Lose Some, Win Some

My life was never the same after I lost my arm in a construction accident.

OSHA will get you on the most minor crap, but for some reason, the more I think about it, my last workplace hardly ever had an inspection. A paid-off inspector, a delayed inspection, paperwork falling through the cracks: whatever it was, they were immune, in the short-term, to getting called out for their lack of safety procedures.

I was installing some pipe and I had my arm severed by a tractor while I was working. It was the most pain I’d ever felt in my life. It wasn’t fast, either. Through skin, muscle, and bone, it took at least a good four or five seconds. I nearly lost half of the blood in my body in the next few minutes, and I passed out from shock after about twenty or thirty seconds.

I had followed all of my safety procedures, I was wearing my gear, everything. Didn’t matter. There went my arm.

An ambulance was called, the driver was reprimanded, and within weeks the company was investigated. I was laid up in the hospital.

My girlfriend didn’t visit me for a while. I didn’t blame her for that part. I hadn’t been the best partner, or the best father: not for some time, at the least. Instead, what I’d done was yell at her, abuse her, and even beat her from time to time. My kid was just one, and I didn’t have many friends or family, so I didn’t really get visitors.

While I recovered in that hospital, I vowed to never do that again. 

I vowed a lot of things while I was recovering. So far, I’ve kept every single one.

Around a day after the incident, I woke up in the hospital. They immediately informed me that they’d attempted to reattach the limb, but infection had made it almost impossible. I would be stuck with one arm for the rest of my life, not counting a prosthetic. 

Recovering felt like it took forever. Every day stretched on into eternity. My nurse would come in and check me in the morning. They had me on several different medications: mostly to treat any kind of infection that might have got rubbed into the wound, what with all the dirt and different stuff that had been on the ground right next to my arm when it had been severed.

So, I’d get checked, take my medication, and they mostly focused on physical rehabilitation. They insisted that since I only had one arm left, it was critical that I adjust to using one arm (and an eventual prosthetic), but I also recover as much as possible. I got used to everything. From them showing me how to put on a shrinker, to training my remaining arm, my schedule, I got used to everything.

I probably would’ve been out of the hospital faster, but the infections complicated everything.

It was about a month in when my girlfriend first visited me.

“Alfie, we were so worried about you. We both were,” she told me, with tears in her eyes. I couldn’t help but have tears in mine, too. Sophia had only ever been kind to me, but I’d taken advantage of that generosity. And Emily was my whole world, even though she was only two years old. 

I’d yelled at her once or twice, but never hit her. Never. I couldn’t ever do that.

Staring at my girlfriend there, someone I’d once considered to be my fiance, I knew I had to change things. They couldn’t remain the way they were.

Her big blue eyes full of tears made sure that I understood that.

That was the catalyst of everything.

“I’ll be better,” I promised her, crying and sobbing like a baby. My father would’ve been ashamed of me. I was never supposed to cry, never. Ever. I covered my face and told her to leave the room. She hugged me instead. I love Sophia so goddamn much for that.

Sophia helped me get used to normal life after the accident. I officially left the hospital thirty-three days after I’d been admitted.

Nothing was ever the same.

Everything was so much harder. Have you ever tried to do anything with one arm? Hell, even just one hand instead of one arm? You lose so much mobility, so much reach in so many situations that I couldn’t believe it.

Putting on clothes at first was a struggle. It was something that used to be easy, but instead became a legitimate task for me to accomplish.

Cooking, too, was right out. I was already bad at it before, and that was when I had the dexterity and motion of two limbs. I was glad that Sophia had always been a good cook.

Sophia helped me with everything. I’ll never forget any of the things that she did for me.

“This leg first, then this one. Nice and easy and slow. You can go faster once you get it done,” she’d tell me, every morning. 

I was also glad I had been given a substantial settlement in the class-action lawsuit that had followed from my accident, along with a hefty workman’s compensation package that I also got. I was also extremely lucky that the settlement had happened so fast. The company knew that there was no way they could win, so they settled out of court for a seven figure fee that got distributed among the many wronged people, myself included.

The first few months were the hardest. Just putting on pants took forever without her help. Learning to fix things again, hold things, work properly, do so many things--it was all so difficult, and I think I might have quit and died inside completely if she wasn’t there. My therapist, June Waters, told me that she was the best thing in my life. I fully believed her.

Around six months in is when I started seeing a real improvement to my life.

Our relationship had recovered completely. How could I ever have struck her, ever? She was like my angel. She was like my rock. How could I have ever done that to her?

I apologized to her, over and over again. I shuddered and felt sick to my stomach whenever I’d raise my hand and she’d flinch. After the six months were over, she hardly did it anymore. We loved each other again.

My little girl, too. Emily learned to get along with her daddy better. She learned how happy he could be, when he had some time off work to think about what he wanted to do with his life, and what kind of person he wanted to be.

Seven months in and I was sure of it. That fall, I entered an art college that I always wanted to go to. With Sophia working and my payments, we could easily afford it.

“You should do it. You were always great at drawing. I know… I know it’s what you really wanted to do. What you would’ve done, if I never got pregnant,” Sophia had said at the time.

“It’s not your fault. I’m going to make it better. We’re going to be better,” I promised her.

It took me three years to finish my education, since I’d left it unfinished to work when I found out Sophia was pregnant. It was three long years.

Art had always been my calling, though, and even though I had one arm, I finally had so much time to practice and think about what I wanted to do that I ended up even better than I ever had been, whether it was my late teen years or my early twenties. 

I was twenty six when I graduated from the school.

Right away, I got a job, making about double what I used to, in a digital art position. It was miles better than any work I’d ever done in my life, far more interesting and far more engaging. I loved it better than any job I ever had.

I got to use my passion every day. I got to create interesting things, work on art for games, create concept art, and do all kinds of things.

I’m looking back now: a year and a half after the day I got that job. I’m going to marry Sophia next spring. I’m looking at getting a raise and a promotion, too.

Just yesterday, Cornell Construction, my old company, went under. They cited a lack of profit as well as a large number of shareholders withdrawing from the business due to all the legal trouble they had gotten into in the last few years. They were active in twenty-two states and were a near-monopoly in the business.

Now they’re nothing.

I could’ve ended up in jail, or out on the street, hooked on drugs or alcohol. I could’ve completely ruined my life. I wasn’t even a person who was alive, just a zombie, surviving day to day in the most disgusting manner imaginable.

Losing my arm may have been my biggest loss, but it was also my biggest win. It brought me back everything. The only price was a limb.

Cheap, for a happy life.

“I’m so proud of you,” Sophia told me, the day I got a promotion: two months from our wedding day.

“So proud,” she said.

So proud.