...Frank
Beazley lay paralyzed on his apartment floor. He couldn’t
feel anything below his upper chest. His fiancé,
Mary Fields, went to comfort him, but Frank ordered her
not to touch him. He feared that he had broken his neck.
...Please!
he said. Get on the phone and call an ambulance!
...The
rescue workers sped Frank to Rhode Island Hospital, where
x-rays showed he had fractured two vertebrae near the top
of his spine. The fractures injured the spinal cord, the
pathway of nerves connecting the body to the brain. No one
could immediately determine the extent of the damage. No
one yet knew if it could be repaired.
...Doctors
drilled into Frank’s skull to anchor a traction device
immobilizing his head, preventing further damage to the
nerves. He was strapped into a Stryker bed, which sandwiched
a patient between two mattresses and could be turned like
a rotisserie. He was turned regularly — front to back,
back to front, face up, face down — a precaution against
bedsores.
...In
the ensuing days, therapists exercised Frank’s muscles
in an attempt to preserve function. Frank complied uncomplainingly,
but three weeks after admission, he could barely move his
arms and hands, and he could coax almost nothing out of
his legs and feet. He remained what was called a spastic
quadriplegic.
...During
a four-hour operation on Jan. 31, 1967, doctors removed
pieces of Frank’s ribs and grafted them onto the broken
bones in his neck. The surgery was successful. At the very
least, the doctors believed that Frank would be able to
support the weight of his head. With a little luck, they
predicted, he would walk again.
...‘‘Mr.
Beazley is relatively young, 38 years old, and should eventually
return to his work as a baker,’’ a doctor wrote.
‘‘He is a very cooperative patient, and no special
difficulties are anticipated.’’
...At
7:30 p.m. on March 3, Frank’s heart suddenly stopped.
...The
staff saved Frank, but the next day, he suffered a succession
of seizures. Examination revealed that one of the traction
rods had pierced his skull and pushed against his brain.
Doctors replaced the device with a collar.
...By
March 17, the wound had healed.
...Frank
was encouraged. A doctor approved his request for a St.
Patrick’s Day beer.
Still, by the end of March, almost three months after falling
down the stairs, Frank hadn’t left his bed. He couldn’t
feed himself. His arms throbbed and he had no sensation
in most of the rest of his body. His legs spasmed day and
night. He wanted to believe the doctors’ prognosis
of recovery — but sometimes, he doubted.
...Lying
there, he remembered roller-skating and Rocky Point and
the Turf Club Cafe. He worried about his future with Mary.
They were supposed to be completing their wedding arrangements;
quadriplegia wasn’t part of the plan.
...Is
this going to be my life? he thought. Am I going
to sit up again? Will I walk?
...Frank
had reached the limits of what an acute-care hospital could
do. On March 29, the staff dressed him in a johnny, coat,
and socks and slippers that Mary had brought him. They placed
him into an ambulance for the hour-long trip to a rehabilitation
center in northwest Rhode Island, a part of the state that
he’d never seen.
...He
signed his discharge papers with an X, the best he could
manage.
...THE
AMBULANCE LEFT the city and drove through suburbs
and then thickening woods. A few miles more and the ambulance
reached a red-brick institution. The growing season was
almost upon Zambarano Memorial Hospital, and soon the lawns
would be green, the apple trees budding, the flowers blooming
in the beds outside the granite steps.
...Zambarano
had opened in 1905 as a sanatorium for victims of tuberculosis.
Fresh air and sunshine were the treatments of the time,
and the climate at Wallum Lake, which straddles the Massachusetts
border, was ideal. With the advent of antibiotics in the
mid-20th century, tuberculosis patients no longer required
such rural isolation. Zambarano would maintain a TB ward
until the 1980s, but as that population declined, the hospital
began to specialize in treating the victims of accidents,
strokes, and chronic diseases.
...Some
were brain-dead. Many would never leave.
...The
ambulance proceeded to a dock at the rear of the hospital.
An attendant wheeled Frank into an elevator, which brought
him to a room on the third floor. After examining him, a
doctor noted that ‘‘pt. no. 23-471’’
was ‘‘alert’’ and ‘‘cooperative’’
and that his heart and lungs seemed normal. Mary Fields
was listed as the person to be notified in an emergency.
...A
week after admission, Frank began his rehabilitation.
...Every
weekday, staff brought him to a room equipped with mats,
bars, balls, handrails, splints, weights, tilt tables, and
hoists. Therapists flexed his limbs and massaged his body.
They worked his fingers and toes. They dipped him into a
whirlpool. They applied heat. They attached weights to his
knees. They were as committed as Frank, who had learned
the importance of hard work from the nuns at St. Joseph’s
Orphanage.
...‘‘His
spirits are good, his appetite is good,’’ a
doctor wrote a few weeks into the program.
...By
summer, Frank was able to shrug his shoulders, lift his
arms almost to neck-level, and better move his fingers.
By the spring of 1968, a year after he was admitted, he
could negotiate parallel bars with the assistance of a therapist
— his arms partially supporting his weight, his legs
moving as if walking. He no longer required a hydraulic
lift to get him from his bed to his wheelchair.
...He
believed that someday he would go home.
...But
as he neared the end of his second year at Zambarano, the
doctors no longer shared his optimism.
...Frank
had regained no feeling in the parts of him that had gone
dead. His elbows were locked. He could not walk, and while
he could move his fingers, they had contracted, rendering
his hands largely useless. Surgery might loosen them, but
nothing could repair the damage to his nerves.
...‘‘He
has no awareness of vertical position,’’ a doctor
wrote on Feb. 18, 1969. ‘‘I feel that this patient’s
disability is permanent and total. I do not anticipate any
further recovery.’’
 |
For decades, Zambarano
Memorial Hospital in Burrillville was a sanatorium
for tuberculosis patients. In 1959 with the decline in TB, it
started treating victims of accidents, strokes and
chronic diseases.
Journal file photo |
...AT
FIRST, MARY FIELDS
visited Frank every weekend. The two played cards and talked
as they gazed out at Wallum Lake.
...Although
they never discussed their future in detail, Frank began
to sense that Mary believed he would never leave Zambarano
— that eventually, probably sooner rather than later,
she would consider his quadriplegia repulsive. He knew that
he had failed her financially. During his early days at
Zambarano, Frank had received hundreds of dollars in monthly
federal disability checks, which he’d turned over
to Mary. But then the government changed procedures, and
all but $25 in spending money went directly to the state
for the care of ‘‘pt. no. 23-471.’’
...The
seasons changed. Mary’s weekly visits became monthly,
and then less frequent than that.
...Frank
was saddened, but understanding: they’d been partners
in a vibrant relationship for six years and now he couldn’t
brush his own teeth.
...To
some extent, Frank blamed himself. If only he’d gone
straight home from work on that January morning. If only
he’d had less to drink. If only he’d remembered
to tie his boots. If only...
...Frank
confronted the inevitable.
...I
can’t very well hold her down, he thought. It’s
her life out there and my life here.
...There
was no final goodbye, no card, no letter. One day Mary kissed
him on the cheek and said she’d see him soon. She
never returned. The curtain closed and the woman he’d
believed would complete his life faded to black.
...But
her daughter, Patricia, a young woman by then, kept in touch.
She remembered the days when, as a teenager, she sometimes
joined Frank and Mary at the Turf Club Cafe — how
her mother would step aside to let her dance with this good-natured,
fun-loving man who was going to be her stepfather, the first
real dad she’d ever had.
...One
day in August 1971, Patricia visited Zambarano. She found
Frank in the therapy room, where he was receiving whirlpool
treatment for his wasted hands. Frank saw her face and knew
she’d brought bad tidings.
...Something
happened, didn’t it? Frank said.
...I
found my mother dead, Patricia said.
...I’m
sorry.
...She
had a heart attack. I found her in her apartment.
...Mary
had been living alone in a rundown manufacturing district
of Providence after moving out of the basement flat she’d
shared with Frank. She was 47. Her obituary ran to just
three paragraphs. Once again, Frank was not mentioned.
...In
clearing out Mary’s apartment, Patricia had kept an
eye out for any of Frank’s possessions that her mother
might have had. She found no photographs, no clothes, no
license, no passport or other papers. Mary had kept only
one memento: the Canadian dollar bill Frank gave her on
the night they met, the night that Frank played ‘‘Blueberry
Hill’’ on the Turf Club Cafe jukebox.
...It’s
all I have, Patricia said.
...It’s
all right, Frank said.
...The
dollar went into Frank’s wallet. Decades later, he
still had the bill, his only link to the last period in
his life that he’d danced or walked or been able to
tie his shoes.
TOMORROW
| BEAUTIFUL DAYS
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