Screwed

Sandy loved to drink until it became too painful. So she quit, again. She liked the way alcohol made her forget all her worries. It had not started out living in blackouts, but she graduated to them quickly the more she drank.

  Sandy had felt screwed out of life because of difficulties with jobs and men. Child Services had removed her children from her last home, so she was alone. She had lived a life of pain, mostly from not being able to give her children the simple things that life demanded.

She went to a counselor after a hospital stay, and her life started looking up. Sandy felt better every day. She even gained a job at the local YMCA as a lifeguard. Her life became simpler over the next year. 

When Sandy took the lifeguard course, she found it funny how a thirty-six-year-old female could do things they, the teenagers, could not. Being tall and slim naturally helped. Also, strong from a past construction job.

In her teenage years, Sandy worked at a couple of pools. She enjoyed the work as a lifeguard then, which prompted her to try it again.

Sandy opened the pool early. There were many swimmers early in the morning doing laps before going to work. One morning a swimmer swam in circles. It turned out she had a stroke. Sandy pulled her out and sat her on the edge of the pool. They talked with each other until the ambulance arrived. The woman spoke of a lovely weekend hiking with her boyfriend. Sadly, Sandy learned the woman died the next day.

After Sandy worked there for a few months, her boss approached her to offer her an additional job. The job of teaching kids to swim. She accepted the extra hours. The feeling of being screwed let up slowly. Sandy enjoyed her additional job, even though she would end up cold before the lesson ended. 

Feeling more comfortable with life, Sandy could smile and laugh like she never had before. Something inside her was changing. Happiness was knocking on the door.

After the summer, when school started back up, the boss again approached Sally with an offer of more hours. These hours would be in the late afternoon when the local swim team came to practice. This seemed too easy for Sandy since there would be coaches there, and she would only really have one lane of lap swimmers to watch.

These newly added hours were pleasant to have now that Sandy was enjoying life for the first time, but the job had its own downfalls and difficulties.

That portion of the day required the two guards on duty to get the lanes in the water prior to the school swimmers arriving as well as removing the hundred-pound stainless steel senior stairs in order to have one lane for regular public lap swimming. Since Sandy usually worked on the side of the pool with the stairs, she would be the one to take them out. It was a two-step process, which boosted Sandy’s ego since they were heavy. The first step was to pull them straight up out of the water, the second was to take two steps backward, pull the stairs out, and lay them on the side of the pool. She enjoyed being strong.

Being a year sober, Sandy was truly happy. She met an older man she respected and had moved in with him. She started seeing her children occasionally. Sandy’s mom had gotten them out of the foster-care system, and she was grateful. Until that fateful evening.

After clocking back in for her shift, Sandy assisted Matt in setting up the lane markers. She was thankful he said he would be the one to get in the water and swim a lane from one end to the other. That was the easiest way to get the middle lane markers in place. Upon completion, Sandy went over to take out the stairs. Having done it a million times, she thought nothing of it. 

Sandy lifted the stairs out and took her steps backward. But something was different this time. She had slipped, taking those backward steps. Now laying on the tiled concrete floor with the stairs on top of her, her hands clinging to the bars. 

The other lifeguard blew his whistle and cleared the pool as he carefully ran around to her. He lifted the stairs off of Sandy and placed them off to the side. She went to get up, but he stopped her. He told her she was shaking uncontrollably and her leg was bleeding, so she needed to stay where she was. She did not argue.

The episode ended up being comical later on. The ambulance came with young training volunteers. They put the neck collar on Sandy upside down. When she was all strapped in, the team lifted the stretcher off the floor. However, they all let go, and it went crashing back down to the floor. Sandy screamed from the pain.

Spending several uncomfortable hours at the hospital, Sandy was ready to go home and crash on the couch with her sore behind. She had cracked her sacrum and there was nothing they could do, except tell her to rest and stay off her feet. There was no cast for that part of the body.

Sandy thought it would be some time before the pain stopped. What she didn’t expect was the additional pain burning her back then grew to down her leg. She spent many years crying in pain. None of the doctors knew what to do for her.

Eight years later, Sandy moved out of state. This new state had a doctor who actually looked at her x-rays and other tests she had done. He ordered more tests and the next year cut her back open for the first time, trying to relieve the pain.

It would be another nine years before the sixth operation on Sandy’s back actually worked. The doctor put spacers in her SI joints, which relieved the sciatic pain she lived with. That was after fusing both her back and her neck.

Sober eleven years, Sandy now walks around enjoying herself when going through metal detectors. “I’ve been screwed,” she would say as they looked at the many boxes on the screen, and laugh.