Katherine

 Katherine



    When Thomas Carter came on to her, Katherine felt something snap.  She had been willing to put up with a certain amount of his nonsense.  That was what women who wanted to get ahead did.  She had allowed him to make demeaning jokes in front of the clients, she had allowed him to dictate her style of dress for business meetings, she had even tolerated his instance on calling her "babe" over the intercom.  But when he convinced her to cancel a dinner date with Michael so that she could work late on a project and then, rather than showing up with the stack of paperwork he had promised, showed up with carry-out Chinese and a dimwitted line about the romance of the empty office, she actually felt something go "snap" deep inside her skull.

    She pressed the "parking" button seventeen times on the way down to the car port.

    She brushed past the parking guard, not even offering him her usual, tight-lipped smile in return for his lewd suggestion.  She felt the nylon of her pantyhose between her tense thighs and fought back the sense of sexiness, holding onto her anger.

    She dialed the car phone as she pulled her whale-grey porsche out of her reserved spot.  As soon as she cleared the garage door, she pressed the send button.  Michael's warm voice on the line offered comfort.

    "Hey, Baby."  She said.  "Is it too late to say we're back on?"  It slipped her mind that she was crossing town at six oh three rather than five thirty-eight.

    "Then can you meet me at my place?  I'll be there in..."  She checked her watch but did not really look at the time.  "...about five minutes."

    Because it was never down when she drove home at five thirty-eight, it did not occur to her to check for the railroad gate.

    "All right.  I'll see you--  CHRIST!!!"

    She managed to duck beneath the wooden bar as it broke off against the frame of her car, shattering the windshield.  The car came to a crashing, thumping halt.  She almost had her bearings when the shriek of a train whistle snapped her focus to the left.  The enormous weight of a locomotive sheared through the front of her car.

    She watched it go past with the distant perspective of adrenalin and shock.  The ruined Porsche seemed to vibrate and whine as car after car rumbled past, too close and too swift for her to focus properly but, somehow, so slowly and so far away as to represent no danger.

    The train rolled away, dopplering into the distance.

    She grabbed the phone with her left hand.  Michael's voice came back to her, frantic and frightened.

    "Yeah,"  she told him.  "I think I'm okay.  The car's totalled, though.  And I may have broken--"  She looked down to check her legs.  She began to form a scream.  She reached forward with her right hand...  her right hand...  where was...  "where is...?"  she said.  She heard Michael asking her questions, his voice was very far away.  Where was she, he wanted to know.  What had happened?  "I can't..."  she said.  Then, "I think I need an ambulance."  He was still asking questions.  Why didn't he understand?  Hadn't he just seen what had happened.  She said, "I have to find my right hand."

    She hung up.  She leaned toward the passenger's seat to find her right hand and everything went very, very dark.



    Katherine enjoyed the warm moments of endsleep, realizing it was a luxury in which she had not indulged since childhood.  The fragments of warm dream swirled about her filled with illusory urgency and, dimly aware that they were dreams, she was able to savor them for the moment, knowing they were unreal.

    She was certain she had heard no alarm.  She had grown accustomed to waking with a start, jolted from the depths of sleep always a few minutes too early, always feeling as though she was running late.  This morning, though, she had begun coming around before the beep.  She swam lazily toward consciousness.

    She would reach the distant light of the waking world soon enough.  She would get up and shower.  Maybe, if she still had extra time before her alarm she would use it to spend more minutes under the warm flow before rushing out to the garage, sliding into her dear little car.

    The car.  She'd crashed the car.  Genuine urgency overflowed the images of her dreams.  She'd crashed the car.  She was bleeding to death and she was lazing about in happy dreams.  She knew she had to wake up.

    She opened the car door, stepped out and realized she was still wearing her dream body.  She struggled with the levels of reality.  She tried to feel the cool wind, the chill of the evening, the warmth of her blood.  She decided that if she got back into the car she could bring her dream body into the same space as her waking body and take control that way.   She had trouble getting a grip on the door handle with her right hand, so she used her left.

    The metal felt odd, soft.  sheets! she thought.  Just a dream.

    That helped.  She twisted her fingers against the fabric.  It seemed stiff.  Starchier than it should be, almost like denim.  Perhaps she was on the couch.  Perhaps she'd drifted off wearing her jacket.  She attempted to adjust her position, to free herself of the jacket.  She snapped to wakefulness.

    "You're awake," Michael said.  He reached out and took her left hand.  He pressed it between both of his own.  "I was worried."

    "Mmm."  She said, the fragments of her dream melting away like shattered ice.  "How long was I out?"

    "Eight hours of surgery," he told her, "Then another six."

    Surgery.  Her surroundings shifted into focus.  "I'm in a hospital."

    Michael didn't respond.  He worked his jaw uncomfortably.  Katherine attempted to bring her other hand into play to comfort him.  Sharp pain darted from her shoulder to her fingertips.   She looked to her right as the memory rushed back to her.  She looked at where she felt the pain in her fingertips.

    The bandaged lump just below her right elbow hung in the air, an abstraction of a body part, reaching uselessely toward Michael.  A bit of blood, rust-colored and drying spotted the end of the clean white bandage.  "I--"  she said.  Then,  "Um--  I--"  She had no right hand.   It was difficult to grasp.

    She felt dizzy.  She felt nauseated.  She said, "I think I need to get to the bathroom."

    "I'll get you a nurse," Michael offered.

    "Just help me stand up, would you?"

    "I'll just--  I'll get you a nurse."  He backed out of the room fumbling awkwardly with the door handle.

    God damnit.  That was men for you.  When he had a sniffle he got her to run around helping him with everything.  Now, when she needed a hand...  she chuckled internally even as she winced at the thought.

    She tried to kick aside the sheets.  She couldn't seem to get proper traction.  Every movement sent shocks of pain through her legs.  They seemed to be very warm and the sheets far heavier than they should be.  casts. she figured.  I'm really gonna be an invalid for a while.

    She used her left hand and a great deal of effort to drag herself back to the headboard.  What was taking the damned nurse so long?  She didn't want to throw up in bed.  She was certain of that.  She grasped the railing at the head of the bed and pulled herself up to a sitting position.  She kept her eyes locked on the ceiling.  If she looked down and saw her arm again she was certain she would vomit --  her  --  what used to be her arm.  Used to be.

    She sat that way for what seemed hours, staring at the ceiling, slowing her breathing, preparing for the next step.

    She would pull aside the sheets in one move.  Then she would look down and see how heavy the casts were.  She'd figure a way to get down to the floor and slide herself over to the little private bathroom.

    Here we go, she thought to herself.  Then, one, two, three!

    She pulled aside the sheet and looked down.  Oh, god. she thought,  Oh, god no.

    There were no casts.  There were no mangled legs.  Just below her thighs the white hospital gown fell flat against the bottom sheet.  With trembling fingers she pulled up the hem of the gown.  The stump of her right arm twitched painfully in an automatic attempt to assist.

    The flimsy fabric slid back to reveal two more small round lumps of bound bandages.  She touched them gently with her left hand, probing the pain that seemed to reach her toes.  She rubbed the flat of her palm on the end of her right arm.  She tried to make sense of what she was seeing, what she was feeling.

    A nurse with thick blond hair entered the room.  She had a perfect body, the nurse.  All the original parts in all the original places.  Katherine found, though she didn't know why, that she hated the nurse at once.

    "Are you aware you're muttering?"

    "Bathroom," she managed to say around the pre-vomit saliva.

    "Here you go," the nurse said brightly.  She handed Katherine a bedpan.

    "No.  Bathroom.  I'm gonna--" she doubled over the bedpan, heaving.



    People came and went for a few days but pain killers and shock made them all seem quite distant as though they were all speaking through the wrong end of the binoculars.  A doctor told her the details of her surgery and told her she was lucky.  She noticed that he had difficulty looking directly at her but she didn't much care.  She wasn't really interested in what he was saying.

    An unattractive woman in her late fifties came in one afternoon.  She had no legs and she rode a wheel chair into the room to give a not-too-encouraging lecture about all the things she had found she could still do.  Even in her half-listening state Katherine was aware that most of the abilities of which the woman spoke required two hands, as did the operation of her chair.

    A man who handled her roughly, like a tailor who hates his work, informed her that, from what he could tell at this point, "the diminutive nature of the lower stumps would obviate the possibility of prosthetic replacement."  He said he'd get her fitted for an arm by the time she was ready for rehab.  He instructed her to begin massaging the stump daily and, as soon as the doctor said it was okay, to begin excercising the joint.

    She hadn't needed that word of advice.  It seemed all she could do was massage her stumps.  She flicked from one TV channel to another, not really watching anything and whenever she reached for the remote she realized that her hand had been rubbing at the tender knobs of flesh, kneading the confused nerves.  

    Michael was the only one who seemed to be able to look at her.  He came in every day to see her.  He brought her insurance forms and talked her through them.  He helped her sign her name with her awkward left hand.

    She napped frequently.  Often when she awoke he was there.

    On the morning that she had been told she would be moved to rehab, he was there.  She awoke at six a.m. and saw him through the slits of her waking eyes.  She watched him for a moment before admitting she was awake.  She watched him watching her, a mystery novel in his left hand ignored.  Then she stirred and he pretended to be reading.  

    "Good morning," she said.

    "How you feeling?"  He asked.

    "Scared," she told him.  She'd been scared, she realized, since the moment she'd hit the crossing gate.  She hadn't had a moment's respite.

    He studied her with eyes she feared were the eyes of a man who's about to do something for which he'll feel guilty later.  She felt ugly.  She found herself binding and unbinding the rounded nub of her  arm in the hem of her sleeve as though but curling a bit of fabric around it she might hide the amputation.  Her left hand funbled with the sheet trying to make it fall less obviously over the short lumps of her thighs.

    He opened his mouth.  He closed it again.

    "It's okay.  I understand."

    "No you don't," he told her.

    "I do.  I give you my permission, Michael.  You can go.  We're not married.  We haven't made any life commitments.  You didn't sign on for this."

    Again, Michael seemed unable to make words.  He reached toward her.  He seemed to be reaching not for her hand or to stroke her hair but to touch the bandaged stump of her arm.  He hesitated.  He withdrew his hand.  "I should have told you...  I couldn't bring myself to tell you and now..."

    This wasn't what she'd expected.  He seemed about to cry and not at all about to leave her.  She decided it was best to wait him out.  After a moment he said, "Katherine, I'm scared too.  I'm--  I love you.  I know I've said it before but it's really true and now--  you're--  I think we're destined to be together, Katherine.  I think--  I want you to--"

    His stammering monologue broke off sharply as the perfect blond nurse burst into the room.  "Mr. Cartright,  I thought I told you not to come in here until after eight o'clock."

    "I needed to talk about something."

    Katherine waved her away.  "Give us another minute, would you?"

    "We have to get those bandages off of you and wheel you down to rehab.  Get you learning how to take care of yourself."

    "This'll just be a minute."  She heard the low threat in her own voice and savored the awkward moment of decision making it forced upon the nurse.  She left them alone.

    When the door closed there was a moment of silence.  Katherine said, "What should you have told me?"

    "Please don't hate me." He muttered.  Then, moving to her and holding her he repeated the plea.

    His warm, trembling hands felt grand against her back, reassuring.  She tried to offer him the same comfort but her right arm gained no purchase.  "I'm sorry.  I know I must be hard to look at now.  I can't even hold you properly."

    "No!"   He cried, burying his face in her shoulder.  "That's just it.  It's good.  It's better.  I--  This turns me on, Katherine.  More than anything.  I could never tell anyone.  Anyone.  It was just too--"

    "Wait,"  she said.  "What turns you on?  The hospital?  What?"

    "No, no, no.  This.  You.  The--  Ever since I was a kid it's the only thing that really excited me ever.  I saw--  in kindergarten there was a girl in the class across the hall who only had one leg.  I used to pray at night that both my teacher and hers would leave the doors open so that I could watch her.  I remember the way her skirt swayed empty under her chair when she was coloring.  It was--  it's all I've ever wanted in a woman."

    "A missing leg?  Michael?   Is that what you're telling me turns you on?"

    "All that light bondage?  That's what I was fantasizing when I had you tied up like that.  And now--  this is so real.  And I don't have to figure out whether that's the only reason I'm attracted to you because I already loved you before it happened.  Don't you see?  In an odd way, things couldn't have worked out better."

    Katherine felt suddenly uncomfortable.  She felt her jaw tighten.  "You imagined this?  You fantasized about it?"

    "I didn't make this happen, Katherine.  I don't think the power of my subconscious could have made you drive through the--"

    "I wasn't saying that, Mike.  I just.  I'm a little wierded out by it.  What is it exactly that turns you on about this?  I mean--  I see how the interns are when they come in here.  And the doctors even.  They either make direct eye contact so their eyes never drift or they never look at me at all."

    "All I want to do is look at you, study you, explore the newness of your design.  It all turns me on, My love.  The shape of you.  The marvelous curve and twitch of your little arm stump.  The way you have to wriggle just to sit up in bed.  It's killing me with excitement.  I want to make love to you every time you start to do something with your right hand and then realize it isn't there.  I want to feel the roundness of you against me.  Katherine--  it's making me nuts."  He backed away from the bed and returned to his chair.  "I'm sorry.  I know you have a lot to deal with right now and this is sort of strange."

    She couldn't think of anything to say.  Her right arm tried to withdraw into its sleeve.  She saw Michael shiver at the movement.  She did it again to see if it would have the same effect.  It did.  She enjoyed that.  She allowed herself a coy smile.

    "Does this mean you don't hate me?"

    She shrugged, still smiling.

    "Cause I really want to marry you."

    "Hmm." she said.  "So this really gets to you, huh?"  She used her left hand to roll up her right sleeve fully exposing the shortened limb.  She made the elbow joint writhe for his pleasure.  She watched him trying to overcome the dryness in his mouth.  "So, you'd probably just lose your mind completely if I did this:"  She did something she'd been working on in private for the past two days.  With great effort she stood on the bed on the tips of her stumps, her hand offering a third grounding point for balance.  With her right arm wagging uselessly she crawled the length of the bed and sat at the edge letting her little leg nubs hang over the edge of the mattress.  She let her fingers brush gently over the exposed bandages and savored the effect it had on him.

    He nodded meekly.

    She reached out and rang for the nurse.  The blond woman entered, winter white and fully starched.  "Alright, Mr.  Cartright.  I think we'd like some privacy for this."  She moved to place herself between him and Katherine.

    "No,"  Katherine told her.  "Michael and I are going to be married."

    "Congratulations," the nurse said unenthusiatically.

    Katherine went on.  "I think he should be allowed to stay if he wants and watch you unwrap my stumps."

    The nurse shrugged and began clipping away the bandage on her arm.

    From behind her Michael smiled at Katherine and mouthed the words "thank you."

    As the nurse peeled away the bandage to expose the round pink nub with its dramatic closure scar, Katherine watched his eyes widen.  For the first time in what seemed a year, she found she was smiling.