The Miracle Stealer (20 page)

T
he emergency helicopter flew me all the way to a trauma center in Philadelphia, where a team of surgeons battled tissue damage and massive infection for hours. Of course, I have no memory of this. Even following the operation, for a time all I have are snippets of life: a loudspeaker paging someone; a nurse yanking back a curtain; a clear tube stuck in my forearm; a doctor in a white coat standing with his back to me. These mixed with nightmare fragments from the cove: that gunshot's first crack; the burning tire; the sight of Samson's open jaws. Doped up as I was on drugs, I had a hard time distinguishing reality from delusion. Once, late at night, I swore I heard Daniel singing, but when I looked around, the dark room was empty.

When I finally came to for good, groggy and confused in the early morning light, my mother was sitting in a chair in the corner, paging through her worn Bible. The mattress was propped up just a little, so I could see her without lifting my head from the pillow, and she didn't notice my open eyes. I didn't speak, partly because I wanted to be sure this wasn't another dream, partly because I couldn't think of what to say. I didn't know if Daniel was alive or dead, and I was afraid to ask. His beating heart, the last thing I could recall, seemed more fantasy than memory.

My mother's face was gaunt, as if she'd gone days without food or sleep, and I could tell too that she'd been crying. Rather than deal with her pain and my own, I closed my eyes and slipped back into the haze.

Later—a couple hours? The next morning?—I opened my eyes again and saw the television was on. Just past the foot of the bed, high up on the wall, a cartoon turtle walked beside a cartoon moose with a red bow tie. There was no sound, and the blocky letters of the closed captioning sputtered across the bottom of the screen. My mother sat in her chair, Bible on her lap, head tilted in sleep. My eyes rolled away from her and settled on the bottom of my bed. In the space where the lower half of my right leg should have been, there was nothing but a flat white sheet. I saw the peak made by my left foot and moved it, making the sheet ripple. But when I thought,
Right foot, move
, nothing happened, because it simply wasn't there. This was impossible, of course, and even after I reached down, even after my hand under the sheet gingerly touched the gauze-covered stump that ended just past the knee, the amputation didn't seem real. Nothing seemed real.

The Bible thumped to the floor and I turned to my mother, who had stood up but not rushed over. She crossed the room slowly, came to my side, and put two hands on my arm. “Thank God you came back,” she said. “Oh, my sweet girl.”

That's what she called me when I was little. She leaned in over the IV tubing and kissed my cheek. “The surgeons didn't have a choice,” she said. “Your leg, it was just too—”

Samson's open jaw flashed in my mind. “So they just cut it off?”

She shook her head. “They tried their best, Annie. They saved
as much as they could. Things were worse than you know.” She clutched at her mouth, as if the words themselves scared her. When she took her hands away, she said, “They kept telling me you'd wake up, but it's been three days.”

Three days
, I thought. I wondered again about Daniel, a subject my mother was clearly avoiding. She went on. “I've already talked with the doctors about your recovery. They say with time and effort, you'll still be able to have a perfectly normal life.”

“A perfectly normal life!” I shouted back at her. “Sure. Of course. Me and my freaking peg leg. That's exactly what we'll have.” Tears pressed in along the rims of my eyes. I was trapped in that bed. I couldn't stop looking at the place where my leg should've been, though the sight disgusted me. I turned away from the stump, turned away from my mother, and finally fixed on the TV, where the cartoon moose was spinning that turtle on its back.

“Annie,” my mother said. “They had to do this. They did it to save your life.”

Something in the way she said this made me feel like I should be grateful, like not everyone got to live through what happened. My brother. That twisted neck and his still chest. I wondered if Jeff had told her about the hoax or if she thought I'd killed Daniel while trying to steal him from her. How do you apologize to a mother for a thing like that? How could I apologize for all I'd put her through? The tears seeped out now, just a few from both eyes. I wiped my cheeks and tried to find better words, but all I could come up with were the same ones we always use. “I'm so sorry, Mom.” My voice was scratchy and raw. “They should have let me die.”

“Don't you worry about being sorry,” my mom said. “You worry about getting well.” She poured some water from a pitcher into a cup, and I sipped it through a bent straw while she watched. She had no reason to offer such quick forgiveness. When I finished, she took the cup back. “Everyone has been praying.”

I sniffled back the tears, made them stop, and focused on the Bible she'd been reading, still spread on the floor. “Don't tell me you believe this was all part of God's plan.”

“What I think isn't relevant. Everything is a part of God's plan.”

“Dad leaving?” I said. I rubbed the last of the wetness from my eyes. “What happened to Daniel?”

“All of it,” she said. “The good and the bad. The things we understand and especially the things we don't.”

“Oh, there's plenty I don't understand,” I said. Why my leg was gone. Why Daniel had to die. But also, I remembered now, the scent of vanilla and that swirling white warmth from the cove. On the TV, the moose and turtle began dancing. The closed captioning read
HAPPY MUSIC
. “Can you please turn that crap off?” I said.

“Of course,” my mom said. She lifted the remote from a chair next to the bed and tried to find the right button. “Daniel must have left it on.”

“Daniel?” I said.

And at that moment my brother walked into the room, his arm in a cast up past his elbow, the whole thing suspended in a blue sling. “Hey, Andi,” he said. “You're awake.” A square white bandage covered half his forehead. He crossed to my mother and handed her a Crunch bar. He said, “I told you Andi was gonna be okay.”

She gave him back the unwrapped chocolate and said, “You sure did.”

Daniel offered me the candy bar and I hesitated, then took a bite. “Thanks,” I told him, still not believing my eyes.

He said, “Mom says you're gonna get a wheelchair till you get a new leg. Can I have a ride?”

Mom shushed him, but Daniel didn't care. He waited for an answer to his question with a beaming smile on his face. I was shocked to hear myself laugh. “Yeah, sure thing,” I told him. “You're first in line.” I gave him back his candy bar and looked at the bandage on his head. I wondered what he remembered about the cove. “Daniel, how do you feel?”

“I have a compound fracture,” he announced proudly. “I'm glad you're awake. I couldn't read them words fast enough.” Now he was looking again at the TV screen, munching his chocolate.

“We should call the doctors, Annie,” my mom said. “They'll want to know you're awake. But first things first.” She turned off the TV. “Let's pray now, the three of us.”

Daniel put down the candy bar, folded his hands, and bent his head reverently. My mom looked at me, waiting. I stared down, expecting still to see my right leg just as it had always been. Instead, there was only the clean white sheet covering the stump. But I also remembered that warmth within my chest, the glowing that filled my whole body.

“How about you guys pray, and I'll listen?” I said.

Mom held back her smile, but I could tell she was pleased. She closed her eyes and began. She didn't ask God to straighten the path before me, and she didn't ask Him to take away my pain. That day, all she focused on was offering thanks for sparing my life. I let my eyes close, leaned back into the pillow, and listened to the words of my mother's prayer.

 

That first day in the hospital, a doctor came in and explained that during surgery I'd gone into septic shock. Technically I'd been in a coma. He asked how my pain was on a scale of one to ten. I couldn't pick a number, so I told him four. Another doctor, this one a lady, pulled a chair up close to the bed and explained the lengthy rehab she had planned out for me. Later a counselor stopped by and said we should talk sometime about mourning my missing leg. It all seemed crazy, impossible, wrong. Yet all this time, while the images of crutches and wheelchairs and metal joints strapped to my flesh made me cringe, I'd see my brother in the corner, reading a comic book, or at the window, smiling at a squirrel balancing along the telephone wire. Every time I felt like screaming or crying, I'd remember that strange warmth in my chest and think,
Daniel's alive
.

That night, after the parade of doctors finally stopped, after my mom and Daniel left for the hotel they were staying in, I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamt, but not about fire or Samson or the fairy fort. I dreamt I was running. On strong and powerful legs, I jogged across a never-ending green field with the open sky overhead. The wind flowed through my hair and I could run forever, it seemed, but then I was distracted by the sound of gentle weeping.

I opened my eyes in darkness and clicked on the little light on the nightstand. Leo was kneeling next to my bed. He had his head down, and he gripped the metal rail with both his hands, like he was holding on to keep from collapsing. When he raised his head, the sight of tears on that ravaged face was more than I wanted
to see. He said, “Oh, Anderson, I am so sorry. I am so sorry for what's happened.”

“You got nothing to apologize for,” I said.

“I'm not convinced of that. It was I who called Daniel to the fairy fort.”

“Nobody made me do anything,” I told him. “I wanted to come. And so did Daniel.”

With the back of his damaged hand, he wiped the tears from his face. “I came here tonight to receive your judgment. I came to ask you to forgive me.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Poof. You're forgiven.”

He seemed shocked. His stare turned to the bottom of the bed. “But your leg,” he said.

Given what Leo knew, it made no sense that I'd be so willing to offer absolution. What happened to my leg was a shitty deal, one I still cope with to this day. But losing it to save Daniel was a bargain I would've gladly accepted on those rocks. With as honest and good as Leo had been to me, and as terrible as he was clearly feeling, I thought he had a right to know. I started the story without even thinking. “That bear would've killed me for sure,” I said. “But Daniel came back.”

I explained how I'd gotten my brother to safety and how he returned from the lake. I told him about the pain and the blood and Bundower's sniper shots. And then, after I gathered myself, I told him how I found Daniel like I did, dying or dead already, with neither breath nor beating heart. I looked into Leo's ruined face and described what happened next as best as I could, how I broke my vow and asked for God's help. I finished my story and shrugged. “I'm not even sure what I did qualifies as a prayer,” I said.

Leo was silent for a time. Then he said, “That's probably the best prayer I ever heard.”

“It was so strange, though,” I said. “There was this glowing inside me. It felt so warm, like it was almost alive.”

“It was,” Leo said. He smiled and nodded. “It most definitely was.”

I shook my head. “I can't be sure God brought Daniel back from the dead. For all I know, Daniel's heart could've kicked back on all by itself. How can I be positive?”

“And where is it written God wants you to be certain?”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“Faith isn't about absolute proof. Belief isn't a math problem. You prayed for your brother, Anderson. That's the truly miraculous act here, not what happened before or after. In your hour of need, when you had every reason to despair, you chose to reach out to God.”

“But if He really heard me, why am I still alive at all? I offered my life for Daniel's.”

Leo patted my arm. “I don't think God bargains like that. Besides, God may have needed you alive for a reason. He may have work He wants you to do.”

I wasn't sure how I felt about doing God's work and gave Leo a look that demanded an explanation.

He smiled at me strangely. “You have seen astounding things, Anderson, but seeing alone merely makes you an observer. To be a witness, you must tell others what you saw. When the time is right, you must offer testimony. Make others feel what it felt like to be where you were. Tell your truth, Anderson Grant.”

That last notion appealed to me, but I knew I wasn't ready,
not that night for sure. So we talked for a while about Daniel and what a great kid he was. It's funny, but I have no memory of Leo leaving. He slipped out after I fell asleep, and I never heard from him again.

The year since then has been anything but easy. I went from the trauma center to Good Shepherd Rehab in Allentown for the hardest six weeks of my life. I got fitted with a temporary leg, and they worked me out of the wheelchair, up into a walker like old folks use, then onto wobbly crutches. I practiced falling and getting up. I had to learn how to walk again, how to deal with stairs, get in and out of tubs, a dozen daily habits you just take for granted. Then Mom drove me back home, where I found Bundower and Jeff had moved all my stuff from my cabin to my old bedroom, given the walls a fresh coat of blue paint.

All winter, I was desperate to run, and I spent plenty of afternoons feeling sorry for myself. But when the snow wasn't bad, Daniel and I took longer and longer walks, and Gayle got in the habit of giving me rides in to the office even when she didn't need help. By spring, I had fixed up that bike in the shed and, with some practice, rode it along Roosevelt Road, pretending I was jogging. A couple times a week, Jeff called from Penn State to check in and razz me about how when I get to campus in the fall, he'll be a senior and I'll only be a freshman. Little by little, my new life started taking shape.