On my first trip to Salt Lake City, I was nine and just starting fourth grade. Hours after arriving at the Crippled Children’s hospital, my bent-over polio wrist was yanked straight and locked down with a plaster cast up to my elbow. Sure, it ached. Sure, I was scared spitless. But I’d been told I was going to have surgery. That first day, while the plaster hardened, I told myself that if the cast was surgery, I’d just aced it.
But for the next few weeks, I watched as girl after girl’s bed was moved to the spot nearest the nurse’s station. I saw how terrified each girl was in the afternoon, and how empty the spot was the next morning. I listened to other girls whispering about the Dead Bed. A giant named Otto would come for you before the sun came up. And later that day, the same giant brought back the unlucky girl, who now groaned in pain.
My arm cast had already been sawn off when my Dead Bed dread began to build. I’d been there almost two months, long enough to get the low-down on what surgery really was. I tried to think of an escape plan, but I knew exactly nobody in Salt Lake who’d rescue me. Instead, I kept my little white bible under my pillow, and read and reread the red-letter parts where Jesus begs God to let the cup pass from him. Maybe the doctors would change their minds and send me back home to Yuma. Maybe I could change my name. Maybe Otto would drop dead.
Deep down, I knew none of my ideas would work. I flinched each time the prep nurse showed up with her cart full of smelly green liquid soap, shaving razors and funny-looking flesh-colored socks. For weeks, the cart rolled past me, stopping at another girl’s place. Each time, I prayed for the girl and thanked God it wasn’t my turn.
Until one day the cart stopped for me.
The green soap was ice-cold as Prep Nurse lathered my arm. I stared at my poor skinny arm and withered hand as if it belonged to someone else, but I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering. Prep Nurse shaved the hair from my armpit to my fingers—since I was a hairy brunette, I kind of liked how that looked. But then she covered my arm in one of her funny socks and left me sitting there with no idea about what would happen next.
Another cart, another nurse. Only we were all really terrified of this one—Blood Lady. As that huge hypo took a bite out of my good arm, I didn’t dare yell or even wince. It was all by design—you sat there and got poked in front of everyone, probably to keep you from screaming. It worked.
After the carts, I was moved to the Dead Bed, banished to sit there without dinner. From the Dead Bed, you couldn’t even see the television from its shelf near the ceiling. My neck ached from looking up, trying to see a rerun of “I Love Lucy.” The whole time, my blood-draw elbow was turning purple and nobody would talk to me. It was like being on death row.
I must have drifted off right after midnight, when a nurse gave me two pills and said no more water, no more nothing. When I opened my eyes again, it was still dark, and a huge figure loomed over me. He didn’t have to tell me his name.
I wanted to stop shaking but nothing I tried worked. Otto was about ten feet tall, and I felt under my pillow for my bible. Why hadn’t I memorized that part where Jesus begged to skip being crucified? When Otto spoke, I almost ran for my life. His accent was thick, like he meant business. “Climb onto the gurney,” he said.
The stretcher, covered in cold black plastic, had siderails—bars, really—to keep you from getting away. While the rest of the darkened ward snoozed, I climbed on, he raised the rails and away we went.
In the elevator, I got a better look at Otto. His surgical hat and scrubs were all light green, like that was supposed to calm kids down. He never smiled, but he didn’t really look like an executioner either. Otto didn’t seem as wicked as the other girls had said. Maybe he’d always wanted to be an artist or a famous dancer. Or maybe he just got tired of pushing crippled kids to the OR.
When the elevator opened, Otto shoved us right through double doors, into a room that looked just like the front door of heaven. The brightest light hit me so hard I had to close my eyes, and it was freezing in there, like wearing your swimsuit to the Arctic. My stomach turned inside out. Standing all around, people wore the same light green outfits with gloves and masks, and everyone looked kind of wavy. “Boy, I’m so thirsty,” I said. They just laughed, their voices echoing off the icy walls.
They said scoot over onto another table. By this time, I was too tired to say no, so I just scooted. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see Otto or the ward or anyone ever again, but Someone was there, holding my good hand, pouring love all over me. In my head I heard, “Don’t be scared.” A man sitting at my head chuckled and asked if I could count to ten in German. I got to zwei before the world went black.