Tranquil Tornado

One of my favorite people during the forty-years at Sugar Loaf Health Center was a bull of a man turned docile as a pussy cat. Tim Broadbent had been in a tragic motorcycle accident thirteen years before and was lucky to have survived. As you might guess, the wreck changed him completely.

Through four counties this heavy-drinking, woman-chasing, motorcycle-screeching, barroom-fighting man had a reputation even the joint police forces cringed at. An honest, hard-working farmer by day, he turned into a hairy-armed hellion at night. Imagine Dr. Jekyl so strong that he threw hay bales with one arm in hundred-degree heat and you might be able to envision how threatening his darker self could become at night. One of the targets he aimed his pent-up energy was women.

When this five-foot-eight gorilla donned his engineer boots, leather gloves and hole-filled jeans, then revved up his Harley Davidson, no one was safe. Put several quarts of Budweiser in his dehydrated stomach and even the cows and pigs had better barn themselves. He ripped through vegetable and flower gardens, tore through clothes lines, and spooked more than one herd of Gurnseys coming home to be milked. And when he neared a City Limits, even police road blocks were helpless. He made Evil Knievel look like a tike on a training trike.

But all that changed when he cycled to Colorado to taste Coors in its native land and be entertained by Rocky Mountain women. For halfway

through a tight curve, the three-quart appetizer caught up with him and he slammed into an on-coming semi. Rather, slid under it and crunched beneath the tires and low-hanging transmission. When I met him, he had spent thirteen years in a wheelchair unable to move the right side of his body, unable to think clearly, unable to remember much. Two other things had been squashed out of him: frustration and ambition.

It didn't take a clairvoyant to see that the former Tim was built for tremendous work and needed opportunities for great energy release. Looking at his massive forearms, I'm sure he had thrown fifty-five pound bales with one hand. And seeing his eyes twinkle, there could be no doubt about his womanizing. But now there was barely a hint of his reckless side. On the other hand, I could see how, if his great energy were bottled up and his body were able, this hairy-armed tank could full-throttle a motorcycle and not care about consequences.

In a sense, Sugar Loaf was blessed by the presence of Tim Broadbent. Everyone knew he was totally incapable of giving them any trouble. It seems that his football helmet had offered just enough protection when his head banged into wheels and underhanging steel; he received an instant lobotomy instead of decapitation. With no aggressive center to kick in, the man was left tranquil for life. With a severely damaged liver, one more drink of alcohol would poison him. And with his family jewels splattered somewhere on Highway 70, he was no threat to even the most beautiful, sexy, or yes-saying woman, Carey Delmar included. He was, as my notes remind me, a pussy cat. But in spite of this and his lost memory of wild days past, one could still sense what he had been. It was to this that I catered.

My approach to Tim Broadbent rose several eyebrows at Sugar Loaf, but my rising popularity as a Program Manager urged me to be more

experimental with the Residents than the more conservative Staff. They came to see that there was no way known to medical science to return Tim to his former self. And to me there was no problem reminding him of his good old days since his mind had been so drastically altered. So constantly I teased him about the women bouncing down the hallways, how that tomato juice looked like blood but wasn't very Mary, and his wheel chair couldn't peel like a Harley. And when I pushed him down the hall yelling, "Make a hole! Make a hole!" it was worth threatening a few Ambulatory to see Tim laugh. I'm sure the spurts did wonders for the man's psyche, for finally, here was a Staff who treated him like a man, not a vegetable. And even though he couldn't remember the booze, the broads, or the bike, somewhere, way back in his severely damaged brain, there was a LITTLE memory of these having once been objects of pleasure. So when I greeted him, "Hey, Tim, how they hang'n?" it didn't bother him a bit that he hadn't seen them for over a decade. Hanging, swinging, or even just being there.

Whether you described the man as a bull, gorilla, or ox, or used inanimate metaphors such as tank, bulldozer, or brick outbuilding, even the sightless could see that God had pulled the rug out from under this giant. For while Tim Broadbent had once been a whirling tornado, now he was barely a gentle breeze. Still, it was a joy to see such a soft man, one who always smiled and said thank you, even though it was out of the corner of his contorted mouth.