Writer's Digest Chronicle winner. In December 2007, her flash "Riding the Coma" took first place in Cezanne's Carrot Return of the Light contest. Margaret lives with her husband John and canine literary critic, Ruffian. She can be reached at: mafrey@tds.net.