A young female athlete girl breaks her leg playing soccer. After treating the fracture the doctor sees the potential of a more serious condition and calls her back. While he is doing the tests she begins to study the diagnosis, treatment and outcome of the treatment and in doing so she encounters something disturbing. Are all the surgeries being done for this condition necessary?
It was Laura’s first half day back at school. As the morning passed many of her friends wished her well.
She decided to eat lunch and visit with her friends before leaving so she got her tray of food, took both crutches in one hand and made the steps on her peg leg to the table where her friends were sitting. Brian was usually around to eat with them. Today he was on a trip with the computer club. As she lowered herself to the chair everyone stood and clapped. She was finishing eating when a guy came over and asked if he could sit down. Laura motioned him to an empty chair.
“Laura, I’m Larry Jasper. I need to talk to you. I work on Linux with Brian Warner. He told me to talk to you. I need help. I hate to ask.” His eyes watered and his voice cracked.
Her friends were silent.
“What can I do?”
“My girlfriend, the girl I was dating, I mean am dating. She had surgery last Tuesday. She, I mean, oh I can’t explain this. Could you go to the hospital to see her? She is talking wild, like about killing herself. They either have her drugged out of her head or she is in terrible pain. It is bad, real bad. This was to save her life. It’s killing her.” He buried his face in his hands.
“What happened to her? Who is she? And how can I do anything about it?”
He was sobbing but enough words came through, “She, sob, her left leg, sob, last Friday, sob, drugs, sob, pain, sob, it’s gone, sob, she can’t handle it, sob, thinks I can’t love her, sob, wants to die. I really, I mean she is special.”
By now Laura knew enough. “Has anyone been in to see her? I mean, another amputee?”
“No. They are sending her to therapy, pushing her to walk on that pole but it isn’t helping her. I went to see her. She told me to get out. She loves me and doesn’t want me to be stuck with a cripple. I’m afraid that when I see her leg the first time I’ll get sick or gasp and make it worse for her. She has it tough enough right now without me making it worse.”
“Do you really want her?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“She kept me from running away two years ago when things were bad at home. I owe her a lot. I love her more than anything.”
“Then show her you do.”
“Could you, I mean, I know it is a lot to ask, see her?”
“What hospital is she in?”
“General.”
“What’s her name?”
“Doris Yeagle.”
Laura tensed. “I talked to her over a week ago, before the surgery. I guess the test from Mercy came out bad.”
“No. She had a test at Mercy. It came out no cancer. Her doctor told her mom they had to go with the other two tests.”
Laura burst into tears. Two of her friends got up. One tried to push Larry away, thinking he was upsetting her. Laura grabbed his hand and motioned him to stay. To the girls she said, “Let him stay, I need to get myself together.” One of the girls handed her a Kleenex. “I need to go somewhere we can talk.”
Laura got up. “Beckie, can you take my backpack, Marcie, take my crutches. Larry, come give me your arm. Just give me something to steady myself.” He stood next to her. “Walk with me.”
She walked to a sheltered spot on the common and sat on a bench. She motioned Larry to sit next to her. He lowered himself nervously. She took her crutches and backpack and placed them next to her. “Do you want to really help her?”
“Sure. More than anything. Her leg doesn’t matter, she does.”
“That’s a good start. The first lesson is simple, my crutches stay within reach. I get worried when I can’t reach them. That goes for Doris too. It isn’t funny to hide crutches. I can walk with this but it’s difficult and I can’t go far yet. But it is better than last week. And I needed to show you and I that I could.”
“Is it, really better?” Larry was anxious.
“The first couple of days were a drug fog, that is probably where she is now, then came several days of pain mixed with being drugged out, then came the depression of loosing a leg, then fear that I could never do anything, then I woke up that I was either going to live or vegetate. It has been much better since that.”
“Will it be for her?”
“I can’t say. She has to decide that.”
“But she is so hurt. She cries all the time. She needs help.”
“That’s where we come in. She has to do it but we have to help her get past this. Let me show you something.”
She reached under her skirt. When her hand came out it was holding her prosthetic leg. She handed it to Larry. He seemed reluctant but took it.
“Take a look at your leg sometime, how intricate the joints and muscles are. This replaces all of that. Or better, I get by with it.”
“But don’t they have real legs?”
“You mean cosmetic legs. Sure they look like a leg but they have crude knee and ankle joints that don’t have muscles to power them. I don’t have one but I know they don’t make it like it was before. Don’t ever tell anyone it will ever be like it was. It’s a lie and it makes it worse later on.”
Larry handed back her leg. She offered it to the girls. Beckie took it, turned it so she could look into the socket.
“What keeps it on?”
“I have a belt around my waist that has a tab that hooks to it here.” She pointed to the clasp.
“What if it comes off or collapses?”
“Marcie, what happened after you hurt your knee and before you had your knee operation? When your knee gave out you caught yourself or you picked yourself up. It’s the same here.”
“But my knee…”
“It got better. Doris and I have to learn to live with this.” She took back her pylon and lay it next to her. “Larry, I never thought I could do this with anyone and I couldn’t for any other reason.” She prayed she would not back out. “Turn your head away for a minute.” He turned away. She raised and pulled her skirt between her legs. She looked like she was wearing very short shorts. “You can look now.” He turned back.
“You don’t have to.” His eyes turned away.
“Please don’t turn away. I have to do this, for Doris, for you, but more than that, I have to do it for me. If I can’t show my stump, I can’t go to the beach, I can’t do a lot of things, and I’ll never be able to help others till I get past this. See each of us has to get past things.”
Larry looked down. “It just hurts me to think of you and Doris having this happen to you.” His voice quivered.
“You have to have feelings but too much sympathy isn’t helpful. You helped me walk and the girls carried my things. That was good because I needed the help, and I asked for it. If I don’t ask and you think I need help, offer. If I say no, back off. I may need to do this myself. Getting here on crutches would have been easier but I needed to know if I could on the peg leg and you needed to know what it will be like living with an amputee.”
Larry lowered his head. “I liked helping you. I just kept thinking it was learning how to help Doris.”
“Now look at my stump. Hers will have stitches, the incision will be more pronounced and it will be puffy, really sore but it will look like mine in a couple weeks. She probably isn’t ready for you to see it yet so don’t ask to see it. But if she wants to show you it will help if you can handle it.” She lifted her stump so he could see it. Marcie was looking over his shoulder.
“Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes. A eight-inch incision hurts till it heals. It itches sometimes, and my ankle hurts at times.”
“How can your ankle hurt? It isn’t there?”
“They are called phantoms, it can be feeling, itch, cold, hot, or pain in a part of the limb that isn’t there.”
“Golly, I have a lot to learn.”
“Now I need you to turn around so I can put on my leg.” He obediently turned his back. She stood and placed the pylon in front of her. “You can watch now.”
“Are you sure?”
She put her hand on his shoulder and stepped into the socket, then she reached under her skirt and hooked the strap. “All cinched up and ready to go.” She put on her backpack and took her crutches. “Can someone walk with me to my car?”
Larry quickly said, “I can.”
She started off with him following her. At the entrance she sat down. “I’m tired. Let me catch my breath. Doris is lucky to have someone like you.”
“You have Brian Warner.”
“He is a friend, a good guy, but he doesn’t care that much.”
“You are dead wrong about that. Let me ask you something. How many people do you think have the Linux access you have?”
“A bunch?”
“Three. Doris, you and me.”
“You are kidding.”
“And Doris only has it because I work with him.”
“No.”
“The second smartest girl in the class and she doesn’t recognize the smartest guy adores her?”
“You are kidding.”
“I spend hours with him. I think Doris is prettier than you. I’m sorry, you know what I mean, but I can’t say anything about her in front of him. He keeps saying he isn’t good enough for you.
She leaned over and kissed him. “Thanks for telling me that. I have to get to the hospital. I only hope I can help Doris a tenth of what you have done for me.”
“You will help her more than that.”
A half hour later she was outside Doris’ room. She decided to go in her school clothes. She knocked and started in on her crutches.
If the girl in the bed was as pretty as Larry thought she didn’t look it now. Then Laura remembered how she looked the day before she made a decision to get better.
“Hi Doris. I’m Laura Durin. We talked on the phone before your surgery.”
“Yes.”
“Larry asked me to see you.”
She broke down crying. An hour later Laura left to go home. They had talked and Doris was in better spirits.
At home she wrote a e-mail to Brian.
“Can you drop over or call me?”
With that done she dropped on her bed and slept till her mom came home with Larry and Lem. It had been a tough day.
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