Girl tried to drive quickly, but she couldn’t concentrate, and accidentally went the wrong way and had to loop around the city, getting directions from Mother on her cell phone as she drove—of course she had called Mother the minute she left the house, even though it was the middle of the night, and Mother calmed her down, gave her directions, helped her focus. The ten-minute drive took nearly thirty in the blowing snow. Finally, Girl reached the hospital. She had to wait until Samson was stabilized to see him. Girl spent thirty minutes in the waiting room watching a runny-nosed child climb on and off the chairs, off and on, while she waited to learn her husband’s fate.
Eventually, the nurse directed her to the proper gurney. Feathers floated in the air—they had cut off his down snowmobile suit. The nurses were laughing about the feathers. He could make anyone smile, even while lying in a hospital bed.
Samson wore a hospital gown with blue ship’s wheels on it, his leg wrapped in gauze bandages that were starting to seep yellow and red. Girl leaned close to his face and kissed his cheek, whispering in his ear that no matter what, they would get him a new motorcycle. A motorcycle had gotten him into this hospital bed, but she needed him to know that she hadn’t turned on him—that she understood that he feared the loss of his bikes more than the loss of his leg.
Samson told her the details of riding his dirt bike home on dark, snow-covered streets. He had left work after 11:00 p.m., and a car didn’t brake for a stop sign before it pulled into oncoming traffic. Samson’s right leg was the point of impact. A woman from a nearby gas station had cushioned his head with her flannel shirt as they waited for an ambulance.
The doctor came in.
“Near-total amputation of the right leg just below the knee,” he reported, and then asked, “Where doesn’t it hurt?”
Samson raised his pinky, and everyone laughed, but once the doctor started pushing and prodding his flesh, Samson cried out in pain. The room suddenly seemed hot and Girl couldn’t hear anything but the blood rushing in her ears. Don’t pass out, you can’t pass out, you wuss, she told herself over and over. Girl ran to the bathroom, barely making it before her bowels emptied. She wished her body responded by throwing up—it would have been less mortifying.
Girl returned to the room just before the doctor took Samson into surgery.
“It’ll take three or four surgeries over the next few weeks,” the orthopedist said. “We’ll know more once we open him up, but I think we can reattach it. Then we’ll send him to a plastic surgeon for the final skin grafts.”
Girl was directed to the main waiting room. The chairs smelled old, though the colors were new. Everyone ignored the silent TV that was hung too high on the wall to be worth watching. They stayed as far apart from each other as they could, each of them holding their private vigils in public, keeping to the corners of the mostly empty room like rubbery macaroni stuck to the sides of a pot.
Brother came to sit with Girl, and she breathed easier when he walked in. No matter what, she would be okay now. Next to arrive was Liz—the only friend Girl could trust to explain the difference between the piles of clean, dirty, and semi-dirty-but-can-be-worn-again laundry in her bedroom. Girl needed a bra badly, but she wouldn’t drive the half-hour round trip home to get one, just in case. She wouldn’t read a book, just in case. She had to mark every minute, feel every tick of the second hand, just in case it was his last. Five hours later they called her name, and a doctor in clean scrubs told Girl that it would be several weeks before Samson could be discharged. They wouldn’t give odds on whether or not he would ever regain the use of the leg. No one warned her that Samson would spend days in the intensive care unit, receive four blood transfusions, and never walk without pain again. She didn’t know that three years later he would still be out of work, addicted to morphine, and filled with even more rage.
Two weeks after the accident Girl drove Samson home from the hospital. He had rods, pins, screws, and guide wires holding his foot and leg together. Part of his rectus abdominis muscle had been removed from his abdomen and grafted onto his calf. Four skin grafts covered the wounds that gaped too much for the doctors to stitch shut. His leg looked like gray, uncooked sausage. He vomited from pain four times on the ten-minute drive home. Girl learned to always keep a bucket in the car.
Girl quit her job for a few months and became his full-time caregiver, sleeping on the living room floor next to the daybed, just like she had slept in a chair by his side in the hospital. She drove him to doctor and physical therapy appointments and watched the pain etch permanent lines into his face. She tried not to cry when he screamed during dressing changes. Girl bathed his leg in Dawn dish detergent and debrided the skin grafts as gently as she could. Father sent one thousand dollars to help out. Mother and Stepmother paid their mortgage for a year. When Samson was able to take care of himself, Girl returned to work.
Two years later, Girl stood at the sink in the summer heat, a fly buzzing listlessly around her face, neither of them able to summon the energy necessary to do much of anything. Crusted, filthy dishes littered the counter that ran
