The "Dear
Frances" Letter
Excerpts from Chapter 1
He lay prone on the
stretcher, face down. The white sheet that covered him from the waist made
his bare shoulders look big and strong. Soft blond hair framed a pair of sea
blue eyes that were twinkling at me. He was 21 or 22, I guessed, and about
six feet tall.
The stretcher was raised to a level for him to make eye contact with
visitors when they entered the door. A pillow was placed under his chest,
extending out to allow a soft surface for his elbows when he was propped up.
I noticed both were bandaged tightly with what appeared to be thick layers
of gauze with an ace bandage wrapped around them. I would learn later, that
this was to prevent pressure sores.
“So what do you want?” he
asked.
“A friend told me about you and I just dropped by to get acquainted,” I
explained, taken aback by his abruptness. “I’m Dottie Brosch, the Director
of a Recreation Program for the physically challenged here in Tampa, and I
wanted to give you a personal invitation to join with us every Monday night
from seven to nine. We’re going to have a varied program to meet the
interest and abilities of all types of people. I thought you might enjoy
it.”
“Humph,” he snarled, as he
looked at me with disgust. “And just how do you think I could join you? In
case you haven’t noticed I am paralyzed. I broke my neck a few years ago in
a diving accident,” he explained. “It happened in 1949 when I went to a
Sunday school picnic. Wish I had never gone with them to that lake
afterwards.”
I looked at him with
compassion and dismay. Perhaps he was right I thought, as I wondered what
activity I might be able to provide for people like him who were totally
paralyzed and could not even pick up something with their hands.
He seemed to be reading my
mind. “But don’t waste your pity on me. I can do a lot more than meets the
eye.
“It must be awful to lie
in bed all the time and to not be able to move. I can’t begin to
imagine...”
“Don’t try,” he
interrupted, “’cause I do move.”
“I don’t understand.”
“See that tree out there?
When the wind blows the limbs and leaves I move with them.”
I looked across the room,
through the door of the next room and in the distance I saw the limbs of the
tree to which he had referred.
His eyes took
on a dreamy look as he continued. “You’d be surprised at the things I can
dream up when the wheels in my head start turning. Are you familiar with
the big high bridge they are building across Tampa Bay? I read about it in
the newspapers and watched on TV as it was being built. I became obsessed
with a desire to see it in person. But I learned long ago that some things
are out of reach for quads (Bob’s shortened use of the word) so I developed
some techniques all of my own; one of those tools is imagination. Now I
just hop on the back of a bird flying by and tell it where to take me. This
often works for me; I just imagine that it happens, as silly as it may sound
to you.”
“Silly!” I exclaimed. “What
wonderful brain power you have. That is absolutely grand. Anyone who can
dream up solutions to their problems like that has a leg up on many others
who have two good arms and two workable legs. Given a choice, I would
settle for your brain power any day of the week.”
“Well, people who don’t
dream might just as well be dead,” he went on with a big grin breaking
across his face. “Sometime I will tell you of my really big dream. It
concerns my ambition. I have it all figured out as to what I want to do
with the little bit of time I have left on this earth. You may not know this
but I have all ready outlived what the doctors had expected from me. Quads
don’t have a long life expectancy, you know.”
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