GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love (35 page)

The next time she saw the young doctor, he confirmed the diagnosis of polio. ‘I'm afraid it's as we thought,' he told her. ‘Now we just have to wait and see how severe your case is.'

Even the word polio was enough to strike fear into anyone living in America at a time when there was at least one major outbreak every summer, sometimes claiming thousands of lives. And assuming she survived the illness, Lyn wondered what kind of life she would have. She might spend the rest of her days confined to a wheelchair, or hobbling along with misshapen limbs – or worse, stuck in an iron lung forever. It was hard to believe that just a few days before she had been perfectly healthy, yet now she had no idea if she would ever walk again.

The doctor went out into the corridor to inform Ben of her diagnosis. Ben put on a brave face, but at his parents' house afterwards he cried like a baby. What had his poor Lyn done to deserve this?

At the hospital, there was little the doctors and nurses could do beyond making Lyn as comfortable as possible as her fever increased and the pain grew even worse. She spent much of the next few days unconscious, as bit by bit the disease crept up her body, burning out her neurons as it went.

In her wakeful periods, Lyn lay staring up at the ceiling in terror, wondering if she would ever leave the bed she was in. As she felt the burning sensation shoot up her legs and into her back, she was haunted by an ominous shadow cast upon the wall of the ward. It was the outline of the iron lung, a terrifying metal coffin, which could well become her only means of breathing if the polio got as far as her chest.

In isolation, the only real distraction from the pain – and the delirious fever that accompanied it – came with the arrival twice a day of the hot-pack machine, an aluminium spin-washer that contained steaming woollen bandages, which a nurse would drape over Lyn's legs. Many patients found the wool treatment unbearable – they hated the scalding heat of the packs and the clammy coldness that followed – but for Lyn the distraction they provided was blissful.

At first, Ben was not allowed to visit Lyn in isolation. He stood anxiously outside the room day after day, looking in through a tiny little window. On one visit he brought young John with him to show the boy that his mother was all right. John was too little to see into the ward, so someone found a stepladder for him to stand on, and he clambered up it and nervously peered through the window. ‘Look, there's Mommy,' Ben told him, pointing towards Lyn, who turned her head towards the window and smiled.

But John was traumatised by the sight of his mother laid out on a hospital bed, surrounded by mysterious machines and strange figures dressed head to toe in white with only their eyes showing. ‘I want to go home,' he wailed, so Ben picked him up and hurried him away.

Lyn's doctor came to see her afterwards. ‘I think it's best the boy doesn't visit you here,' he told her.

‘If you say so, doctor,' she replied, doing her best to hide how heartbroken she felt.

After a while, the doctors and nurses agreed to let Ben onto the ward with her. After all, if Lyn had been contagious he would probably have caught the disease already – and in a country where polio outbreaks were frequent, the chances were that Ben had developed an immunity in childhood without ever showing any symptoms. Nonetheless, he was forced to wear the regulation white gown and mask on his daily visits.

As Lyn's fever and the worst of the pain subsided, to be replaced by a dull, insistent ache, the damage done by the polio began to become clear. ‘Well, it could be a lot worse,' the doctor told her. ‘The paralysis hasn't reached your lungs, and your arms are strong. We're going to transfer you to a convalescent ward, and there we can work on improving your condition with physiotherapy.'

‘Will I be able to walk again?' Lyn asked him. It was the question that had been plaguing her ever since she had arrived at the hospital and she was terrified of what he might say.

‘I can't tell you that right now, I'm afraid,' the doctor replied. Then, seeing the devastated look on Lyn's face, he tried to offer her a little more hope. ‘I've seen plenty of people in your condition get back on their feet and walk again eventually,' he told her, ‘whether that's with braces or throwing one foot out ahead of the other.'

Despite the doctor's good intentions, every word he had said made Lyn feel worse. She didn't want to be a cripple, hobbling along with mismatched legs. She just wanted to go back to how she was before.

The year's polio epidemic had been the worst ever in California, and over 3,000 people had died. In many respects, Lyn was lucky – but right now she certainly didn't feel it.

When Lyn had first arrived in hospital, she had imagined she might be there for a few days or weeks, but on the convalescent ward she began to realise she was in for the long haul. She soon settled into a routine. First there were more hot-wool treatments, which her physiotherapist explained would stop her muscles from contracting. ‘It's to prevent the limbs from deforming,' he told her, ‘as one muscle tries to take over from another that's been damaged. If this muscle pulls too tight, the other one will end up like the strings on a tennis racket.'

After each application of the boiling-hot bandages, Lyn's limbs would be forcibly stretched by a nurse, a process that was agonising to begin with. Then they began asking her to do some of the stretching herself, which Lyn found exhausting and demoralising. Making tiny improvements day by day, it was hard to imagine that she would ever have the strength to walk again, and Lyn spent many tormented hours wondering how far her recovery would take her.

At least on the convalescent ward Ben was allowed to visit without having to wear a mask. But it was a source of constant sorrow to Lyn that he couldn't bring John with him. She missed her son more every day, and felt desperate to get out of the hospital and back home to him.

As well as Ben, Lyn had regular visits from Auntie Louise, who as a polio survivor herself knew more than anyone else in the family what she was going through. ‘You'll be all right in the end,' she told Lyn. ‘I know it's hard work, but bit by bit you can make a big difference.'

It was good to have Auntie Louise's support, but Lyn still found the progress unbearably slow, and the motivational posters plastered all over the ward by the physiotherapists – Aesop's tortoise beating the hare in the race, along with insightful quotations about the rewards of hard work – did little to help boost her spirits.

At least with some help from the nurses Lyn was able to sit up in bed, which meant that she could read and write to keep her mind occupied. There was a task she had been putting off for some time that she knew she had to face – writing to let her parents know what had happened. After much delay and procrastination, Lyn finally put pen to paper. She told her mum and dad not to worry, that she was being well looked after, and that with enough physio she hoped one day to walk again. She waited anxiously to see how they would respond.

The letter she got back from Southampton made her feel worse than ever. Mrs Rowe was devastated to hear what her daughter had been through, so many miles away from home. ‘You broke my heart, Gwen,' she wrote.

Lyn felt awful – all through her time in the cabin in the mountains, and through her struggles with Ben's mother, she had never told her parents how hard she was finding life in America. Now that she had finally risked it, all she felt was guilt.

But the worst part of the letter was an off-hand remark. ‘I'm sure you'll be up and walking again soon,' Lyn's mother told her, ‘but I hope you don't have to wear those ugly iron braces.' Lyn wept as she read those words – right now, she would have given anything to be walking with the ugliest braces in the world. For months she had been unable to move from her bed.

While Lyn's mother was 6,000 miles away, wishing she could afford to fly over and see her beloved daughter, Mrs Patrino, who lived hardly any distance away, never came to visit her. But back at home, she was making her own adjustments to the new situation.

One day, Ben came in to see Lyn with an anxious, hangdog look on his face. ‘Hi, honey,' he said. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘Terrible,' Lyn replied honestly. ‘How are things in the real world?'

‘Well,' Ben replied cautiously, ‘actually, I have something to tell you. John and I have moved back to my parents' house for a while. We've given up the rent on the apartment.'

Lyn was used to feeling numb in her lower body, but now her whole spirit felt paralysed. Ben's mother had got him back, and the home that she loved so much was gone.

Perhaps sensing that her spirits were low, her physiotherapist decided Lyn needed a motivational boost. ‘There's someone I want you to meet,' he told her, as he wheeled her in a chair through to another part of the ward. There, to Lyn's horror, a woman lay encased in an iron lung. ‘She's been here eight years,' the physiotherapist told Lyn. ‘So you see, you could be a lot worse off.'

The poor woman told Lyn about the battle she was fighting with the city to be allowed home with a nurse and a special bed. ‘I'm not sure how much longer I can bear it in here,' she said. And hers wasn't even the worst polio story in the hospital – one man on the ward had been in an iron lung for almost a decade. ‘I keep asking the nurses to help me end it all, but they won't,' he told Lyn pathetically.

Despite the physiotherapist's intentions, the sight of these people living through her own worst nightmare only made Lyn feel even worse. Her doctor was furious when he found out about the excursion. ‘What were you thinking?' he asked the physiotherapist.

His own belief was that the carrot was more effective than the stick. ‘I'm going to make you an offer,' he told Lyn one day. ‘If you can get to the point where you can sit up in bed without assistance, I'll let you get out of here for Thanksgiving. We can get a nurse to look after you at home.'

‘Thank you!' she replied. ‘I'll try my best.'

The doctor's offer had the desired effect. With a clear goal ahead of her, Lyn pushed herself like never before, strengthening her muscles day by day with excruciating and exhausting exercises. Sometimes it was a case of reawakening muscles that the polio had all but destroyed, and sometimes it meant learning to use new muscles to take over their functions. She had just one thought in mind: getting home in time for Thanksgiving dinner with her husband and son, even if it was at Mrs Patrino's.

On his daily visits, Ben offered plenty of encouragement. ‘John is really looking forward to seeing you after all this time,' he told her.

Bit by bit, Lyn continued to make progress, until one day, when the doctor arrived on his rounds, she was able to prove how far she had come. With tremendous effort, she raised herself up from her back and heaved her way to a seated position.

‘Well done, Lyn, you did it!' the doctor beamed, as she sat there breathing heavily. She had never in her life imagined that she would feel so proud of such a seemingly minor accomplishment.

When Ben arrived, she shared the good news with him. ‘That's wonderful, honey!' he said. ‘But I'm afraid I have something to tell you.'

‘What is it?' Lyn asked.

‘I've been talking to Mom,' Ben continued. ‘Of course, she's as pleased about you getting better as the rest of us, but . . .' He broke off for a moment and sat looking at the floor. ‘She doesn't think you should come back and stay in the house. She says Pop will find the wheelchair upsetting.'

Lyn was staggered. ‘You know that means I'll be stuck in here for months?' she said desperately.

Ben was clearly upset by the situation himself. ‘I tried talking to her,' he said, ‘but she wouldn't budge. I don't know what else to do, honey.'

When Ben had gone, Lyn wept. She was powerless to fight his mother now. She couldn't even get out of bed.

The next day, Ben's Auntie Louise came to visit Lyn in the hospital. ‘I heard about what my sister said,' she told her, ‘and I want you to know that I'm here for you.'

‘Thank you,' Lyn replied. Louise had always been good to her, even before she had been ill.

‘I didn't get much help myself when I had polio,' Louise told Lyn, ‘and I want things to be different for you. If they're willing to discharge you, you can come and stay with me and Sid.'

Lyn felt overwhelmed by Louise's kindness. ‘That's so sweet of you, but I couldn't do that to you,' she replied. ‘I'm going to need a hospital bed and a nurse and all kinds of things.'

But Louise wouldn't take no for an answer. ‘You're moving in with me, kid,' she said.

As Auntie Louise wheeled her out of the hospital, Lyn was transfixed by her surroundings. The trees, which had been fresh with blossom when she had arrived in July, were now bare, and the crisp smell of autumn filled the air. After four months in an air-conditioned ward full of clinical smells, it felt like breathing in life itself again.

Louise helped Lyn into her car and put the wheelchair in the boot. ‘We'll be having some visitors tonight,' she told her, as they drove to her house. Lyn felt overwhelmed by all the cars whizzing by, and the noises of the city as they drove through it. ‘Okay,' she murmured.

Thankfully it was no great gathering of the Patrino clan, just Ben and John, who were already there to greet Lyn when she arrived. ‘Oh, honey, it's so good to see you,' Ben told her, rushing over to help her out of the car and into the wheelchair. He pushed her up to where little John was standing with Uncle Sid in the front drive, nervously hanging back. ‘Aren't you excited to see your mommy?' he asked the boy.

John nodded obediently, but there was something a little hesitant about him as he approached the wheelchair and awkwardly hugged Lyn's legs.

He's scared of me, she realised with a jolt of sadness.