Dwarf: A Memoir (14 page)

“I just want a yes or a no, know what I mean?”

“Don’t give him a reason to say no,” Mom replied. “Be confident and be yourself. You’ve
been through it before. You know what it’s like and what’s to be expected.”

“That wasn’t enough with Dr. Shapiro.”

“And if it’s not enough with Dr. Mortimer, we keep looking,” Mom said and then paused.
“Don’t have a defeatist attitude.”

“What’s ‘defeatist’ mean?”

“It means you’re defeated before you even begin. How bad do you want this?”

My gaze wandered down the hall. A few seats away from me, a mother held her baby girl
with a smile, nuzzling the baby’s rosy cheeks with her nose and kissing her tiny forehead.
A large diamond ring on her left hand caught my eye as she turned to her older child,
a boy of about eight who had a long cast on his leg. It was decorated from toe to
thigh with friends’ signatures and funny drawings, and the boy and his mom were giggling
together. I imagined he was there to get his cast removed. Maybe he broke his leg
while playing sports.

“Bad,” I whispered just loud enough for my mom to hear me. “I want this
bad
.”

“Good. Remember what your Papa says: ‘All or nothing.’”

I looked away from the family down the hall and repeated my mother’s words.

“All or nothing.”

Fight was in the Pryor blood. I always tried to make that family characteristic my
own.

Then he emerged. I was finally getting a look at Dr. Mortimer.

I was instantly struck by how
young
he looked— far too young for all the experience my mom and I had heard about. His
face was smooth— I couldn’t detect a single wrinkle— and he smiled with a slightly
rebellious air about him. With his curly, reddish hair and slim frame, he looked like
a Canadian Doogie Howser, I thought to myself, stifling a smile. He looked
nothing
like what I’d expected. It was almost as if he could hardly believe he was an acclaimed
surgeon himself, because he didn’t wear the usual white coat, or even a conventional
suit and tie. Instead, he wore a plain button-down shirt and insisted that I call
him by his first name, Errol.

It was going to be a good meeting.

His office was different from the others I’d seen. There weren’t certificates and
awards hung neatly on the walls. It was messy and jumbled and I was practically climbing
his cluttered walls with impatience. I needed an answer to my question: would he operate
on me?

Errol began by talking about his work and his philosophy about bone-lengthening surgery.
He spoke simply and didn’t intimidate me with the big words and medical jargon I had
come to expect. I sat in the center of the room in a wheelchair provided by the hospital
since walking the halls was too much for my
small stride. I kept switching my position from upright and attentive to slouched
and antsy. Errol sat on a chair in front of me and never asked me why I wanted to
have surgery. He never asked me to consider my decision a bit longer and then get
back in touch with him. Instead he simply asked, “How are you doing?”

As soon as he finished his question I was off and running on a tangent of my own.
When it was my turn to speak, I made my timeline clear: I wanted to get the procedure
over as quickly and as effectively as possible. I wanted to graduate with my class,
and I wanted to walk across the stage to get my diploma.

When his facial expression changed from soft and congenial to stern and stiffened,
I gripped my seat and feared the worst.

“Do you understand the complications that can result from this surgery?” he asked
somberly, looking me right in the eye.

“Yes,” I answered honestly.

He leaned back a bit in his chair, seemingly relieved. “They should be expected. The
problems that we can fix, we’ll fix, without a doubt. It’s the problems that we
can’t
fix we want to really consider before going forward. The more we anticipate, the
more of an upper hand we’ll have.”

Errol spoke as if he were drafting some sort of battle plan, as if already he had
agreed
to do the surgery, at least in his mind. Then the moment of truth arrived.

“How much length were you thinking?”

I smiled. “How much do you want to give me?”

Errol’s eyebrows scrunched together, and suddenly I was nervous again. Perhaps I went
a little too smart-ass with my answer.

“Well,” he said, carefully measuring his words, “the apparatus is usually set in increments,
and then it locks once it reaches the limit that we place on it.”

“What if we didn’t put a limit on it?” I asked, saying a silent
prayer that he wouldn’t dismiss me from his office right then and there.

Errol’s eyes widened a bit.

“I want to determine my own limits,” I continued.

“You know, gaining three or four inches is better than good; it’s wonderful.”

“Yeah, four inches is great, but it’s not what I want.”

“What exactly do you want?”

I paused, trying to figure out a way to make him understand. Errol sat back patiently,
his eyes still locked on me. That was what I loved about him— he let me speak, and
he treated me like an adult. I knew I had to tell him what I wanted without acting
like an emotional child.

“Do you know what four inches feels like?” I asked. I wanted him to know I was a veteran
and not going into all of this blindly.

He shook his head no.

“Four inches was more pain than I ever thought possible the first time I had surgery.
Every night, I felt the muscles in my legs twitch and jolt and bang against me from
the inside out. It was horrible, and while I was doing it, I swore I never wanted
to feel that much pain again. But now I know that I
need
to do this again. I also need it to be worth all that pain.”

There was silence. I don’t think he or my mom had expected my response. I didn’t really
expect it, either.

“All right, I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

My attention was undivided.

“I’m going to need your help,” he continued, shooting a glance at my mom. She nodded,
inviting him to continue.

“I won’t put a limit on the apparatus,” he began, and my eyes immediately began to
well up with tears. “But Tiffanie, I have to trust you here. You have to work with
me. We have to work
together on this. The more we stretch, the more pain you will experience and the more
you run the risk of all those complications you hate hearing about. I need you to
tell me when you can’t take it anymore. I need you to promise to be honest with yourself,
with your body, and with me. Can you
promise
that?”

“I promise,” I said quickly, my voice cracking with joy.

“Even if your personal limit is only another four inches, will you
still
tell me you have had enough?”

“I will.”

“Two inches?”

I paused. Two inches? What a horrible, cruel joke! He was crazy. Not while I’m in
control, I thought. No way in hell would I accept only two inches!

“I promise.”

He smiled and reached for my hand. “Deal.”

I stared at his hand for a moment. This was it? We just made the deal? I looked at
Errol, who was smiling. I realized I’d been holding my breath. I exhaled and smiled,
too. It was just us, and we had come to an agreement. It felt so grown-up. I shook
his hand and thanked him, ecstatic to be one step closer to my goal. I cried silently,
feeling the tears roll down my cheeks as my mom, who had been silent thus far, let
herself cry, too, as she shook Errol’s hand.

From there, we talked specifics of the surgery. It would be similar to the one I had
undergone as a child, with the pins drilled into my broken bones. Again, I’d turn
the pins a quarter millimeter, four times a day, for a total of about an inch in added
height per month. Because of the amount of height I wanted this time around, Errol
would use a different technique called the Ilizarov method, in which multiple wires
would be strung through the bones in my feet, around my tibias and fibulas, and then
connect to the metal halos that would encircle my legs. The wires
would act like bobby pins, holding the small bones in place. A thick, heavy nail would
also be drilled through each of my heels.

I almost called off the surgery right then and there, I was so freaked out by the
way Errol described it. But because I didn’t want to place a limit on how far I could
lengthen, he said it was necessary to use this new method. It would be like an internal
cast, keeping my bones immobile as my shins grew longer, minimizing the chance for
complications by allowing him to make tiny adjustments to keep my bones in proper
alignment.

The nails in the heels sounded the worst to me. With them, I wouldn’t be able to flex
my feet or point my toes while enduring the lengthening. I could wiggle my toes, but
the internal wires and nails would keep my feet flat. Somehow I was able to convince
myself that it was just another part of the process, and though I hadn’t experienced
it before, I’d get through it just fine.

I’d simply come too far to turn back now.

October 15, 1996, was my last day at Marlborough High School. It was just like any
other day. There was no big fuss signifying my farewell, no announcements, no homemade
cupcakes to send me off. It was a little disappointing but not surprising: I didn’t
exactly make it public knowledge that I was undergoing major surgery to be followed
by months of grueling recovery. Even if I had tried to explain it, I’m not sure my
classmates would have fully grasped the concept.

When the bell rang at the end of my last day of school, the halls flooded with all
sorts of bodies— thin cheerleaders, stocky athletes, scrawny sophomores, and heavy
seniors (all of them tall, though), and they were all equally anxious to get the hell
out for the day. Not me. I stood in the center of the atrium and I looked up at the
bright orange railing lining the main stairway and the walkways to the left and right.
Someday, I imagined, I would walk
up those stairs, purposefully forgoing the handicapped elevator that I had relied
on each day before. Taking the stairs with everyone else was a luxury I never got
to experience. Someday, I promised myself as I gazed at the seniors upstairs, digging
into their purses for car keys, I would drive my car to the school for a visit, and
then effortlessly pull into a parking space of my own. One day, I would push open
the front doors with ease, just like everyone else who passed by me on their way home.

I knew my mom was waiting outside in the parking lot, but I wanted to take my time
saying good-bye. Other than Mike, I didn’t tell anyone the extent of what was going
to happen to me. The surgery would speak for itself. A few friends gathered around
me and wished me good luck. Some said they’d write; others promised to visit. I smiled
and nodded, encouraging their efforts but knowing that I wouldn’t have any social
life to speak of over the next several months.

But at least I’d have Mike.

I spent the majority of that evening compiling a mix tape for my Walkman. Bush, Republica,
White Zombie, and random songs from the
Mortal Kombat
sound track made up what I would label “Surgery Mix.” Mike had called me four times.
The first two phone calls were extremely brief.

“Hey, what’s up?” he began, as always.

“Making a mix tape,” I said.

He didn’t give me enough time to tell him I was including his favorite, Nirvana, before
he got angry and hung up on me. I’d told Mike months earlier that I’d be undergoing
more lengthening surgery, but he was dismissive of the idea from the start, saying
I was fine just the way I was.

A half hour later he called back. He asked the same question
and I responded the same way. He hung up. The third phone call lasted a bit longer.

“You’re doing this all because of a teacher,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” I corrected him. “I’m doing this for me.”

He hung up once more. Later that evening, he called to say good night.

“It’s not too late to change your mind. No one is pushing you.”

He was right, it wasn’t one person pushing me, it was everything. My own
life
pushed me. I could tell he wasn’t happy with my choice. Like my dad, Mike never understood
how differently I saw myself. He could never comprehend just how hard it was for me
to reach the milk off the top shelf in the refrigerator. To be eye to eye with Bruiser
and to come up only to my friends’ hips— I hated it all.

“I’m doing it.”

“Fine.”

“Call me in the morning to wake me up?”

“What time?” he asked with a dramatic sigh.

“Three a.m.”

“Maybe.”

And that was that.

The night before the operation was pretty unremarkable. We didn’t have a big dinner.
Despite the constant reminders from my mom to “eat what you want now, because at midnight,
that’s it,” I wasn’t very hungry.

I didn’t even have any packing to do. What would I need? I wouldn’t be able to wear
socks or underwear. I didn’t even need a toothbrush— the hospital provided one. I
just needed my Walkman. Mom had the most to put together, because she would be staying
the night with me. We watched television while she
packed, and when it finally came time to turn out the lights, we said good night the
same way we always did.

At three a.m. my phone didn’t ring. I didn’t sleep much and really didn’t need a wake-up
call, but I wanted to feel like Mike was there for me. My heart ached. I didn’t want
him to hate my decision, but I wasn’t about to do anything to change it.

My dad was the first one up, making coffee. Mom took a brief shower and then carefully
arranged my hair into a French braid— the best style for hair that would be pressed
against a pillow, untouched for days. No one spoke much. It felt like we were all
too busy going through our individual what-ifs. I pulled on my gray sweatpants and
sweatshirt, gathered my headphones, and popped in my mix tape.