Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [60]
Article 2b ii of the Copenhagen University Grounds Keeping Manual states that “all grounds must be kept in prime condition, including but not limited to the trails and parks within a two mile radius of the academic lawns.”
Is Professor Gallagher’s accident proof of violation?
Professor Gallagher is decidedly humble. She had great plans of being an astronaut or a ballerina. Instead, she has sacrificed these dreams to become a lowly instructor of freshmen minds. It seems unfair that she should be repaid with injury. Particularly when it becomes evident the university does little to provide her with health insurance. “Out of pocket” she laughs good-naturedly, though there is a tinge of regret in her voice. Now she can thank heaven it was only a mild injury which she can afford. What if the root had pierced an aorta? You cannot put a price on an aorta.
When questioned about the accident, Professor Gallagher admits “it was like tripping over a taut rope.” Though highly doubtful that professor Gallagher has any real enemies, the suspicion in her statement cannot be denied: she implies that someone laid the rope to trap her. Someone failed to care for the grounds and as a result a beloved teacher has been dangerously wounded.
Did the grounds people lay a trap for this unsuspecting professor? Of course not. But an act of inattention makes a party guilty. Is not one bolt out of place enough to explode the Challenger? I ask you, are there not sins of omission? Inaction is as much a crime as action. If the people of Copenhagen do not demand better grounds keeping we can expect to hear more where this came from.
When I arrived in my office Friday, I found a bouquet of flowers waiting on my desk. The card read Get Well Soon and was signed The Grounds Committee. This was followed by four e-mails from the president for the Board for Student Rights, who wanted to know if I would come speak at a lecture on their weekend conference devoted to the Health Care Crisis on Campus.
Everett encouraged me to milk the incident for all it was worth.
“These are just flowers,” he said. “Think what you could get if you actually pressed charges. There’s money in litigation.”
“ ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’,” I recited.
“No, the root is evil,” he said. “Actually, I believe insidious was the word.”
11
February took its time. The clouds promised snow but delivered ice. The days blurred together like watercolor brushstrokes bleeding into one pale stain. Though I hated Ohio winters, I was a veteran. Zoë suffered from the lack of color; she dyed twin skunk streaks of fluorescent pink in her hair to compensate.
Her mood as the month went on gave new meaning to the phrase under the weather. She hadn’t written a successful page in weeks, and as a result the energy that she usually channeled into writing had no outlet. She stayed up until five in the morning baking four dozen whole grain, almond raisin granola bars she never ate. She painted our kitchen yellow. She ran seven, eight, even ten miles a day, until her shins throbbed in protest. Michael recommended total rest. At night he played nurse, rotating Ziploc bags of ice from my ankle to her shins and back again.
Though Eli, Zoë, and I spent almost every night together in the small apartment, I gravitated away from Zoë’s company and toward Eli’s as a plant naturally strains for sunlight, grateful that at least one of us remained immune to the ubiquitous gray.
He was applying to artist residency programs on the coast, filling out applications that piled in disorderly stacks. He sometimes talked of moving out. Though the traffic of artists through our apartment had dwindled with the inclement weather, Kevin, the ever-shy sculptor, still appeared every now and again and lingered, a quiet shadow in the background of our busy days. The money he’d poured into his graduate thesis exhibition had