A few months later, Fran shares her writing with Maddy. She’s nervous about how Maddy might respond. Fran smiles when she remembers the conversation. When she handed the journal back to Fran, Maddy smiled and said, “This journal is full of helpful insights. It would make a wonderful book. So many women could benefit from it. I’d like to put you in touch with my friend, Libby MacCullough. She and her husband own Pines & Quill, a writing retreat in Washington state.”
Fran is filled with nervous excitement because today she’s catching a nonstop flight from Boston to Seattle. She doesn’t enjoy flying, but she tolerates it. Travel is part of her job. Because it’s a five hour and thirty-eight-minute flight, Fran is taking her laptop on the plane to focus on her manuscript, Mother in Waiting: The Stigma of Childlessness. If she’s lucky, she might even make a bit of headway.
After zipping her suitcase shut, Fran thinks, I’m giving myself this month away to scrape up the courage to remove the wedding band from my finger.
EMMA
A year ago, I didn’t know if a trip like I’m packing for right now would ever be possible again, Emma Benton muses, remembering what it was like to wake up one morning, paralyzed from the waist down.
She wanted to be a clay artist ever since she was a little girl watching her mother at her potter’s wheel. When she grew up, she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Ceramics at Penn State School of Visual Arts, and then moved back to southern California to be closer to her family and open a small studio shop.
Last year I was delighted to be one of the artists invited to show my work at Gallery in the Garden—Celebrating Art in Nature, a two day, outdoor event. My best friend, Sally, helped me pack all of the materials in and back out again. It was hard work; pottery is heavy. But I felt that the opportunity for a wider brushstroke of visibility was well worth it. Sally agreed. The morning after the show, I woke up paralyzed from the waist down.
At the hospital, they run batteries of tests. “Have you recently been out of the country or had any vaccinations?” Dr. Christianson asks. Another member of the medical team, Dr. Davidson, thinks it might be the West Nile virus. “Have you recently been bitten by a mosquito or suffered any physical trauma?” After ruling these out, they test her for multiple sclerosis and Legionnaire’s disease, but everything comes up negative.
By the second day, the symptoms Emma presents indicate that she has transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord. It can develop in a matter of hours or take several weeks. Emma’s happened overnight.
It can occur in the setting of another illness, or in isolation. Emma’s is isolated. When it happens like hers did, without an apparent underlying cause, it’s referred to as ‘idiopathic’ and is assumed to be a result of abnormal activation of the immune system against the spinal cord.
Emma has been in a wheelchair since that time. Her medical team remains baffled. They tell her, “Your recovery may be absent, partial, or complete. At thirty-five, you’re still considered young, and other than transverse myelitis, you’re healthy. More importantly, you have a positive outlook.”
“My friend, Sally, says that I’m ‘unabashedly optimistic,’” Emma says, smiling.
At first, Emma stayed at her parent’s home. It helps that she’s from a family of creatives. They speak the same language and value the same things that she does. They understand that creativity is in her blood. Because of this experiential knowledge, they’re supportive. Her dad and her brothers modified her home, art studio, and potter’s wheel so that she can live independently and continue to throw pottery.
After adding the final items to her suitcase, Emma smiles, thinking about her family. Mom’s worried. Dad says he’s not, but I can tell that he is. And my brothers are happy for me.
In addition to physical therapy, part of the recovery work she’s doing is writing a memoir, Moving Violations: A Sassy Look at Life from a Wheelchair. That’s why she’s excited to catch a flight today from San Diego to Seattle. She’s looking forward to being a writer in residence at Pines & Quill. One of their cottages is designed for people in wheelchairs.
So far Emma’s recovery’s been partial. I’ve regained some feeling in my hips, and I’m able to stand long enough, without collapsing, to transfer myself into a car, chair, or bed. One of my goals this month is to be able to stand at the bathroom sink long enough to brush my teeth. Who knows, maybe I’ll even take a step.
CHAPTER 1
“You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.”
—JOSS WHEDON
McPherson arrives at the baggage claim area with time to spare. He moves slow, weighed down by private burdens—the everyday struggle with profound loss. With regret. With guilt.
His piercing green eyes absorb the details of his surroundings, a habit he picked up on the force, one that kept him alive. His partner, Sam, hadn’t been so fortunate. If the day’s coin flip had come up tails, he would have been the driver. Not Sam. He would have been killed. Not Sam.
Mick has been “retired” from the SFPD five years now—if that’s what you call being forced to quit because of line of duty injuries. He spent the first two years following dead-end leads trying to find his partner’s killer. The last three years, he’s worked with his sister and brother-in-law at Pines & Quill.
Libby was a freshman in high school when he was born. Always a sparkle in her eyes, Mick’s mother calls him her “iontas iontach,” Gaelic
