I hung up the phone. A runnel of tears cascaded down my cheeks. The floor gave way, and I was falling, tumbling, spinning, yet I could barely move. Somehow I made it to the master bedroom and closed the door. I fell to the floor and wailed, kicking my feet and pounding my fists against the white carpet. I wanted to slip beyond the veil, for my brain synapses to stop firing, for reality to fall away, but the rug remained beneath me. I inhaled that chemical smell still buried deep within the fibers. The door to the bedroom opened, and my four-year-old son stood there, eyes wide.
“Mommy, are you OK?” he asked
No. I was not OK. At that moment, something did snap. I stopped crying. Got up from the floor, embarrassed, humiliated, and humbled. I was a grown woman throwing a temper tantrum. It was not OK. I had to keep it together for my son, his older brother at school, and my husband. I had to share the news with him. My stomach churned. How would he react? Would he be angry? Would he want to throw a temper tantrum too? Or would it be despair? Would he give up? Would he hurt someone? I couldn’t be sure of anything.
In January 1994, my husband of nine months, a railroad engineer, was stranded in a six-mile-long railroad tunnel with nine diesel locomotives running. The train had uncoupled as it crossed the apex within the high mountain tunnel, and my husband, the fireman on the rear engines pushing the mile-long coal train over the mountains, got out of his engine and walked the cars searching for the faulty coupling. It was well below zero, and the air coagulated. He spent more than an hour breathing toxic fumes and suffered undiagnosed cerebral edema when he arrived at the hospital two hours and three ambulance rides later. It was a shift change. They stuck him in a hyperbaric chamber for a while and released him. A railroad supervisor dropped him off at home with EKG stickers attached to his chest. He could barely tell me what had happened. I put him to bed, packed up our 18-month-old son, and headed to work. I was 29.
Later that afternoon, I took him to a clinic near our home for a follow-up examination. He was incoherent, babbling. He couldn’t figure out how to take his seatbelt off. When we got to the clinic, and they asked him to complete the paperwork, he angrily threw the documents at the clerk. Later he would confess that he couldn’t comprehend the words on the page. Didn’t know his address or how to write his name. I calmed him down and filled out the forms. We met with a doctor who suggested my husband needed further examination, recommended a neurologist and a toxicologist, and signed paperwork authorizing him to not return to work for a few days. When my husband called his supervisor to tell him the news that Dr. Wu had referred him for more treatment, the man laughed at him. The supervisor thought he was joking. But there was nothing funny about what happened to the man I married. He underwent months of treatment for the resulting brain injury. Had to learn to read again. Could not remember playing cards laid out in front of him. We filled out forms each month for disability payments. Some months we got paid; other months, we had to fill out even more paperwork, and the checks arrived much later after the bills were past due and the late fees had been added. The railroad refused to pay his medical bills. Eventually, the doctors determined he could never return to his loved job. We hired attorneys, went to trial in 1997, and were awarded a jury verdict that the railroad appealed.
Uncertainty became a regular part of our life. And somehow, despite the daily challenges, life went on in those three years between his injury and the trial. In November 1994, the 800-square-foot house we rented for $400 a month was put up for sale. When we rejected the offer to buy it, the landlords evicted us on Thanksgiving, giving us until the end of the year to move. As the primary earner in our family, with my husband receiving temporary disability income, I worked harder than ever at my career at a small publishing company. I was promoted from Marketing Assistant to Public Relations Director, given a raise which made it possible for us to buy a house. Well, that and a miraculous mortgage broker who refused to take no for an answer and found a way to get us into our first home. A loan that would be impossible in today’s mortgage environment. A year later, I was promoted again to Marketing Director. My 40-hour work weeks became 60-hour work weeks. I traveled. In 1998 we had our second child. He was born on a Friday, and I was on a conference call on Monday morning. I turned down a job offer in Baltimore and the opportunity to earn more money because, unsettling my husband from his routine, his surroundings were ill-advised by his doctors. But I asked my boss for another raise. My performance evaluations were impeccable. Sales were increasing dramatically. The small office felt like a second family. They supported us through my husband’s injury and the trial. I believed my co-workers genuinely cared about me.
Then, in January 1998, I returned to work after a weekend retreat with the company’s advisory board. My boss had asked me to present to the Pennsylvania Board of Directors in the coming months. My husband was a great stay-at-home dad who loved volunteering at school. We could pay our bills, his permanent disability income was finally on track, and my job was going well. It was a beautiful, sunny day. The Denver Broncos had won the Super Bowl.
I vividly remember the smell of burning brakes and the smoke as the tractor-trailer in the lane to my right tried to stop his trailer fishing. The red taillights of the person before me were coming too quickly. I didn’t know if I could stop. I did. My hands and arms were locked stiffly on the steering wheel. I glanced in the rearview mirror in time to watch the blue compact car hit my Honda Civic. It was a small car like mine. Our bumpers aligned, and we hit flat bumper to flat bumper. The driver never swerved, just plowed right into me. The impact shoved my car forward. Despite my seat belt, I hit the steering column, and my head slammed back into the headrest. The impact broke the bracket that attached my seat to the car’s frame.
My cell phone, purse, and briefcase went flying. Things were strewn all over the car. I pulled to the left against the concrete barricades dividing the highway. I tried to get out of the car but couldn’t open the door. I pulled up and away from the barricade. I don’t recall much, but cars honking. I got out and was shocked that my car was not accordion folded. It looked fine. The damage was hidden beneath the rubber. The woman who hit me had children in her car. They were crying, but she said they were fine. I returned to my car and fumbled until I found my cell phone and called the police. The city was on accident alert due to the football celebration parade and recommended that we exchange information unless anyone was injured and needed an ambulance. I wasn’t bleeding. There were no broken limbs. We exchanged names, numbers, and insurance details. I drove a few miles to an exit where I knew there was a police station so I could file a police report. The adrenaline was wearing off, and I felt shaky. My neck was stiffening. As I filled out the paperwork, my whole body tightened in pain, and my head pounded. Maybe I did need that ambulance. But I was only a few miles from work, and my chiropractor was just up the street from my office.
The chiropractor diagnosed a whiplash injury that afternoon, my neck and back were a mess, but several weeks later, when I started blacking out, I was diagnosed with post-concussive syndrome. I had TMJ, my balance was affected, and I walked into walls; I could no longer tolerate loud, noisy environments like a busy restaurant or ToonTown at Disneyland, where I had a meltdown a month later. At work, I would sit in my office with closed doors and cry because I didn’t know what else to do. The work piled up. I couldn’t make a simple decision. I had to call my boss to help me understand a conversation with a vendor. I lived with a constant migraine headache for over a year before acupuncture finally relieved the pain. I lost my job. The company that had supported me through my husband’s ordeal and seemed to understand my diagnosis couldn’t afford to keep me employed. Especially not after I told my boss off using expletives and walked out on a budget meeting. When I lost my job, my doctors rejoiced. I could focus on getting better. I was younger than Jesus. I still had my life ahead of me.
I tried to focus on the positive. It was something I learned during the difficult days with my husband. I could either laugh or cry, and it was better to laugh. I would finally have time to write. Maybe I’d finish a short story or a few novel chapters. But between the hours of physical, vision, balance, occupational, vocational, emotional, and behavioral therapies I was undergoing and the fact that my brain no longer functioned as it once had, I could not write. I spent an entire day sitting at the kitchen table with a brand-new notebook and a shiny pen, and I couldn’t write a complete sentence. This went on for months. I entered my psychologist’s office one day and plopped down in her comfy chair.
“If I can’t write, I don’t know why I’m here, on earth,” I pronounced.
After a series of questions to determine the level of my suicidal tendencies, we talked about my life’s purpose. I always believed that writing was something I was supposed to do. It was a gift. Not a Jackie Evancho-type gift. I wouldn’t open my mouth and sing with a pure and flawless voice. Or I should say, I never thought I would sit down to write and a polished work of literature would come out. OK, I did, but I also knew that I needed to practice and write and that eventually, I would be good, or maybe brilliant. I had already passed up on my first dream of being the next Barbara Walters by choosing liberal arts over journalism. Still, I could write articles for magazines and popular women’s fiction. I could be Elizabeth Gilbert without Italy, India, and Bali. However, I kept writing lower on the totem pole behind being a wife, mother, breadwinner, and caregiver. I took writing classes at night, even began teaching them (another avoidance technique perhaps), pounding away at my novel on nights and weekends. Even before my husband’s life-changing injury, I chose to pursue a career in publishing by convincing myself that writing the back cover copy for other people’s books would somehow benefit my writing goals. In my post-concussive fog, I was beginning to realize that I had to dedicate myself to writing just as I did to all the therapies and treatments I focused on to improve my cognitive functioning. But I had nothing to dedicate myself to anymore.
“This is only temporary,” my therapist said. “You’ll be able to write again. It might be different, but it will come back. Try something different, something tactile.”
And with those simple words, the stars aligned, and everything fell into place. Well, at least that’s how it appears looking back; of course, it wasn’t quite so simple at the time. I was an auditory writer who would hear the voices in her head. For me, writing was a bit like taking dictation. After this conversation, I was at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver with my children. They had a huge table filled with clay for children to play in. I took my oldest son to the table and began playing with clay. He quickly rolled out a snake and asked me to make him a bear. I took the clay into my hands and sat there mesmerized by the feel of the cool brown adobe. It was smooth and pliable between my fingers. I formed a bear, gave him arms, legs, and paws, and scraped the fur texture onto him. I sat there while my family walked around and enjoyed the festivities. When I presented the clay teddy bear to my son, he squealed with delight. We took it home. It dried. It lived with us for many years.
After that, I signed up for pottery classes at the local community center. I learned to throw on a wheel, sculpt, and make things with clay. One morning, in the shower, I heard the voice of one of my novel characters speak to me. It was only a line. But it was something. I dried off and wrote it down. Within days I was able to write a paragraph, then a page. I bought a copy of The Artist’s Way and wrote morning pages. Some of them are listings of my appointments and what I did in therapy, but over time they became something different, something more. I began to see things differently. I made notes. I have a box of notebooks filled with my life’s daily, boring documentation and not much else. Occasionally a few lines of poetry appear, or a description of the moon, perhaps a dialogue overhead in a coffee shop.
In 1999, amid my recovery, our attorneys appeared before the three-judge, Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Each side had fifteen minutes to make their arguments. We were in the courtroom for no more than 30 minutes. Afterward, we sat in the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel, and our attorney told us that he believed we had hit a home run and they would rule in our favor, and it would all be over soon. We just had to wait for the ruling.
That morning in 2000, when the phone rang, and I saw the attorney’s name on the caller id, I expected it to be over. I expected good news. But the moment I heard his voice, I knew something was wrong. He asked for my husband. No small talk. No, hi, how are you.
“No, he’s gone to breakfast with a friend; what’s wrong?”
“Are you sitting down?”
I wasn’t. I did.
He told me the 10th Circuit had remanded our case to trial. We had to start over. They were upset with the judge and used our case as an example. We had to go back and do it all again. The trial, the testimony, the agony, the lying, the belittling, the questioning of everything, the making you look bad, the looking for anything remotely unsavory about you, the insinuations, the long, drawn-out days in court, and they now knew our case, it wouldn’t be easy, but we had to do it. We didn’t have a choice. Well, we did. We could just walk away, file for bankruptcy, and try to get on with our lives. But that didn’t seem like an option at that point.
The justice system is not about justice. It’s violating. It’s humiliating. I sat in a courtroom and listened to people under oath tell lies about my husband. I watched experts prostitute their knowledge for money. I had to be cross-examined by a hostile defense attorney while the supervisor, who laughed at my husband because Dr. Wu had ordered him not to return to work, snickered in the background.
When I collapsed into that floor, willing it to suck me into the depths, to be overcome by formaldehyde, Teflon, and butylated hydroxytoluene, I wanted to be carried away from all that, to disappear into a world where justice did exist and corporations did the right thing and took care of their employees. I wanted my brain to function again the way it had before. I longed to find another reality where I was Leanne Goebel, a forward to my book written by Liz Gilbert. I wanted life to be easy and not the traffic jam during rush hour that it seemed to be.
I pulled myself together and found my husband, who took the news stoically. Perhaps he was in shock. The anger did come later, but at that moment, he was calm. He was committed. We would get through this as well. We couldn’t give up. We would have to find a way to return and do it all over. Days and weeks later, we would fall into the darkness, unsure if we could genuinely walk back into a courtroom and begin the fight anew.
Luckily, we didn’t have to. Our attorney’s found some obscure loophole, and everyone agreed to the outcome. The lower court judge would write his ruling to appease the 10th Circuit. The railroad accepted a high-low agreement. If the 10th Circuit ruled in our favor, we would get the original jury verdict. They would pay a portion of the medical fees if they ruled in favor of the railroad. We resigned ourselves to the fact that this journey in court might never end. It was now a part of our lives, for better or worse, not a focus, but out there in the perimeter.
We sold our house and moved to a small town with a slower-paced life to raise our children and continue our healing (or maybe it was to figure out again how to live). I made pottery and wrote, never returning to a corporate job but working on freelance projects to earn a living. It was the only way I could manage my disability. Writing is different. It’s a slow process, sometimes auditory, sometimes tactile, where my fingers hit the keyboard or feel the heft of a pen in my hand, and I give myself over to the words as they trickle through me.
In 2004, the court ruled in our favor. It was finally over. A decade had passed.
Eventually, I committed to writing as a full-time endeavor. I began writing about art-making and discovered I’m pretty good at it. I might never be as good as Roberta Smith, Lucy Lippard, or Emily Genauer. But then again, who knows?
I’m Leanne Goebel. I write about art from the rural Rocky Mountain Southwest. I’m writing my first novel. I pulled myself up from that carpet and stepped into my shoes, sturdy, comfortable, and a bit funky—colorful— not someone else’s red-soled high heels.
Leanne Goebel 
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