CHAPTER 1
DREAMING BIG
CLAWS AND JAWS.
I'm concerned about both. I only see one: claws. Not friendly, kitty-cat claws. These are fear-inducing grizzly bear claws and I'm holding them. I'm not bumfuzzled or bold. I'm an outdoor journalist with the dream job. Well, my dream job. Most other women don't consider the squalor of the stinky wild dreamy, but I do.
Bears do stink and they do hog the top spot on my bucket list. Especially when I'm on assignment and the bear is out cold. The sleepy-time shot to its shoulder has it under a spell that makes it possible for me to safely shoot close-up footage while researchers examine this four-year-old bear.
A bear's teeth are tucked in when it sleeps, but its claws are always out. That's probably why I take so many pictures of claws. They don't retract like a cat's. It's like trying to pal around with Wolverine when he's mad — blades out and ready.
The visual intensity makes my hands rattle, but I work through it. At least I think I do. Most of my shots for this story are steady while I lie on my belly nose to nose with Grizzly No. 1,225. His breathing is slow and deep. Mine is quick and shallow. My hyped rhythm races to hysteria when the bear's eyelids flip open.
"He's up!" I say with blurted surprise, while also peeing my pants. A lot. It's true, but at least that's all I did.
Eye twitch is normal, I'm told. The ticker tells us we still have ten minutes of sedation. It's just enough time to bolt on the GPS collar, so I keep working on footage.
I'm filling frame with the beautiful beast's signature shoulder hump when the bear lifts its head. I lift mine in alarm.
"No!" I say. "He's really up!"
I rise to run. The bear rises to chase. The fall comes twelve paces after the chase starts.
I wake up freaked out, fur still filling my head. But the fear is fading. Falling dreams are the worst, the quick tensing of every muscle in your body painfully jerking you from sleeping to waking in an agonizing instant. You acknowledge the ache right away. Recognizing the dream is secondary.
That's right, I was dreaming. No bear, no chase, no fall. I didn't even get up for a potential fall, but I have to get up now.
"I'm fine," I say, rising from the couch, straddling my body with crutches and moving through the kitchen. "I'm not having a come-apart."
My head hits the door.
I'm not fine. I'm having a come-apart.
My head hits the door again.
"I thought you just said you were fine," my husband says from the kitchen table, with his morning mug of liquid magic that I love to smell but hate to taste.
"But the door is closed," I say with a sob. Not a whine, a sob.
My husband leaves his coffee cup and reaches me in two strides. My head is still leaning on the door. My eyes are down, tears dripping onto my swollen purple toes.
"I'll get the door for you," he says with a chuckle. He quickly follows this with "I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing with you."
"But I'm not laughing," I say, switching from sob to sober. "I'm about to shit myself and the door is closed."
My leg is broken in three places. I'm heavily sedated and couch bound. I haven't done serious bathroom business for more than a week. This is a significant moment in my recovery and I'm stopped at a closed door. It's a swinging door, separating kitchen from laundry room and half bath.
Swinging doors don't have knobs. They don't need them.
Just give a nudge with your hand or hip and what's closed easily swings open in either direction. Perfect for when your hands are full — full of anything but crutches.
My bruised palms are gripping crutches. There's no nudging the door open with hand or hip. Between the crutches are my grossly mismatched lower limbs. The left leg is beefed up like a brute dead-lifting all 125 pounds of me. The right leg, the one that's all wrong, is shriveled and useless. It's broken, so there's no kicking the door open either.
The reality of a disability, even a temporary one, is humbling in so many ways that it becomes unnerving. Friends check in on me and say, "I miss you." I miss me too. I'm reduced from living life amplified to stopped at a single door, exhausted by the thought of getting through it.
The only thing I can push the door open with is my head and that takes forever. I'll never make it. I'll poop in the shorts I've worn for a week and my husband will have yet another thing to do for me since I can't do a single thing for myself.
Smiling, he swings the door wide, silently props it open, and then politely steps aside so my crippled gait has plenty of hobbling space. I pass him, the washing machine, and the dryer. Next, coats, boots, and baskets full of beanies and gloves. One more hop and I'm in the half bath. It has a sliding door. I force my sore left armpit to suction cup the top of my left crutch. I release my left hand from its bruising hold on the middle handle of the same crutch. I slowly slide the door closed with my stiff fingers, lean both crutches on the counter, and then lower myself one-legged onto the toilet.
I made it. I'm shaking and sweating, but I made it. And I'm nearly lucid, so I'm not dizzy as my left leg settles into seated position while my right leg extends straight out, bloody and bruised with every color but healthy. It hovers two inches above the bathroom rug. My husband hovers two feet outside the door.
Even in my hallucinogenic state, I think he's handsome, maybe more so. Drugs do that. He's handsome, not handy. I've always said hire handy, marry handsome. And that's exactly what I did.
Women raised my husband, so he doesn't leave the toilet seat up. He knows how to cook and he has great fashion sense. When we were younger, his dark hair was so groomed, it was glossy. He wore it longer then. Now it's short and textured with the color of age, but no less appealing. It still complements his sharp cheekbones and his lips, perfected with a slight pout. The whole façade is confidently roughed with a short-trimmed, almost stubble-length beard. I love that beard. Crazy to think I once feared beards and now I'm married to a marvelous one.
"See, no poopy pants, babe. You made it," he says from the other side of the door. "And I'm...
