Rainbow Sherbet

I remember the day I got my casts off. I was in a room with another little girl who’d had the same surgery. Her name was Amber, and she drove me absolutely frothing mad.

Amber was a few years younger than me, five maybe. Her particular bent of Cerebral Palsy had affected the speech center of her brain, so she couldn’t talk at all – but being mute did not make her one bit less annoying. For some reason, Amber took one look at me and decided I was the greatest person on the planet. But because she couldn’t tell me outright that she thought I was cool, she settled for copying everything I did: when I laid down, Amber laid down. When I sat up, Amber sat up. When I got a drink, Amber wanted one too. I didn’t quite understand that she was trying to be friends. I thought she was doing it just to be a pest, like Matt did when we quarreled – mimicking me to tick me off. It worked. I crossed my eyes, stuck out my tongue, and pulled on my ears – and so did Amber. I gave up. We were assigned separate rooms after a few days, and I was so grateful it wasn’t even funny. I think I said, “Oh, thank God she’s gone.” My mother pretended to scold me, but she was laughing behind her hand.

Getting Spica casts removed is scary business. It involves a plaster saw, and plaster saws are horrifying. They’re huge. They’re loud. They’re sharp. A plaster saw is the last thing on Earth a kid wants anywhere near important body parts like legs. I’d encountered them at least a few times before – the molds for my leg braces, after being allowed to set, were taken off with a plaster saw – but just because I knew what was going on didn’t mean I thought I was going to live through it. No matter how many times in my life someone came at me with a plaster saw, I was always convinced they were going to screw up and amputate my legs.

The saw screamed. Plaster dust flew into the air. I shut my eyes tight – if my legs were getting ready to part from my body, I did not want to watch. When the sawing was over, two nurses grabbed the edges of the plaster and pulled. There was a sound like a loaf of crusty bread being broken in half, only magnified. Then the cool air touched my legs for the first time in ages.

The sensation was exquisite. Every nerve ending had been made new by confinement; the touch of air was like a thousand gentle fingers stroking my skin. I exhaled deeply with the relief of no more itching, no more heat, no more sweat trapped under the plaster. Carefully, slowly, the nurses eased the spent casings off my legs. I had my eyes closed in bliss, but I opened them again before the sheet could be pulled over me. I looked down at my legs, eager to see the back-and-better-than-ever version I had been waiting on for so long. What I saw instead scared the sense right out of me.

My first thought was that someone, somewhere, had seriously messed up. My legs. My legs were wrong. They weren’t legs anymore, just little shriveled white things hanging off my hips like over-watered roots. I didn’t recognize them. They didn’t belong to me. They’d lied to me after all – my mother, all those nurses. They did so take away my legs! They did!

I burst into tears. I was a mutant. An alien. I had been made to suffer, and I’d been robbed for all my trouble. My mother didn’t understand. She was annoyed – after all the whining I’d done about the casts, she expected me to be overjoyed to have them off. But she had neglected to explain to me what I’d find under them when they were gone. I had no idea what atrophy was. I was only a child. I thought the legs that came out of the casts would be the same ones that had disappeared beneath them, and when I didn’t see the tanned, wiry things I had come to identify as mine, I was frightened and repulsed. I wept.

It was the nurse who knew what was up. Thank heavens for pediatric nurses: they’re a special breed. They know children like other children know children, only better. They spend their days soothing sick kids, broken kids, dying kids – terrified kids – and the toll it must take never seems to show on them. They are confidantes and comfort-keepers. A good pediatric nurse always knows what to say, somehow.

“Hey,” said the nurse in charge of my right leg. “Chin up, kiddo. I know it’s scary, but you know what? I think you’re brave. You didn’t cry at all when they turned on the saw, and those things make me want to cry.”

I sniffled. Me, brave? No way.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. And I hear them every day! Can you imagine that?”

I shook my head. Nope.

“Tell you what. It’s gonna be awhile before your legs are better, but that’s why you’re here with us. We see this all the time. We know how to help. In the meantime, brave girls like you get all the rainbow sherbet they can eat. Would you like some?”

I nodded vigorously. Duh. Of course I wanted sherbet. Was that even allowed to be a question?

The nurse nodded to her colleague and whisked out the door. “Don’t get up and run away, now,” she said over her shoulder. “I won’t know where to find you when I get back, and I’ll have to eat it all myself.” I giggled. We both knew there wasn’t going to be any running, but she made it funny instead of scary. I liked her. She was cool.

True to her word, the nurse returned with sherbet. A gallon bucket of it, to be exact, and a bowl and a spoon. She pulled the table up over the bed and dished out three big scoops of icy cold rainbow deliciousness. Best sherbet I ever tasted. Sherbet made especially for fearless people like me. I ate every bite and licked the spoon with an air of self-importance. It was a great beginning to a long and difficult recovery, a beginning that gave me the ammunition I would need to get through the months of rehab ahead: I could do it, because I could do anything. I was brave.