Girl and Five Brave Horses, A (15 page)

“I don’t know,” I said. “It was a tough ride but I didn’t get hurt. Still, I can barely see anything at all. It’s like looking through a thick screen of smoke.”

I hadn’t told Al that I had landed again on my face because I didn’t want to worry him, but George took it upon himself to summon Al. Immediately he was at my door, full of concern and questions. In spite of his objections, I insisted on making another ride that night; he could summon no arguments strong enough to talk me out of it. By this time I was behaving under some insane compulsion that had nothing to do with common sense. “The show must go on,” I told myself. “There’s no one but me to ride,” but in effect what I was doing was denying that anything was wrong. I was also protecting my pride. No one had ever had to take my place on my horse and no one was going to.

As Red Lips galloped up the ramp later that evening I thought to myself, “Thank God he’s got a lot of white on him. I could never have seen Klatawah’s dark coat against the night background.”

After the last dive we went home and I went to bed. I refused to have any discussion of my eyes, still insisting that I was all right. The next morning brilliant sunshine penetrated the gray curtain and made it seem less sinister. I told Al and Arnette to go ahead to the pier, since they had to be there earlier than I did, and promised to come along later. Then I dressed, had my breakfast, and set forth.

I covered the four blocks from our apartment to the pier and there had a mishap, seemingly unimportant in itself, that frightened me more than anything that had happened so far. At the entrance I became confused and walked through the main gate instead of the one reserved for employees. I recognized my mistake almost immediately, for I heard people moving all around me and realized I was in a much more heavily populated place than our private walkway. What I had done thoroughly upset me; I knew that if I could get lost in such familiar surroundings I must hardly be able to see at all.

Warily I made my way backstage, feeling my way along, and crept into my dressing room and began to search for my suit. Even after the shattering experience at the gate, conflict was still raging between my common sense and my vanity—and vanity was winning out. But just as I began to get undressed Al burst into my room.

“She’s coming!” he announced, waving something yellow in front of me. “Marie says she will come.”

Marie was a girl who had tried riding for a short time in 1929 but had been persuaded to give up after a series of injuries culminating in a broken collarbone. She was a girl who had an amazing amount of courage but lacked real skill for riding diving horses. Although she was hardly an ideal substitute, Al (who had been having a rough time with me and my hardheaded insistence on riding when he felt I shouldn’t) was relieved to get anyone at all. I didn’t share his reaction. He had wired her without my knowledge, and the news of a substitute brought tears to my eyes. This blow to my pride was more severe than physical pain. In the eight years I had been riding I had never once needed a substitute, and with each season my pride in my stamina and ability had grown.

Al then told me that Mr. Endicott had heard of my trouble and had telephoned to say that the act could be canceled until Marie arrived. But I said I was going to ride anyway. It was Sunday and thousands of people swarmed on the pier. They expected to see a rider on the diving horse, and I was not going to disappoint them. A few more rides, I argued, couldn’t make much difference. Al reluctantly agreed to let me ride. He left, saying, “All right, but this is the last day.”

My only concession to my impaired vision was in the choice of a horse. Usually we worked the two horses alternately, but since I had discovered that dark objects showed up better in daylight and light ones better at night I asked that Klatawah be used during the day and Red Lips that night. There was some commotion among the water-sports gang when they heard I was going to continue riding until Marie could get there, because they thought Al was making me do it. That false notion was quashed quickly via Arnette. She delivered a message to them from me saying that I was riding at my own insistence, not Al’s.

Later that afternoon at the top of the tower, as I waited for Klatawah’s dark form to loom up in the vague grayness, my eyes filled with tears. The next time Klatawah made a dive I would not be riding him. I struggled sadly through the rest of the Sunday performances.

The following day brought Marie, and Al and I finally went to a doctor. He was considered to be one of the best eye specialists in that part of the country. After I had explained my accident and subsequent developments, he examined my eyes. He told me that the impact of the water had broken tiny blood vessels in my eyes and that the physical exertion of each ride thereafter had increased this internal hemorrhage to the point where more blood had accumulated than could be absorbed. The unabsorbed blood had clotted and began to detach my retinas.

The term “detached retina” meant nothing to me until he explained that the eye has three layers—the sclera, the choroid, and the retina—which lie one on top of the other, somewhat like the skin of an onion. The retina is the inner one and corresponds to the film in a camera. The blood clots had slipped between the choroid and retina and worked the retina loose, the way sand behind wallpaper will eventually work the wallpaper loose from the wall.

He pulled no punches in explaining how badly my eyes were injured, saying that he could not impress on me too strongly their serious condition. “I shall do everything within my power,” he said, “to restore the sight in your right eye, but the state of your left eye seems utterly hopeless.” He explained that apparently the retina of my left eye was completely smashed, but the retina of the right eye was still only partially detached. He warned me that hope for the right one was slight, however, because of limited medical knowledge in treating detached retinas.

The implication of blindness was horrifying. Indeed, the doctor’s suggestion produced a sense of shock so profound that a part of my mind seemed to stop functioning, and the terrified thoughts that had scampered through my brain at the first realization of the possibility of my becoming permanently and totally blind were put away into some inner fastness and I refused to let them out.

“He’s only trying to frighten me into being a docile patient,” I told myself. “He doesn’t really mean it.” I clung to this rationalization as I followed a nurse down a corridor and into a room where she helped to undress me. So within a matter of hours I was snatched from a life filled with excitement and action to the monotony of a hospital bed.

The clinic was a small private hospital used solely for eye cases, for, as the doctor explained, “My patients are seldom ill and so they become restless when subjected to the strict routine of a general hospital. I find it much better to have them here where they may have company whenever they please.”

His attitude was fortunate for me, since all the people I knew in Atlantic City were in show business and, owing to the schedule of their performances, would have found it difficult to come to see me during regular hospital visiting hours.

The room assigned to me was as austere as any ordinary hospital room. It had a bleak cleanliness which no amount of flowers or company ever completely abolished. I felt overwhelmed by its atmosphere as I slipped into bed. To Al, who appeared later with my things, I complained, “I never felt better in my life, and to be lying idle in bed seems the silliest thing in the world.”

“You know what the doctor said,” he replied.

“Yes, I know, and I’m going to try to co-operate, but I’ll hate every minute of it, so please come whenever you can and tell everyone else to.”

Al had no sooner left the room that day than I fell asleep. For the next three days I slept almost constantly, waking only for medical treatment, food, and visitors. I had not been aware of being either tired or sleepy before going to the hospital, and I think now that this overpowering urge to sleep was a psychological attempt on my part to escape the dismal picture the doctor had painted. Whatever its cause, after those three days I was surfeited and never again slept so solidly and continuously. Later I often prayed for the ability to sleep in order to pass away endless hours of monotony, but sleep would no longer come.

The worst part of those early days in the clinic was that I had to lie perfectly still. This was to allow the fluids and blood clots in my eyes to be absorbed so the doctor could better calculate the extent of the damage before attempting to operate. In the complete immobility of my body lay the only hope of saving my eyesight. I could move my arms up and down if I went about it very cautiously, but every other part of me had to remain like stone.

It is impossible to describe the agony of being absolutely still when you are perfectly well and accustomed to moving constantly. Muscles seem to shriek for movement, and nerves appear to be on top of the skin. There is no chance to relieve pressure on any part of the body, with the result that areas that press constantly on the mattress become desperately sore.

I was allowed no pillows; my head lay flat on the bed, and the back of it became so sore I could have cried. Having an unusually high curve in my back made my spine hurt even more than the rest of my body. They tried relieving the pressure there by means of a small air pillow shaped like a doughnut, but this was no cure. It merely lessened the ache.

I was not allowed to comb my hair or brush my teeth or get up to go to the bathroom. I hated all the restrictions, but the bedpan was the worst. Overwhelmed by the desire to get up and go to the bathroom by myself, I dreamed one night that I did but that I had no sooner got there than the doctor found me and gave me such a tongue-lashing that I flew back to bed.

It occurred to me that throwing a fit would be a relief from the tedium, but common sense prevented such an indulgence. I knew that throwing a fit would be for effect alone and that the effect would serve no purpose, so I told myself that I could hold on and would hold on in order to give myself every possible chance of regaining my sight.

The doctor checked my eyes every day and, on the fourth one, decided to operate. Before he left my room he explained the object of the operation and how it would be performed.

“It will not be painful,” he went on. “I will put some drops in your eyes, and after a moment the surrounding tissue will begin to feel dead. Then I’ll put an anesthetic into the lids with a needle, but you’ll only feel a little pricking. This anesthetic will deaden not only the tissue around the eyeball but the eyeball itself. Once it has taken effect, you will feel nothing at all.”

So far the doctor had never lied to me and I was confident I would feel no pain. I didn’t, but even so the operation was a grueling business, and when it was over I was covered with sweat. My only sensory experience during the entire operation was the smell of burning flesh, which, as my nurse later explained, had occurred when the doctor cauterized the choroid.

First the doctor grasped the eyeball, she said, with a special instrument and twisted the eye around in the socket to expose the back of it. Then with a diathermy needle he pierced the eyeball to the depth of the retina.

When the needle reached a point precisely between the choroid and retina he cauterized a little spot, then another and another and another in a half-moon shape, so that when the cauterized places healed they would cause scar tissue to form and thus reattach the retina to the choroid. It was actually like gluing it back with scar tissue.

If the operation proved successful (as it did about fifty per cent of the time), some impairment of vision would result, but usually very little. My chances were less than fifty-fifty, however, because the retina was so badly damaged. Though no one had actually said so, I knew it would be a miracle if the operation was successful.

With the operation over, I had to lie still again, this time not for days but for three to four weeks, and the doctor warned me that immobility was even more important now than it had been before. If I couldn’t manage it on my own, he said, he would put sandbags around me. I loathed the idea of being sandbagged and promised to keep very quiet.

Since I was not permitted to raise my head, the nurse, Mrs. Davis, fed me. From the beginning my greatest problem in connection with eating was timing. If I opened my mouth and the food wasn’t immediately crammed in I began to feel the way a fish looks with its jaw agape. But if I hurriedly closed my mouth the nurse invariably said, “Open.” No matter how hard I tried, we seemed to be continually working at cross purposes, and the results were often frustrating.

There was also a physical sensation connected with the act of chewing which bothered me considerably. All my Me I had chewed my food slowly and thoroughly, but now I began to wish I could swallow it whole. The act of chewing made the back of my head rub against the mattress, and this, in turn, made me conscious of the slow rhythmic motion of my jaw. Once my attention was riveted on it, it seemed as if my jaw began to grow, expanding in size with every successive chew until it was swollen alarmingly. Although I knew perfectly well this was not so, I could not help wondering if I looked as ridiculous as I felt.

I was allowed no salt on my food and was given very little liquid—one cup of coffee, one glass of iced tea, and about half a glass of water each day. It was a grim menu, and only once did something happen to brighten my mealtime.

That day the nurse from next door, who was going off duty, came by to visit Mrs. Davis, who had just finished feeding me my lunch. The lunch tray—containing the remains of an assortment of vegetables, watery potatoes, and some unidentified ground meat—was still on the table.

“Why didn’t you give her the green pepper the meat was stuffed in?” the other nurse wanted to know.

“Because,” said Mrs. Davis, “I don’t like it”

For hours and hours, lacking all company but my own and occasionally the nurse’s, I often retreated into my thoughts to escape present reality, taking shelter in some memory. Sometimes scenes passed in review before me like floats in a parade and I would lie there watching them as if from a special balcony. Most were transitory and fragmentary, but a few that were strong and clear came back not once but several times to reimpress themselves. The memory that kept returning with the greatest persistence was something that happened when I was fourteen years old.