Sarah had, like
many little girls, begged her parents to sign her up for dance school. She had,
unlike many little girls, stuck with it clear into college. Her commitment to
the sport didn’t diminish until her career as a botanist began.
The damage to her
right ankle had only begun.
The
twenty-eight-year-old sat in her doctor’s office. She held a small, plastic bag
of ice against her swollen ankle. It seemed that her foot only grew worse. She
stumbled often, couldn’t run at all.
The doctor returned
with a handful of X-rays, none of which meant anything to her. He explained
that her onstage landings in dance school, back in her youth, had overstressed
the tendons in her right ankle, the total damage of which only now had risen in
full.
The damage didn’t
appear repairable without costly surgery, well outside Sarah’s budget.
Her doctor
suggested a wheelchair, or at least crutches. “The less you walk, the longer
you’ll have the option to do so,” he explained.
* * *
Sarah considered,
while she drove home, those who break their backs, necks, or blow off their
legs. She had little reason to complain. She at least had a few journeys left
available to her.
The thought improved
her mood, but she couldn’t help consider all the places a person couldn’t go without
functional legs. Such destinations would remain forever out of her reach, once
her ankle took its final breath.
She slowed to a
stop at a red light, wondered if she ought to regret her time at dance school.
She hadn’t made a career out of it. Shouldn’t she wish that she had never set
foot on stage?
She didn’t regret
it, though.
She knew, with
that realization, what a paraplegic would tell her.
Use your legs while you have them. Don’t live like you’re already dead.
The light turned
green. She stomped the gas.
She arrived home,
jumped onto her computer, and started to plan the greatest hike ever conceived.
She listed everywhere she would ever want to wander.
New Zealand.
Ireland. Egypt. Alaska. Central America. Yellowstone. The Great Wall of China.
Most people with
functioning legs never traveled so far. How dangerous good health proved. Only
when a person heard the tick of her or his second hand did they ever plan for their
present. Healthy people blindly thought only of their future.
Sarah’s front door
opened. Her live-in girlfriend, Debbie, had arrived home from work.
Sarah hadn’t
considered how she would break the bad news to Debbie. Would Debbie want to live with a cripple?
“Hey, tree
hugger.” Debbie hugged Sarah from behind while the latter remained seated.
“Discover any new mushrooms, today?”
Sarah dutifully
kissed her. “Mushrooms aren’t plants.” Sarah tried to sound nonchalant.
“Besides, I had a doctor’s appointment, today.”
Debbie
straightened. “Right. How did that go?”
Sarah hesitated.
“A few more ice packs, and I’ll be good as new.”
“Good. You had me
worried.” Debbie’s eyes wandered towards the computer screen. “Planning a
trip?”
“Um . . . yeah.”
“When?”
Sarah shrugged.
“Kind of immediately.”
Debbie blinked. “Neither
of us have the vacation time.”
“I can get it.”
“But I can’t.”
Sarah said
nothing.
“You planned a
trip without me?” Debbie pretended to check emails on her cell phone, a
transparent method to mask her mood. “When will you get back?”
Sarah changed the
subject. “You know Daniel and Martha down the street?”
Debbie shook her
head, which didn’t surprise Sarah, since she had invented the couple.
“Well,” Sarah
said, “Martha injured her back. She needs crutches to get anywhere. I think
Daniel wishes he could abandon the whole situation.”
Debbie frowned. “Inexcusable.
If you say, ‘For better or worse,’ you should mean it.”
“They’re not
married.”
“Engaged?”
“Um, no.”
“Oh.” Debbie
considered this far longer than Sarah would’ve liked. “I guess that’s understandable,
then.”
Sarah fought for a
straight face. “Would you walk away if I broke my back?”
Debbie laughed. “You’d
never hurt yourself.”
* * *
Sarah managed, the
next day, to horrify her doctor with news of her intentions. Sarah wouldn’t
reconsider, though.
Her doctor wrote
her a prescription for painkillers. “You’ll need these.”
The local pharmacy
served as her next stop. She updated her passport while she was there.
Bank. Traveler’s
checks.
Home. Pack.
Online. Book first flight.
To where, though?
Sarah stared at her computer. She had opened three tabs, each attached to the
same website that negotiated flight costs. Flights to Japan filled the first
tab. Flights to New Zealand filled the second.
She reopened to
third tab, observed flights to China.
Her cell phone
rang.
“I’m on my lunch
break in fifteen minutes.” Debbie echoed from the phone. “Want to meet me?”
Sarah glanced at
her wristwatch. “I still have to call work.”
“You haven’t
called your boss yet?”
“I called in sick,
but I still need to explain . . . everything.”
“When do I get an
explanation?” Debbie asked.
Sarah realized she
couldn’t tell her boss or coworkers anything. Someone would spill the beans to
Debbie. Sarah didn’t feel ready yet for that conversation.
“I don’t like
this, Sarah. Something’s wrong, and you won’t tell me what it is.”
“I’ll explain
everything later.” Sarah disconnected.
She called her
boss, left a vague voicemail, said she didn’t feel well. She could beg him for
forgiveness upon her return. She would eventually
show up for work in a wheelchair, after all.
She booked a flight
to New Zealand. Next, she headed to the closest sporting goods store to
purchase camping supplies.
* * *
The nineteen-hour
flight proved insufferable. Only the sharp, increasing pain in Sarah’s ankle
distracted her from the teenagers who had, for some reason, decided to loudly sing
every terrible pop song ever created.
* * *
She arrived in New
Zealand, checked into a hotel, caught up on sleep.
She kayaked
(poorly) across through the Bay of Islands. Dolphins swam right past her,
smirked at her silly attempts to steer her tiny ship.
The water around
her turned from dark, molten sapphires to green emeralds before it crashed
against the rocky shores in salty sprays of diamonds.
She biked all the
way to Milford Sound (this cost her a few nights in her tent), where she
explored waterfalls and snow-capped mountains.
She met, along the
way, a couple on their honeymoon. She congratulated them, but experienced a
shameful stab of envy. Would Debbie break up with her, once she lost the
ability to walk?
She witnessed, in
Rotorua, pools of boiling mud, volcanic craters, and geysers. She felt as if
she wandered across some stone giant’s upset stomach.
The sharp pain in
her ankle pounded. She washed one of her painkillers down her throat with a
swallow from her canteen.
She required
countless more pills while she waited in the airport for her flight to Ireland,
which proved a remarkable improvement over its predecessor. “Romancing the
Stone,” her favorite movie, played as the in-flight movie.
She discovered
herself, after the movie, drowsier than expected, a side effect from her
painkillers. She slept, awoke in Ireland, and decided she would have to cut down
on the pills.
She hiked through
Sheep’s Head Way, took a selfie in front of a tower-tall, white lighthouse. She
explored seemingly ancient, gray-bricked churches and homes along Wicklow Way.
She opened her
checking account a little wider than she expected when she heard about
Ireland’s castle tours. Three nights in a separate castle.
She spent her
first night in Ballyseede Castle, half claimed by bright green vines and
surrounded by beds of purple flowers. She explored the nearby Blarney Woolen
Mills, and she pet more than three-dozen wolfhounds.
Her room, shaped
as half a circle, included red carpets, a canopy bed, and a breathtaking view
of the courtyard outside the castle.
She spent her next
night in the medieval-looking, gray Dromoland Castle, its front side soaked
with green and dark red plant life.
It cost her close
to a handful of pills to complete her journey from Dromoland Castle, past the
Irish Cost, the Cliffs of Moher, and finally to Ashford Castle.
A peek at her
checking account, via her electronic tablet, confirmed that her vacation rode on
fumes, financially speaking.
She transferred
her entire savings into her checking account.
She swallowed her
last pill upon her arrival at the airport, chugged a white chocolate mocha to
combat her medication-and-excessive-exercise fatigue, and reconsidered her
plans. She couldn’t afford all the travel she had planned for herself.
She sat at a table
within one of the airport’s countless pubs and poured over a map on her
electronic tablet, negotiated with herself in regards to where she could and
couldn’t travel.
She knew that she
would likely never get another chance to visit whichever destinations she
crossed off her list. It made he feel astoundingly mortal.
Her cell phone
rang. Debbie called for the twentieth times since Sarah left the states. Like
all the times before, she didn’t answer. If she did, Debbie would convince her
to come home early. Better to ask forgiveness than permission.
Her boss called.
Sarah didn’t answer this one, either. She listened to the voicemail, though. He
told her in the most apologetic manner possible that she would lose her job if
she didn’t get back to him soon.
Sarah booked a
flight for Egypt.
* * *
She discovered,
shortly after she landed, that she would experience a hell of a challenge
getting her prescription refilled in the Middle East. What few drug stores she
discovered, she didn’t trust.
She hobbled about
the desert. The pain in her ankle grew worse. She imagined sand while it
drained from her ruined tendons into her shoe. Once the sand ran out, she
would, in her mind, collapse, a puppet with cut strings.
She purchased and
guzzled water. The heat suffocated her.
She discovered
that every merchant at every shop wanted to haggle. Every purchase, no matter
how minor, became an unwanted battle.
While the pyramids
in Cairo amazed her, as did the countless, ancient wonders in Luxor, she couldn’t
help but hate the poverty and mistreatment she witnessed.
She saw women in
burkas, herded by the men who owned them. The men used sticks to steer their
property. It disgusted Sarah to her core.
The “homes” she
witnessed appeared little more than sheets of metal crudely connected, with
holes punched through their sides to serve as windows. Hopeless, filthy faces
peeked at her from these holes.
She also
discovered her citizenship less than popular. Merchants and travel guides often
demanded to know the origin of her accent. They treated her with naked contempt
when she identified herself as an American.
Only the hotel
staff (whom she paid) treated her warmly. The hotel room she rented proved a
disgusting disappointment. Roaches scurried across the bare walls. The view
through her window displayed a grimy alley in which men sold fruits.
She purchased a
power converter (another haggle fought), and recharged both her cell phone and
tablet.
Too many
voicemails awaited her. Debbie had left nearly half of them. She sounded at
once bitter, concerned, and fed up. Sarah’s boss had left as many messages. It
sounded as if he had (or nearly had) decided to fire her.
One message, not
left by Sarah’s boss or girlfriend, had come from her doctor, who expressed
only concern for her. She called him back, assured him that she felt fine.
She guzzled from another
water bottle, and then tried to get some sleep.
Her ankle kept her
awake atop her sweat-slick sheets.
* * *
She had only
collected a few scattered hours of sleep by the time the sun rose to bake the
already sweltering streets.
Sarah checked her
bank account. She wouldn’t last much longer.
She added up the
available credit on all her plastic, determined that she could charge another
two thousand dollars.
She spent the day
exploring the gorgeous, azure beaches of Hurghada. She limped the entire time.
Where should she
go next? If she sold her camping supplies, she could add to her shriveled bank
account.
She returned to her
hotel room, called an American travel agent, ran through her options. An
Alaskan cruise seemed best. She sold her camping supplies and booked a flight
to Washington, where she would board her boat.
* * *
Once in
Washington, she immediately refilled her prescription. Her ankle throbbed such
that she could hardly stand for more than a few minutes at a time.
She explored
downtown Seattle, visited the Aquarium on Alaskan Way, the EMP museum by the Space
Needle in Bell Town, and sampled the world-famous Pike’s Place Clam Chowder.
She took a cab to
the port. Her injured ankle couldn’t carry her any longer. She swallowed pills
as if she swallowed mints. The pain only subsided in the slightest.
She could no
longer stand. She sat, once she reached the port, and waited for the other
passengers to board. She afterwards requested help to climb onto the ship.
She had to
convince the ship’s crew that they should allow her to board.
“It’s just a
little leg pain,” she explained. “It comes and goes. I’ll be fine.”
She found her room
and, before the ship even departed, fell into a deep, medicated sleep that
lasted nearly twenty hours.
She awoke, tested
her ankle. She could hobble a bit, but it felt as if she balanced her weight on
thin pretzel sticks.
The pain brought
tears to her eyes, and she only just made it to the ship’s rails. She steadied
herself against their bars. Her ankle felt seized by fire.
The chilly, salty
breeze ran through her hair.
Someone sent her a
text message. Debbie wanted to know if she could take their coffee table to her
new apartment.
“That’s how she
breaks up with me,” Sarah whispered, though she didn’t blame her.
Sarah felt only
sad, old, tired. She didn’t feel angry.
A sudden splash
commanded her attention, as well as that of the passengers nearest to her.
Everyone pointed over the railing, cheered with delight.
She stared down
into the crystal-clear water. Several shamu swam, blew water from their
blowholes. Their audience clapped and whistled.
Sarah stared down
at them . . . grunted with pain while she slipped off her shoes. She tried to
paw off her socks with her feet, but quickly gave up on the idea.
She pulled off her
shirt. Goosebumps rose from her flesh, where the frozen air kissed her. She
unbuttoned her jeans.
Someone realized
her intentions. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
Sarah tried to
pull down her jeans, realized that this would require too much from her injured
ankle, and changed her mind. She re-buttoned her jeans and struggled to climb
the rail.
The previously
enchanted crowd switched gears, their cries suddenly terror-filled. “Someone
stop her!” “The water’s close to freezing.” “She’ll die within seconds.”
She managed to kneel
upon the thin, metal rail. She stretched her arms and fell forward with a splash. The cold sting shocked her,
burned up her nose, and seemed to make her bones tighten.
She, underwater,
reached out to touch one of the whales, which regarded her with a single,
black, curious eye. Her fingers feel several inches short of the whale’s side—and
her mouth opened.
