Together (9 page)

After Barnes
closed the door, Brenden sat very still, working to absorb the emotions he had
just experienced. Was the man right? Could life take on meaning for him? Was
there a possible light at the end of the tunnel?

The door
opened, and a woman came in. She asked him a few questions and jotted notes on
some kind of calendar or legal pad. In minutes, Brenden worked out a schedule
and began a new chapter in his life.

chapter ten

Over the next
few days before Brenden undertook his rehabilitation program, Barnes's magic
began to wane in the face of doubt, anger, and depression. Doubt because he
still experienced difficulty even with the simple navigation of his own house.
True, he hadn't fallen down any stairs, but he occasionally got lost in the
middle of his living room when he rose from a chair and found himself turned
the wrong way.

Doubt created
anger, an emotion that was never far from the surface of his consciousness. And
depression—well, depression was the natural spin-off from anger in those
moments when he felt completely sorry for himself or missed Lindsey or hated
the patronizing way his mother tried to be helpful.

He knew that
she didn't mean any harm. She was simply being his mother. But his nerves were
frayed to the breaking point, and even the smallest indication of patronage set
him off, either into rage or into a pitiable state of sadness when he thought
about his life circumstance.

It didn't
make him any happier when on the first morning he was to report to rehab, the
van provided by the program pulled up in front of his house, and he joined six
other pathetic human beings headed for the place where they would be
rehabilitated.

What a concept,
he considered, as he sat morosely in the back row of
the van.
Rehabilitation. To be rehabilitated.
That's what he was to become.
Reengineered. Reorganized. Reconstructed. Revamped. Renewed.
It was all garbage as far as he
was concerned. Whatever you called it, to Brenden McCarthy it meant that he
would never be the same free spirit he had once been and that his life, or what
was left of it, would never be worth much to anyone, particularly to himself.

He learned
that in this group of people riding to rehab, he was not particularly unusual.
Two of his van-mates suffered from diabetes and just "had the lights go
out," as they put it, in the last few months. Then there was a guy who had
retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that brought him to blindness so gradually
that he had gone into denial, unwilling to acknowledge and prepare for it. An
older woman in the van had let macular degeneration go on too long, and by the
time she finally went for treatment it was too late. And so all of them carried
the same kind of symptomatic sorry that was eating him up inside.

Oh sure, he
had been impressed with the stuff that Barnes talked about. And he had to admit
that the big man seemed to be doing very well with his own adjustment. But he
and Barnes weren't the same, and he just didn't believe that he would ever
crawl out of the depths of his darkness and gain back the joy that had been so
much a part of the person he used to be.

His
days began with mobility
training, another term that, to
him, seemed deceptively innocuous. To Brenden—the mountain climber who could
move from rock to rock with the surefooted agility of a cat—being limited to
moving through space either holding on to the arm of a well-meaning instructor
or trailing the wall in search of a door—well, this certainly didn't feel much
like independence.

Counting
steps and memorizing the simplest of routes to get from one destination to
another required tremendous levels of concentration. He realized early on that
his adjustment to a world in the dark would not come easily. That was expressed
best in the frustration he experienced in the class the rehab people called
living skills.

He figured
out how to take someone's arm and understood how to move through space and read
body motion. He found that his senses were picking up more information. But he
always hated the use of the cane. Carrying a stick in his hands seemed
pointless, and it didn't prevent him from bruising his shins or tripping on a step,
hitting an overhang or getting lost on a planned route.

He didn't
like most of the people who were in the program with him because they seemed
old and tired, and he hated the fact that Lindsey wasn't around very much. He
knew he would have to deal with her to win her back, to make her understand
that he could succeed. But more importantly, he knew that he had to believe in
that possibility himself, and he had not yet reached that place. Would he ever
get there? He wasn't sure.

Brenden's
thoughts of suicide were losing their urgency. They were still there but less
of a preoccupation—more a plan B. He himself wasn't aware of the change.

Brenden had
to admit that he was surprised at all the options available to blind people,
helping them cope with every element of daily life.

He found
himself reluctantly absorbed in the training. From learning to cook on a stove
with voice-actuated timers to the use of the Kurzweil reading machine and JAWS
software; the voice-actuated clocks that could be set by holding down buttons
and listening while the chip moved the alarm to the time you wanted to get up.
Then there was the question of finding the right clothes in the closet and
working out a personal label system.

During this
labeling process, Brenden was forced to begin learning Braille. It was soon
obvious to him that this was a skill that would take a long time to perfect.
Teaching your fingers to distinguish the Frenchman Louis Braille's touch code
for letters and numbers was a slow, arduous process that carried with it
incredible levels of frustration.

Consequently,
most of the students either used stick-on dots placed in patterns that could be
recognized by touch with an individual system of identification chosen by the
students themselves, or by using a marvelous machine that was voice-actuated,
called a talking color identifier.

This terrific
little device was able to tell the listener the color of the garment. Brenden,
not a particularly creative dresser, was pleased to be able to buy one of these
units and organize his clothes in the appropriate color combinations. He
learned to hang outfits together so that after a few weeks his closet was
organized, and he was doing surprisingly well with his clothes.

Though he may
have been dressed okay, his kitchen skills were woefully lacking. One of his
most embarrassing moments occurred the first time he attempted to pour his own
milk and forgot to turn the glass right-side-up, flooding the table and causing
a river of white to flow onto the laps of two other students.

The teachers
believed that the best way for blind people to cook was to combine the use of
microwave ovens with some of the small, easy-to-handle electric grills that
cooked food on both sides at the same time. Brenden worked on a grill plugged
on television by heavyweight boxer George Foreman, and he was pleased to learn
that he could easily cook foods such as chicken or fish.

The center
also used specialized microwaves. Brenden discovered that the best voice
processor was one made by the Hamilton Beach Company. The voice not only took
you through all the various settings of the oven but also kept you aware of the
time in one-minute increments. So now he could bake a potato with his chicken
or fish.

As the days
went by, he had to admit to a certain feeling of accomplishment in learning to
perform these seemingly basic domestic tasks, but he still felt inept and
disabled.

One of the
women in his class had a husband and four children, and she had always loved to
cook. She figured out a method for placing dots around the dial of a regular
oven that would allow her to set the appropriate temperature and prepare her
own Thanksgiving turkey. He didn't think he'd ever be doing that, but he did
agree that her effort was impressive.

From the time
Brenden was a little boy, he loved coffee. He didn't know why, but he just
loved it, and as an adult, his day could not begin without it. He was happy to
find that once again Hamilton Beach had made a coffeepot that allowed you to
place your cup under a spout, activating the pouring process and eliminating a
blind person's propensity for spilling.

There was
also another voice-actuated device called a liquid indicator, shaped like a
probe. When you placed it in a bowl, glass, or cup, it beeped as liquid was
poured at one pitch and then beeped again in a higher tone when it reached the
desired level.

There were a
lot of fun toys, Brenden thought, but they were valuable only if you wanted to
work hard and learn to use them. And he figured that he was only here to check
them out for a little while; he wouldn't be around long enough for it ever to
matter. The exception was computer technology, something Brenden had always
been fond of, dating back to his love of video games.

He already
owned a powerful laptop and was surprised at the sophisticated programs that
were available on both Freedom Scientific's JAWS and Human Ware's Window-Eyes.
As he typed, a voice told him exactly what he input, and there was a verbal
spell checker available to make sure he got it right.

Along with
this remarkable software, Freedom Scientific manufactured a terrific reader
that allowed him to read anything by first scanning it and then reading it back
in any one of over a hundred voices. He chose a guy named Perfect Paul, who
sounded a lot like a good sports announcer, and the freedom to read a
newspaper, magazine, or book was the only part of rehab that really brought a
smile to his face.

Even more
remarkable was the technology made by a company called Sendero Group. These
amazing scientists created voice-actuated GPS units that could be either worn
on the wrist or carried in the palm of your hand. And, exactly like the units
found in anyone's automobile, this GPS technology made it possible for a blind
person to know where he was at any given moment and program an accurate route.

In a weak
moment, he told Charlie, "Some of this stuff is really pretty special.
It's almost like being sighted." And then he added, "Almost."

Even though the science
was
truly
remarkable, Brenden was still blind, and he knew life would never be the same.
Science could not overcome the despondency of a young man broken in spirit and
angry at his circumstances.

Lying in bed
night after night, unable to sleep, Brenden lived in the memories of what once
had been. He could still picture the touchdown passes he had thrown to Charlie
and the home runs he had hit out of the park in Little League. He tried to
re-create the feeling of skiing downhill in Colorado powder, the snow flying up
over his shoulders, and the speed taking him right to the edge of danger. And
then there were the memories of climbing, climbing high above the timberline
with the sun so remarkably bright against the clearest of blue skies. He remembered
his feeling of high accomplishment when he received his diploma at medical
school and began the work he had dreamed of all his life. Worst of all, he
pictured Lindsey's face and cried into his pillow, knowing he would never see
it again.

No matter
what guys like Barnes said or how many parlor trick skills he learned in rehab,
the reality was that the man who had been Brenden McCarthy was gone, now
replaced by a blind man who felt sorry for himself and lacked the will to go
on.

He railed at
God for cheating him of his sight. What had he done to earn this punishment?
Who had he hurt so badly that he now had to live with this curse? Was there
some mystery he was to understand and accept?

None of it
made any sense to him, and though he grudgingly admitted that some of what he
was learning was interesting, he had no hope that his future could ever be as
meaningful as it would have been had his vision remained 20/20.

After a particularly
difficult day
in class, he came home to spend the weekend with his mother and Gus. It was the
week of Halloween, and the air had taken on the first cold signature of winter.
Brenden shivered in his light windbreaker as he tapped his way across the patio
to the back door.

Before he
could get there, Gus whizzed around the corner and dropped a tennis ball at his
feet. Brenden bent to pick it up, but it rolled away, forcing the dog to grab
it and try again. The second time, Brenden still couldn't find it on the
ground, so the next time, Gus decided that he had to place the object right in
his young friend's hand.