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Adaptation from Chapters 3-5 of Reunion on the Rainbow Bridge
They didn’t know how they knew, but Jim and Shirley believed they were destined to be together forever, even though she was barely 14 and he was a 17-year-old rookie airman stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Despite their youth and the circumspect eye of Shirley’s mother, Anna, a three-year courtship developed, and their infatuation slowly evolved into deep love.
Suddenly, however, their bliss was shaken, when Jim unexpectedly received orders to transfer to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The enraptured teenagers were devastated at the news that they would be separated. So, as a way to emotionally handle the painful situation, Jim and Shirley decided to become engaged, hoping that planning a wedding would relieve some of the looming loneliness. However, at the surprising news of their engagement, Anna said she would NEVER agree to her daughter marrying before turning 18. As a matter of fact, if it was up to her, Shirley would never fall in love and leave home. But, needless to say, Shirley would have none of that. Not to be kept apart by armed services or a possessive parent, the couple decided that they would elope on Shirley’s 18th birthday, which was about a year away. Jim and Shirley had their secret plan and knew they just needed to wait patiently, but never in a million years did they imagine that their dream would be shattered on a winter day in January 1955, just a few months after Jim’s transfer.
Shirley had traveled that day from Shreveport to Dallas to watch a roller skating competition with her friend David, and they were tired as they began the trip home. Shirley agreed to drive halfway, but when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, she asked David to drive. Finally, she was able to close her eyes and rest, but in her unsuspecting slumber, David had also closed his weary eyes.
They jolted awake at the crushing impact of the car with a bridge railing. Glass shattered as their heads hit the windshield, and metal twisted with a sickening groan as the car flipped over five, six, seven times. Shirley was catapulted from the car, and David was tossed about, before the vehicle careened over an embankment. Amazingly, David climbed uninjured from the wreckage, but he found that Shirley wasn’t as fortunate.
She lay in the road motionless. David tried standing her up, but her legs folded underneath as though she was a string puppet. She drifted in and out of awareness, as passersby stopped and offered assistance. By the time the ambulance arrived, she was completely unconscious. The coroner carefully examined Shirley, who was covered in blood and had rocks embedded in her beautiful face. Then, he pronounced her dead.
At the alarming pronouncement, Shirley’s soul suddenly jarred her body to consciousness, but she found that she couldn’t move or speak. As a sheet was being pulled over her head she panicked believing she would soon be sealed in a body bag. Asking God to please help her, she found the strength to move her fingers. The coroner thought he saw the sheet move and almost dismissed it, but checked once more for a sign of life. Stunned, he felt the slightest trace of life pulsing through her veins and yelled for the ambulance driver. While regaining consciousness for only a moment, Shirley asked him to call her sister Agnes, so her mother wouldn’t be alarmed at the news of her being in a car accident, especially since it was only a few years before that her brother had been killed by a hit-and-run driver on the same road.
After receiving the call from the state police, Agnes and Anna rushed to the hospital. “Where’s Shirley,” they asked David, as fear began to overtake them. “The doctors won’t tell me anything. . .I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” The wait was interminable made all the more excruciating as David shared the horrid details of the accident through his sobs of utter remorse. Finally, a doctor emerged from the triage area. As he approached them, Anna tried to read his face. The doctor took her hands into his own, appearing to want to steady her before announcing that her daughter was paralyzed and near death. She collapsed anyway in a wailing heap on the floor, and David sat there in a state of shock realizing what he had done to the girl he secretly loved. Agnes wrapped herself around her inconsolable mother and only left her side briefly to call Jim. She dreaded being the bearer of such bad news, but knew Shirley’s best hope was to know that Jim was on the way.
Jim had just finished working his shift on the base and had plunked down on his bunk for a little relaxation, when the commanding officer unexpectedly entered the barracks and announced that Jim had an urgent phone call in the office. As he followed the officer back to the office, he asked, “Who is it? Is something wrong with my mother?” The officer only knew that it was the Red Cross patching a call through from Shreveport. “Oh my God, it’s Shirley.”
The officer left Jim in privacy, while he received the devastating news from Agnes that Shirley wasn’t expected to live through the night. He felt like he was going to be physically ill as a sick sweat began to leak from every pore. Through a suppressed scream and overwhelming fear of losing his only true love, Jim told Agnes that he would be on the next plane.
When the officer returned, Jim pleaded for an emergency transfer back to Louisiana. But, since he wasn’t eligible, the officer could only offer him a 10-day pass, while casually commenting, “If Shirley was your wife, I could send you back to Barksdale.” Jim took the pass and left the next day, not quite aware that an idea had been planted in his frantic mind.
Just as Jim arrived at the hospital, Shirley was being taken to surgery, where a metal plate would be implanted against her broken vertebrae, hopefully providing the support that would heal her spine. But, sadly, it didn’t change the diagnosis. The doctor explained to Shirley that she would “never sit up, never walk and never have children.” And, he further suggested, that she “give up any hope of being a dutiful wife and. . .”
Shirley stopped the doctor in the middle of his grievous prognosis saying that no one would tell her what she could or could not do. She didn’t know how, but she believed she would have a full life, paralyzed or not.
But, first, she would have to experience the dark night of the soul, where grieving for all she had lost—her innocence, her independence and her dreams for the future—was a necessary part of the healing process. While she asked why and wept from the depths of her soul, Jim never left her side, not even to shower or eat anything more than a sandwich or sleep in a bed. After seven days, he knew that he could not leave his beloved and was aware of only one way to stay. Jim quietly approached Shirley, placing his hands around her porcelain doll face and asked if she would still marry him.
Having tremendous faith that God would help her overcome any obstacle, Shirley answered, “I sure will.” Jim, then, tenuously explained to Shirley that he wanted them to be married before his 10-day pass expired, to which she replied, “of course.” Anna was surprised that she had not been consulted about this monumental decision, although she wouldn’t have objected this time. How ironic it was that she threw a fit over their engagement just months before not even looking at Shirley’s engagement ring. Things were drastically different now. She no longer saw Jim as “that man trying to take away her daughter,” but rather Shirley’s real-life knight in shining armor.
At the unusual news of a hospital wedding, the nurses enthusiastically helped to get it organized. They borrowed flowers from other patients, put blue sheets on the bed for “something blue,” and taped a penny on Shirley’s foot for good luck. This was not the wedding they planned, but it was more beautiful than they could imagine, as it uniquely represented the marriage vows, especially “for better, for worse, in sickness and in health.” The ceremony was kept short, since Shirley was still so weak, but it was lovely and perfect. When all the guests left, Shirley asked Jim to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, and he did. To their surprise, the doctors and nurses gave them one night of privacy to ponder their unusual future.
Exhausted from all the excitement, Jim laid next to his bride, but couldn’t quite get comfortable in the twin-size bed that was locked into an inverted, 45-degree angle. He scooted this way and that, but squirmed a little too far and fell right off the bed. They both laughed until they cried, and Jim said, “This isn’t how I thought our wedding night would be!” He got back in the bed and kept fidgeting until he found a comfortable place against his wife.
They didn’t realize it at the time, but this is how their life would be—figuring out what might work, trial and error and, ultimately, success. It rained on their wedding night, and they joked that it was God’s way of saying that they could weather any storm. They didn’t know it then, but it would rain every anniversary for the next 46 years.
