“If you don't get some rest, you're going to end up dead from a heart attack or something. Look, we both know that you really don't have to work these hours anymore.” When I exhaled, I tried to cover the phone receiver. “It's shutdown. You know what it's like when it's shutdown. Repairs to the plant have to get done in a short amount of time. Time's money around here. When the plant's not running, nobody's making money, and when nobody's making money, nobody's happy.”
When Heather sighed, she didn't bother to try to hide it.
Her breath came through the phone line heavy and aggravated. I pictured her running her hands through the brunette corkscrew curls that bounced around her face and twirling the phone cord tighter around her wrist. “Whatever . . . just promise me that you'll get some rest. A little rest . . . a catnap . . . okay? I worry about you.”
Shuffling through the soiled and wrinkled blueprints that draped over the metal desk, I accepted her plea without any resistance. We'd known each other for half of our forty-one years, but there was also so much she couldn't understand.
Before I hung up the phone, the trailer door swung open. A short young man with deep-set eyes, whose name was long lost among the sea of W-2 forms stacked on a card table next to my desk, motioned with his chin toward the plant yard outside. “We got a break to the rupture disk up on tower fourteen.”
“You think you can handle changing it?” I asked and reached for the hard hat that hung on a rack behind the file cabinet. If only Heather was still on the phone, she could hear for herself why I had to stay at the job site.
The young man nodded. “Oh, yeah. I just need some backup. The thing is, Kyle didn't show up tonight . . . something about a funeral . . .”
“Yeah, I know all about Kyle,” I said, never looking to gauge the young man's reaction.
Outside in the plant yard, rusted pipes and sparks from welding machines littered the concrete floor as men carrying buckets of tools made their way past us. Beyond the plant gates, the interstate hummed with traffic. Bright light from the plant spotlights rained down on us as though we were celebrities at a fancy black-tie event. But the only black ties were those made of grease and dirt, woven permanently into the shirts of the men and women who kept a steady stream of money flowing for the mill owners.
Climbing the ladder to the sixty-foot tower, I watched as the boy who was trying to be a man paused halfway up. “You okay up there?” I yelled.
He never looked back before climbing another few feet. It would be a cat-and-mouse game that continued for the length of our journey. If the millwright had shown up for work, I wouldn't be out here. The thought kept playing in my mind, stirring up the anger that caused me to climb faster until I was inches from the young man and the hardened clay that lined the soles of his work boots. “Am I fixing to have to light a match under you? I don't want to be up here till sunrise.”
At the top of the tower, the crisp, early-March wind clipped against my face, and off in the distance, the high-rise buildings of downtown Atlanta sparkled. Hissing steam rose from the dome-shaped tower that held the disk. I motioned for the young assistant to put the tools on the floor of the catwalk.
If it hadn't been for the risk of releasing chlorine dioxide into the plant, I most likely would have told him to save the job for the morning crew. Turning to ask for the wrench, I found the young assistant holding on to the rail of the catwalk that circled the tower. Sweat trickled down the side of his stubbled face, which was growing paler by the second. “You gonna make it?” I called out.
He never looked away from the top of the tower that loomed ten more feet above us. At first he nodded and then shook his head. “The stairs got to me. I'm feeling . . . something's not right with my stomach.”
Fishing through the box of tools he managed to place on the catwalk floor, I looked down at workers the size of ants. They scurried about the plant just like it was their own personal anthill. “You're not scared of heights, now, are you?” I yelled to the young man.
“No . . . but Kyle usually takes care of this.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, Kyle ain't here tonight.” Part of me wanted to chew him out for not telling me in the first place that he was too yellow-bellied to do the job, but the other part of me wanted to laugh. “I tell you what,” I said, strapping the gas mask around my neck. “You stand over there, glued to that rail, and when I lean down and hand you the old disk, you just lean out and hand me the new one. Sound like a plan?” The entire moment summed up my basic philosophy on life: if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
As I climbed up the ten-foot ladder, the tower hissed like it was ready for a fight. I paused long enough to look out across the rows of pipes that created the plant's skyline. The bright spotlights overpowered the darkness, and even from a respectable distance, the heat from the lights singed my neck as good as any tanning bed that my twelve-year-old daughter argues that she is old enough to visit.
With the mask now in place and the rust-stained wrench in hand, I went to work. Three bolts came off of the old, cracked disk with ease. Then something scratched against my leg, throwing me off balance. My breath was heavy and echoed against the vinyl mask that fogged with each word I yelled. “Wait a minute. I'm still trying to get the bolt off of this one. Give me the new one when I motion for you.” The assistant was reaching upward, holding the disk as if it was a gift for his daddy. His face contorted in either strain or confusion, he stared up at me and lifted the replacement disk even higher.
When I turned back to the stubborn bolt, the white beam shining from the spotlight across the way blinded my vision. For a second I only saw black and then hazy shapes of gray. Out of instinct or fear, I reached out, trying to find the bolt with the wrench. Heat from the disk scalded the tips of my gloved fingers as I struggled to make out the shape of the bolt. “Got it!” I yelled, but the sound never left the inside of the mask.
The thrill of the catch would be the last thing I remembered that night. When I yanked the bolt free with the wrench, my foot slipped from the ladder and the wrench fell faster than I did. No childhood scenes flashed before my eyes. There were only sounds. Yells from the young assistant, clanging from the scattered tools on the catwalk, and the hissing of the tower above meâsounds that rang in my ears until the pain made me scream out.
When I hit the safety rail on the catwalk chest-first, I flipped before landing on the platform floor. My body twisted with pain until breathing became the hardest job I'd ever faced. Even the ammonia scent of the paper mill, that smell of money, couldn't wake me from the darkness that settled over me.
“You're going to be okay. Everything's okay now.” My wife repeated the words so many times that at first I thought they were lyrics to a song I'd heard long ago but had since forgotten. Her words mingled with the sound of the electrical pump that forced my lungs to operate. The first thing I felt was the soreness in my throat, a pain that caused me to think someone had scraped the inside of my mouth with a razor blade. When I opened my eyes, I fought a burning sting until I was finally able to focus and find her.
Standing over me, Heather's face seemed to glow. Her dark eyes were as wild as they had been when we used to sit in the back of my truck and count the stars that held court over her daddy's fishing pond. The bright light behind her head caused her olive skin to seem like it had been painted with milk. Curls of her hair fell free from the clip that was holding it together. She smiled as a tear fell from her eye to my face. “Don't you do that again. Don't you scare me that way,” she whispered and made a weak attempt to laugh.
A nurse in a white jacket appeared from behind a curtain, and I saw a beige-colored machine attached to the tube that snaked into my mouth. The woman smiled and nodded at Heather. “He's coming around the bend now.”
My words were slow in forming and fought against the tube that filled my throat. Heather placed her hand lightly against my arm. “You were in a fall at the mill,” she said in a slow, steady pace. “You had blood in your lungs. Your whole right side was just solid-white on the X-ray. They had to go in and put in a chest tube . . . but don't worry about all that now. You just rest. Don't try to talk. Just rest. There will be plenty of time for talking.”
I tried to lift my hand to brush the hair from the side of her face. It was my wife's face that I wanted to see now more than ever. But the darkness wouldn't let me.
Lucky, survivor, blessed
âthese were just a few of the words that people used to describe my experience. A parade of doctors offered words like
tamponade
and other hogwash-sounding terms to describe what had happened to me. “Blood on the lungs” remained the easiest way to understand how close I'd come to cheating death. A few more minutes of waiting for the paramedics, and most likely I'd have drowned in my own blood.
When I came off the ventilator three days later, I was moved to a private room. A nurse with pink lipstick painted over thin lips delivered cards from family back in my hometown of Choctaw, Georgia. Here, though, only the teachers who worked with Heatherâand one next-door neighborâtook notice of my accident. That's when I started realizing how few people in this big city knew me.
My grandmother, Grand Vestal, sent a card covered in wildflowers that she had painted herself, using the flowers that grew in her pasture as inspiration. She signed the card from both her and my father. Even though my father was her son-in-law, she took care of the emotional side of his business just like my mother always had.
“I couldn't get satisfied until I heard your voice,” my grandmother said through the phone that Heather held up to my ear. Her words hazed my mind until all I could picture were the gray braided pigtails that hung low around her shoulders and the way her earth-stained face would tighten whenever she was concerned. My grandmother was the keeper of my childhood memories, of days spent learning how to reap food from the soil that had first belonged to her Creek Indian people.
“Don't worry about me, Grand Vestal. I'm okay, really,” I said, trying to sound as lighthearted as possible. But something wouldn't let me believe that everything would be okay. Carefree days at my grandmother's were tucked too far away in the back of my mind. Time and responsibilities had shoved them inside a vault whose combination I no longer seemed to know. Now the projects that I'd left behind at the paper mill hindered me as much as the bandages around my chest.
Jay Beckett and the rest of the gang from the construction company sent over a fruit basket that filled every inch of the portable tray table. “We can't have this now,” the pink-lipsticked nurse said as she moved the basket from where the delivery person had placed it, clucking her tongue like a disapproving mother hen. “We need to keep gifts off of this table. We have to keep a place for our meals, don't we?” By the second day, her use of the word
we
wore my nerves down to the quick.
But the day that I was able to sit up in bed, the real gift that I'd been waiting for arrived. My daughter, Malley, stood in front of Heather with her arms folded across her stomach, only moving them once to push the auburn hair from her eyes. Her eyes were as green as my own, and every time I looked into them, I saw the best part of me. Heather nudged her forward slightly, but it was only when I reached out my arm to Malley that she locked ahold of me until my chest ached. I could only imagine what it must have been like for my twelve-year-old baby to toy with the idea of losing her daddy. Holding her and feeling the beat of her heart against my own, I could only relate by knowing how painful it was to watch my own mama die of pancreatic cancer two years before. I guess whether you're twelve or thirty-nine, the pain and fear that come with loss sting just the same.
When my family doctor came in carrying my ever-growing medical file, Malley was sitting in the chair beside me. We'd been playing a match on the new electronic tennis game that she had bought. A man no older than myself, the doctor had a soul better suited for a man my father's age. His smile was slanted and his eyes tired.
“When am I going to be able to check out?” I asked. “Did you know that there are 427 specks on that ceiling tile? Now, that shows you how bad this place is wearing on me.” The doctor rubbed his chin and looked at Heather. “He's back kicking, I see.”
Heather laughed and winked at Malley. “Now you see why we want him to stay in here as long as possible.”
It hurt when I laughed, so I held it in and felt the blood rush to my face. Malley laughed harder and pointed at me. “Look at him. He's getting bashful.”
As soon as the laughter faded, the doctor rose up on his toes and coughed. “No, we'll have you out of here in no time. First I want you to have another X-ray. You know, to make sure you're all clear of the blood. For once it'll be a relief just to see three cracked ribs.”
Relief never came. The same doctor now stood over me, pointing to the new X-rays on the lighted screen behind my hospital bed. I could only hear his words and watch Heather's reaction as she gripped her necklace tighter. “It's just happenstance that we found it,” the doctor said. A single white spot remained on the screen.
“A smudge,” I first suggested, but all Heather did was look down and offer a smile as tight as the nurse who cared for me. Later I studied the X-rays on my own and gazed at the foreign white object on the lung pocket outlined before me. While the doctor talked of specialists and second opinions, I stared at the spot, trying to will it away, to force the smudge from the screen and away from my life.
This isn't me, I kept thinking. During hunting season I can outrace a fox and stay squatting in a tree stand for hours on end without even a single muscle cramping. I can climb sixty-foot towers at work and never lose my breath. The smudge on the black celluloid had to be nothing more than somebody's fingerprint. A mistake most likely caused when the X-ray was processed. “Sugar Boy, just dismiss it from your mind with a good old belly laugh,” I heard my grandmother call out from the brightest corners of my mind. Her mind-over-matter techniques had been freely dispensed throughout the years. Time and time again her wisdom reigned over any advice I'd ever gotten from a licensed doctor. Even so, my mind couldn't talk my fingers out of lightly touching the thick bandages, the place of shelter for the white smudge that they claimed lived within me. I fought the image of the smudge setting up camp inside my lung. Shooing away the feeling of depression, I forced myself to follow my grandmother's prescription.