The Trophy Exchange (8 page)

“
Rehabilitation Clinic. May I help you?
”

Hallelujah!
“
Yes, ma
’
am, I need to make an appointment for monocular occupational therapy.
”

After setting up an appointment for two days
’
time, Lucinda smiled at her accomplishment until her first attempt to place the receiver back in the cradle failed. Anger burned away every shred of triumph. She regretted her call for help and wished she
’
d never picked up the phone but the effort required to call back and cancel was more than she could handle.

The uncomfortable dampness in the seat of her pants fed her ire. She pulled them off and let them drop to the kitchen floor. She stomped out of the kitchen but came to a jarring halt when her hip bone collided with the corner of the counter. Her anger went up yet another notch. She collapsed onto the sofa and pulled an afghan over her outstretched legs.

Fury at her inability to perform the smallest task, rage at her injury and despair over her future stirred up a deep well of bitterness.
Why am I being punished for doing the right thing? It’s not fair. Life’s not fair, Lucinda. Grow up.

Her anger morphed into self-pity. She felt all alone, forsaken, worthless.
Will I ever be able to work again? Drive again? Pour a damn glass of water again?
A single tear welled up from her remaining eye. As it coursed across her skin down to her chin, she realized she would never again feel a tear on the other side of her face. She sobbed quietly until she drifted off to sleep.

When she awoke, a feeling of weight and vibration on her chest was the first sensation to cross her conscious mind. The sound of Chester
’
s contented purring registered on her awareness next. She opened her eye and
Chester
placed a soft paw on her chin.
“
Good morning,
Chester
,
”
she said. He responded by pressing his forehead against her nose. She scratched behind his ears and smiled.
I’ve kicked him, drenched him with water and scared him to death. And yet, here he is – glad to see me, missing eye, scarred face and all.
His simple affirmation resurrected her determination.

After her morning prep and a quick breakfast, she gritted her teeth and called for a taxi to take her to the shooting range. She wanted to gauge how much her skills had deteriorated. After firing twenty rounds, she gave up. One shot grazed the paper but the rest were far off the mark.

The sergeant in charge of the range said,
“
You
’
re thinking too much, Pierce. You
’
re trying too hard.
”

“
Whatever,
”
she said, blowing him off with a wave of a hand. But she vowed to herself to return again in thirty days.

The next day, she went to her first therapy session. The focus was more on education – learning her limitations and the expectations of her rehab plan – and information – psychologist referrals, support groups and where to get special equipment to help her regain her independence.

She was relieved to discover there were other visual clues she could use to regain her depth perception. The therapist introduced her to some of the basic therapy tools. He handed Lucinda a stick and placed her near the Marsden Ball, a suspended rubber sphere covered with letters of the alphabet. Then he swung it toward her face as she called out the letters she could see as her eye struggled to track the complete arc of the ball
’
s movement. She didn
’
t spot many but she did get a few. She was an abject failure, though, at the second exercise of hitting the ball back to him. She ruefully recalled ridiculing the girls who always struck out when at bat in a softball game. They did another exercise with flashlights, and again Lucinda
’
s performance was miserable. The therapist, though, assured her, that with less time than she thought possible, the routines would become easy.
“
And routine,
”
he added with a laugh.

With close-up work like threading a needle, he told her, she was on her own. Her subconscious mind would make the adjustments.
“
With a little patience, you
’
ll soon be pouring a glass of water into a glass without giving it a thought.
”
She was skeptical but she tried hard to believe in the program and in herself.

Then he delivered the bad news about driving.
“
Nationwide, individuals with monocular vision have seven times more accidents than those with binocular vision.
”

Negativity tried to kick her determination out of her reach but failed when the therapist handed her a sheet of paper with suppliers who carried the wide field mirrors she could install on both sides of her car to increase her range of visibility.
“
And I will train you in the head and eye movements you need to further enhance your field of vision scanning ability. I
’
ll put you on a driving simulator first and when you have the knack there, I
’
ll go out on the road with you and help you fine tune your new skills.
”

When he offered to provide a referral to a psychologist and set her up to participate in a support group, Lucinda scowled.
“
I may be impaired but I
’
m not pathetic.
”
He tried to convince her that getting psychological help was not a sign of weakness. Lucinda agreed with him up to a point – it was good thing for other people, not her. She did not want or need the space or the encouragement to whine.
“
It
’
s counter-productive,
”
she insisted. She ignored his continued urging to take advantage of these services.

But Lucinda didn
’
t miss a single occupational therapy appointment. She worked with focused diligence on her exercise routine at home. She still stumbled over objects she didn
’
t see, ran into furniture and walls and kicked
Chester
on occasion, but every day seemed a little easier and the accidents further apart.

In a month, she was ready to return to the shooting range. To get there, she
’
d make her first solo drive in her newly equipped car. The day and the route were perfect for her first excursion – no rain in sight and no highways involved. Her fear and anxiety, though, made the three-mile drive feel like a long distance trek.

At the range, her shooting earned a clap on the back from the instructor. She wasn
’
t the proficient shot she used to be, but every bullet hit the target. She was determined to practice hard until she regained her nickname
“
Dead Eye Pierce
”
. She sneered at herself at the bitter realization that her moniker now had an added layer of significance.

On the personal front, her adaptation to normalcy missed the mark by a mile. Her girlfriends cajoled her back to the whirl of happy hour mixers and private parties. She entered the social fray mentally prepared for the stares and the heavy presence of unasked questions on the faces of those she met. She had not anticipated her biggest problem in group settings but it hit hard at a crowded cocktail party.

She chatted away as usual without a thought about the gestures of her arms that always moved to the rhythm of her words. She was not aware of the woman who approached her left side until she backhanded her in the face. Lucinda flushed and stammered out her apologies but got nothing in return but a grumble and a hard stare.

She vowed to break the habit of moving her hands when she spoke. It was harder than she thought it would be. Before she opened her mouth, she grabbed one hand with the other and held them both tight against her body. If she relaxed for a moment, though, her hands went into motion again. After smacking a few more people, she decided she needed to stop talking in public altogether.

She spent a few nights clutching her hands together and kept her lips sealed, responding to conversation with nods and shakes of her head. Her dulled interaction soon left her standing on the sidelines looking and feeling uncomfortable. If anyone did approach her, she was certain that they only did so out of pity. Soon she stopped mingling altogether – her social life was reduced to conversations with
Chester
.

For weeks, girlfriends called trying to urge her out of her shell and back into the world. She rebuffed them all, getting ruder with each refusal, and soon the phone stopped ringing. Her friendships with other women dried up and blew away like delicate rosebuds left unwatered in the midst of an unrelenting drought. Only one of her relationships seemed unchanged and unfettered by her injury – the one with her old high-school boyfriend, Ted.

Her interactions with him, though, were work-related and serendipitous. He had a wife and kids. She had
Chester
. Her life now consisted of her rehabilitation, her quiet time at home and regaining her job, a task she pursued with the dogged diligence of a newly recruited fanatic. Ambition and striving were her closest friends.

Her driving skills improved. Her shooting skills excelled. She ran an endless gauntlet of political hurdles to return to active duty in the field. Although there were no existing policies in her department prohibiting her from patrolling a beat with one eye, many administrators objected to the precedent it might set.

She didn
’
t mention that she
’
d looked into the possibility of legal action – she held that last card close. She didn
’
t want to use it if it wasn
’
t necessary. When she heard
“
no
”
one time too many, she knew it was time to show her hand. She logged on to the Internet and printed out a copy of the American Disabilities Act and related monocular vision decisions from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and marched down the street to the office of the city attorney.

She entered his office, slapped the documents on his desk, sat down and stared without uttering a word. The attorney looked at the papers in front of him, looked at Lucinda and squirmed. He rifled through the pages while he thought about the predicament and its legal ramifications.
“
I need to make a few calls. Can you come back in an hour?
”

“
Yes sir,
”
she said and walked back down the block to the cubicle where she pounded out statistical analysis for the department. She was good at numbers and had no problem supplying a constant stream of reports. But it bored her to tears. She could not imagine a lifetime of dreary days behind a desk where the lives and deaths of victims became nothing more than input for a new bar graph or pie chart.

When it was time to return to the city attorney
’
s office, it felt more like walking a tightrope across a pit of agitated alligators than the short stroll it was. She had to consciously regulate her breathing to keep it even as she approached his doorway.

“
Pierce, do you have any personal items in your workspace?
”