CHAPTER 27 SALUTE YOUR SOLUTION #2
She turned to Phoenix and stuck out a hand.
“Tara.” He tucked his cane under his left arm to meet her grasp.
She sported the eager grin of a therapist checking out fresh meat.
He’d seen that look before. She was assessing the level of his injuries, his physical capability, how far she could push him, how motivated he would be.
“Below the knee.” He answered her unspoken question, letting go of her hand and hiking up a pants leg. Not that the two inches of visible plastic and metal could verify the presence of a real knee.
“Oh, yeah? The guys are going to be jealous.” Odd concept. Someone jealous of me. “Actually, I was just going to ask your name.”
“Sorry, Tara. I’m Phoenix.”
“Phoenix, your brother is persuasive. Not just anyone gets a tour of MAT-C,” her eyes sparkled at his twin as if she found humor in some private joke.
“He is persuasive. Tightlipped, too. Unfortunately, I didn’t know we were coming here. This was a surprise.”
Tara straightened and pointed down the corridor. “Well then, let’s show you.”
She started down the hall, with no doubt they’d follow the command in her voice.
Phoenix looked around, curious. They passed a stocky guy in shorts and forest green T-shirt, speeding along in the opposite direction.
Full-length prostheses stood on the empty footrests of his wheelchair.
Phoenix realized he’d never met another amputee his age.
At home, the rehab center housed mostly older residents.
Many were diabetics who’d lost a lower extremity to the disease.
Or, in one case, a young child born without tibias, the bones below the knee.
He felt a rush of camaraderie that inspired him to try to catch the guy’s eye, but the soldier was already gone.
The narrow dark hallway soon opened up to an enormous gymnasium.
They looked into a gigantic matted area filled with tables and parallel bars, like the ones where he and Nadine worked, but amplified to arena size.
Everywhere, wounded military worked out with or without prostheses.
He’d never seen so many people missing limbs.
“We used to have twice the number of amputees when we had more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Tara said, as she watched him take in the sight of dozens of injured soldiers.
“Once our military gear got better at protecting torsos, and medics got better at stabilizing patients, our guys were surviving their injuries. Even with the bad guys getting better at making bombs. IEDs started out as a joke, a soda can that would just pop. Now, they’re blowing up Humvees, but still, more guys are coming home. ”
Caleb surveyed the sight of patients and therapists hard at work with pride as if he’d invented the place.
It struck Phoenix how much his brother must care to go to all this trouble. “How did you get us in here?” Phoenix asked his twin with newfound respect for his abilities.
Caleb shrugged. “Your business partner, Dex, helped. He said you guys have some military account. Plus, I signed away our firstborn kids.”
“You’re not having children,” Phoenix reminded him. “And me, either,” he added, upon further reflection of his sorry state.
“You signed a liability form,” Tara explained to Caleb, leading the way onto the main floor. “It just says you won’t sue us if you get hurt.”
Phoenix navigated between clients and their therapists stretching hip flexors, working out with weights and running on one or two prostheses.
“Watch it!” called a man catching a medicine ball, nearly stumbling into Phoenix.
“Sorry,” he said, swerving out of the way with a sidestep that made him stumble. Phoenix’s cane prevented him from falling.
As they traversed the aisle between padded tables, they passed young guy after young guy, one with a metal frame around a bare leg, squatting with a heavy ball, another solid on a real leg and a prosthetic one, shooting hoops.
The sight of men and women missing an arm, with bandaged residual limbs, wheelchairs and prostheses took on a new sense of ordinary.
Here he fit right in. He grinned at nothing in particular.
“I have someone I want to introduce you to,” Tara said.
She led the way to a soldier on a mat. The blond-haired guy, fair in complexion, repeatedly sat up to count each repetition for the therapist holding his prosthetic legs. When he noticed the approaching visitors, he stopped and pushed up to a standing position.
“I’m Aaron. Welcome to Walter Reed,” he said, offering his only hand, his left one, to Phoenix, then Caleb.
“Thanks,” Phoenix said, managing the right-hand-to-left-hand greeting.
Another guy nearby, practicing lunges, stopped and introduced himself to Caleb. “Hey, man, those tats are sick,” he said, mopping sweat off a ginger-hued crew cut.
“Thanks, yours too,” Caleb said and turned to admire the flame-licked dragon down one calf and matching design on his prosthesis. They became engrossed comparing tattoos.
“First time here?” Aaron asked Phoenix.
“Yup, looks like an amazing place,” Phoenix said, surveying the equipment, therapists and rock-climbing wall which hulked conspicuously in the center. “How long you been here?”
“Nine months.”
Phoenix exploded with disbelief. “Nine months! I’m complaining after just two.”
“In the military, we get great benefits,” he replied.
Tara explained. “These guys come in with shrapnel, burns, traumatic brain injuries and all kinds of complications. Some of them have been through dozens of surgeries. That’s part of why it takes longer.”
“I stepped on an IED. I saw my legs get blown right off. I didn’t know about my arm until later. My guys got tourniquets on me and saved my life.”
He looked at Phoenix expectantly. “What happened to you?” Apparently, sharing injury stories was a de rigueur form of greeting.
“Mine’s not really patriotic. I got run over by a train.”
“Ouch. How’d you end up under a train?”
“I saved a guy who was trying to jump onto the tracks.”
“You rock,” Aaron said.
Stoic Tara winced. “But you ended up there instead?”
“Yup.”
“That succkks.”
“The important thing is you lived to tell about it.” The blond warrior whistled.
There was perspective. Yep, Phoenix lived to tell about it.
“At least the train gave you a good-looking stump.” He pointed at Phoenix’s bare arm, visible beneath the pushed-up sleeves of his shirt.
“Good-looking stump? Is there such a thing?” Phoenix asked.
“Yeah, instead of an ugly stump,” he explained, lifting his elbow to show the bumpy, misshapen flesh and angry purple scars running up the back of his humerus. “They put metal and junk in IEDs. Does a number on you.”
Tara observed one then the other, not a whit of disgust at either of them. “This guy’s below the knee,” Tara added, gesturing towards Phoenix with a nod of approval.
Aaron appraised Phoenix processing all of this. “Below the knee is like a scratch,” he said. “That’s what we call a paper cut. You’re lucky. Left leg, too. You’ll be able to drive a normal car. Wait’ll you don’t even need that cane.”
Lucky? Not needing a cane?
This guy had the experience to know what he was talking about, and he verified the tall tales Nadine had spun. Phoenix felt hope resist stubbornly then rise a little. He wasn’t alone. He was part of a community of tough guys who were fighting—not just to subsist, but to thrive.
“There are below-the-knee amputees going back into active combat,” the soldier bragged.
Phoenix nodded, absorbing a new sense of possibility.
Caleb’s murmured conversation with the other veteran turned towards motorcycles.
“I can’t wait to get back on my bike,” the ginger-headed guy said.
“I’m going to rock climb. You want to come?” Aaron asked, pointing towards the artificial tower covered in multicolored hand and foot holds.
“There’s a first time for everything. Sure.” Phoenix shrugged, assessing the wall’s height.
“When you try it, you might find it almost easier if you’ve never done it before,” Tara assured him. “You won’t have to unlearn how you used to climb.”
“It’s all about shifting your center of gravity, and now your center of gravity’s different,” Aaron explained.
Tara led them towards the rock-climbing wall while Caleb hung back.
Along the way across the massive hall, Phoenix observed men and women working on balance and strength. One guy with no legs was strapped into a bowl-like bucket, and he moved forward with two crutches.
“Hip disarticulation,” Tara explained, noticing Phoenix’s glance. “The higher the loss, the harder it is. In his case, he’s lost ankles, like you, but also knees and hips.”
“Oh,” Phoenix murmured.
Aaron strode along next to Phoenix. “You see me? Double above the knee? It takes me at least ten times the exertion it takes you to do the same thing.”
“Geez, sorry,” Phoenix offered.
He shrugged. “It’s not that bad. I don’t even consider myself disabled. I can do whatever I want, so it’s not a big deal.”
Phoenix was floored. This was a new concept. He’d simply assumed that without his leg and his hand, he was disabled, or at least differently abled. Depending on the day and on the struggle, he perceived himself as more disabled or less disabled. But not disabled? The possibility felt good.
“There’s always someone worse off,” his new friend said, nodding towards a guy with no arms or legs, seated on a padded table, wearing one prosthetic hand.
A duo of therapists tossed buoyant plastic balls towards him and he practiced batting each one back, shifting and balancing on legs only a few inches in length. “Quadruple amputee.”
Phoenix glanced away, not wanting to stare. From what he’d seen, though, the young warrior looked focused, not bitter or frustrated. A fresh-faced woman, who also appeared to be in her early twenties, looked on with pride.
“He doesn’t look too bad off,” Phoenix commented.
“You’re right. He’s doing really well,” Tara confirmed, continuing towards the rock-climbing wall, which now loomed larger as they drew closer.
“He’s got his own cheering squad,” Phoenix noted.
“Huh, some guys have all the luck,” Aaron said, his face twisting. Phoenix wondered if the effort of traipsing across the enormous gym was physically too much for him.
“His woman left him,” Tara said, explaining his new buddy’s sudden sourness.
“Of course,” Phoenix said before he could stop his sarcastic tone.
“She said it wasn’t working out anyway, even before I came back all blown up,” Aaron said. “Yeah, right. Nothing to do with the missing parts.”
Tara threw him a glance. “It happens. People react all different ways.”
“That quad’s girlfriend is a saint. She’s here every day,” the guy added, nodding back towards the spot where the batting exercise continued. “You married?” he asked, curious.
Phoenix shook his head, keeping pace with the group. “I’m single. There was someone. But this is too much for her,” he shrugged his arm as evidence. Dark hair, charcoal-shadowed eyes, lips like velvet, a husky laugh, arms thrown around him with abandon. The memories swamped him.
“Boom,” Aaron said, cheered despite Phoenix’s somberness. “There you go. Some girls just can’t deal. We’re like soulmates, you and I. After the climb, we should go grab a beer or grub or something.”
Yup, soulmates with this dumped triple-amputee, who confirmed the truth Phoenix already knew. Some women just can’t deal. He was smart to nip it in the bud before Orchid broke his heart.
“Sure, a beer sounds good.”