Josh wheeled up to the parallel bars as I jotted my last notes. “Paige, could you grab my wound vac?” “Oh… yep!” I put my notes down and hopped up to grab the wound vac that he still had for his back and made sure the path was cleared for him to walk.
He stood.
JOSH
I glanced at Paige watching me as I sat white-knuckling the bars and preparing to stand. After a minute or two, my legs and body adjusted. Then my prosthetist said, “All right, Josh, stand up.” I felt chills at that invitation and gripped the bars for take-off. In my head, I counted 1-2-3! and launched myself onto my stumps and stood straight on the prostheses. It felt like I had jumped off the high dive, and one wrong move could mean the difference between a clean dive and a belly flop.
Weight bearing somewhere between my knee and my old shin was both strange and awkward. My only remaining knee, on my right leg, had not stabilized me since the morning of my last patrol. The added skin flap wobbled at the bottom of my right shin fragment, and I felt the sweat rolling as I tried to maintain my balance. Logically, I knew that the pounds of metal attached to my legs were unnatural, the sockets weren’t comfortable, and my muscles were weak. But standing up, straightening my back, and seeing the world two feet higher than my wheelchair made me feel the best I had felt in months. The tallest mountain in Washington state couldn’t compare with this view.
I was already tired after the first sixty seconds in my prostheses, but my newfound dignity charged my adrenaline. Let’s get these things moving. I looked down and my right “foot,” nervous about what these foreign body parts would do. Taking a deep breath, I moved to take my step. The shoe skidded across the ground but landed solidly a few inches in front of my other foot. Whew, okay, that wasn’t too bad. Exhaling, I shifted my weight and went to try the same motion again with my left “foot,” except this side was working with my first robotic knee, a knee that would never have the natural connection to my brain that my former knee had. That relationship could only be built on trust, which starts between these parallel bars.
With maximum effort from my left hip, I swung the computerized leg in front of me with a motion like spreading a blanket on the ground: casting it far so it would hopefully land flat. The steps were heavy, but surprisingly, I felt in control of the legs. It wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be. When I imagined wearing prostheses, I could only think about balancing on a part of my body that had never held all my weight. I thought it would be like trying to feed yourself by taping a fork to your elbow—doable but weird. But it wasn’t. Even though these prostheses weren’t part of me, they made my legs feel like they were doing what they were meant to do. Even with half of what I walked with before, my legs wanted this movement. I was mesmerized every time a foot touched the ground, thinking, I did that. I made that happen. Now just do it again.
After five or six steps, the sweat was rolling off my nose. I was tiring fast. With tunnel vision on the weird sneakers that didn’t belong to me, I pushed desperately to make my body synchronize to the bionics that were holding me up. The success of my old walking motions felt a little like beginner’s luck. I needed muscle memory to truly feel control over these things, and even though the pressure on my stumps was rising, I didn’t want to stop. I had been through some grueling training exercises, but nothing compared to the amount of work I was doing just to stay upright. It was painful, but it was freedom.
Whenever I wanted to stop, I would just look up. For months, I had lived at the height of light switches, doorknobs, and belly buttons. It made me feel vulnerable and powerless, which is torture to any soldier. It was the reason I was aggressive to the point of injuring myself in physical therapy. I longed for motion that wasn’t sitting and looking up at people who towered over me. God, I don’t care how much this hurts. I will do anything to not be stuck in that chair all day.
As my hands gripped the bars under locked elbows to create some relief for my lower body, I fired my left hip for another successful step with the robotic knee. Each step was shakier than the last. I looked up from my feet again to take in the view that was getting me through the exhaustion, and I noticed Paige walking next to me. One hand was carrying my wound vac, and the other was clamped over her mouth as tears poured from her eyes, which were locked on my newfound freedom. Those tears were a long time coming for Paige. Her life had become an around-the-clock mission to clear the runway for my success, but no matter how hard she worked, I was the only one who could make me stand again. I just gave her a confident smile that said, Pretty cool, huh? And then I moved another six inches down the walkway.
I turned around between the bars and started the grueling twelve-step journey back to my chair. The sockets painfully squeezed my quads and hamstrings, and I was drenched in sweat, but the prostheses were doing what I meant for them to do.
