Walter’s Gift

 Tara screamed when she saw the red and white rubbish truck barrel through the intersection.

She was still screaming when she woke to bright lights and pain.

Even through the pain, she was aware of her new location. The hospital was a low murmur of voices and humming machines.

Someone was crying. Someone else was arguing in a whisper. Her parents. Of course. Coping in the only way they knew.

The pain in her spine demanded Tara’s attention. The agony travelled from just below her shoulders down to the small of her back. There, it stopped. Beyond her waist, there was nothing, no feeling at all. Tara screamed again.

“I want to go to work.”

“No.” Mum argued.

I can’t do anything here,” Tara argued back.

Being suddenly forced into childlike dependency on her parents shamed Tara. She hated every moment of it. Before the crash, her life had been free. Her boyfriend only visited her once since the crash. There was no kiss. He practically ran out the door just a few minutes later. The apartment she shared with her best friend became a no-go zone because of the narrow stairs leading to it. And, while her workplace was wheelchair friendly, her actual job was not.

Now, the wheelchair dominated her bedroom, she needed help to leave the house and Mum acted like a gatekeeper, challenging her every decision.

“You’re only hurting yourself going back.”

Tara chose not to argue. Mum was right, but, surely, staying home was not the answer either.

“Please. Just drop me off. Then I’m out of your hair for the day.”

“Tara. Good to see you.” Michelle sounded genuinely happy.

“Anything I can do?”

Some days she manned the counter while the others took a break.

“Actually, yes. You remember the blind owl?”

“That came in the day before my crash? The barred owl?” Strange how that memory was so clear.

“That’s the one. Scientific diagnosis. He’s depressed. He’s stopped eating. Doesn’t leave his nest box. Millie says he’s old but physically healthy.”

“But he can’t see to hunt.” Tara understood.

The enclosure was dim, always twilight. It was a room never visited by tourists. They did not know it existed. Recuperating birds did best in the shadowy world it provided.

Tara allowed her eyes to adjust. She was not concerned how long she sat. There was nowhere she needed to be.

Gradually the grey of the room released its secrets. There were perches sticking out from the wall. Bird droppings littered the floor. The body of a mouse lay in one corner. And in the nest, a round head was barely visible.

“Hello Walter.” Tara addressed the unmoving bird. “I heard you aren’t doing so good.” The head moved. Huge, round eyes became visible, but Walter did not look at her.

The position as junior keeper at the zoo had been her dream job. She loved working with the animals, learning to communicate with them. They all spoke; just not with words.

Walter was hungry. He had to be. But the mouse had a rigor to it that suggested it was no longer fresh. It would not find favour with the unhappy bird.

“There’s a mouse if you want it.” Tara felt bitterness well in her throat like vomit. They were two hopeless creatures. Walter could not see, and she could not walk.

Time lingered. Tara sat quietly after her outburst. Walter remained in his nest. Comprehension grew in Tara’s mind. The owl, a creature of the wild, wanted to hunt his own food, not be fed by dangerous smelling humans. A stupid thought slid into Tara’s mind.

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” she spoke softly. What would the world look like to an owl. The owl lifted more of his body from the nest.

“I’m mad, Walter. I must be. But wouldn’t it be great if you could see through my eyes?”

After a moment Tara muttered, “at least then I’d be useful for something.”

There was a knock on the door. Both owl and human startled.

Michelle walked in. “You’ve been here for hours. Thought I’d check on you.”

“I’m fine,” Tara responded. “But poor Walter wants to do normal owl shit. That’s why he’s unhappy.”

The other woman nodded. “Sadly, we can’t help.”

That night Tara dreamed. She was Walter, flying silently thought the trees. The world was black and white. There was not enough light to colour it, and it did not matter. As Walter, she was able to take note of the slightest movement. As Walter, she struck and caught a mouse.

Tara woke with a start. She could still feel the little rodent in her claws, her toes relaxed as she realized it had just been a dream.

Much to her mother’s concern she insisted on returning to the zoo. She had to see Walter.

“He had a mouse!” Michelle was delighted. “I went in really early. He was up so I threw the mouse. He caught it! You were right. He needs to hunt.”

How could a blind owl see to catch its prey? That was why Walter had not been returned to the wild.

Tara remembered the dream. Only as she left Michelle to visit Walter did she also remember her toes. They had been curled when she woke.

“My toes don’t do anything,” she whispered to the air. “I have no feeling in the lower part of my body.”

Walter was sleeping. Tara knew this as soon as she wheeled herself into the dim room.

She was grateful. Her brain was bursting as she tried to take in the idea that her toes may have actually moved by themselves. Doctors told her not to give up hope but there had been nothing happen since the crash.

Her self-reflection did not last long. The warmth of the room almost sent her to sleep. Only an uncomfortable prickling at the back of her eyes kept her awake.  She looked up at Walter. His head was up. If she believed he could see, he would be gazing at the water bowl.

Tara flicked her glance in that direction. The level was low.

“I’ll get you some fresh,” she let the owl know.

When Tara wheeled into the kitchen, all the stainless steel was almost too bright after Walter’s dim room.

“He hadn’t touched that for two days,” Michelle said.

“He must like having me visit.” Tara responded with the words Michelle wanted to hear.

 “I nearly told them,” She admitted when back in the little room with the owl. “I don’t suppose it would matter anyway. No one would believe me.”

No one sensible would believe what was really happening with Walter. That, somehow, he was using her eyes and mind to see. 

Walter had nothing to add to the conversation. He was dozing.

The dream came again. The details were even clearer. Flying, all senses in action, smelling mouse, tasting air, hearing the human. And seeing. Seeing the mouse being moved into the air, thrown by the human.

Catching the mouse was easy. But Walter was dissatisfied. The kill was not his. Even though the body was warm, it was not as fresh as he desired.

Tara woke, filled with Walter’s despair.

She knew she needed to get to him as soon as she could. Her mother would object but it was early enough to snatch a ride with Dad.

“He caught the mouse again but dropped it. The fellow is being contrary.”

“No, Michelle. He thinks the body too long dead.”

It was one of the less pretty sides to zoo life. The carnivores had to eat meat. The fresher, the better. That meant to handlers often had to prepare the kills.

Michelle shrugged. “Fussy bird. He must be hungry. He needs to remember that owls do eat carrion.”

While that was true, picking up dead prey offered no challenge, especially to an owl who struggled to find purpose in his life. Tara kept her opinion to herself.

“Could he go out into the enclosure? Just for some fresh air?”

“The other owls attacked him.”

With that information sitting like a lump in her chest, Tara returned to Walter’s room.

“I get it Walter, I truly do. No matter how much we dream, how much we help each other, we’re stuck. You can’t leave this room and I’m in this wheelchair.”

“You know, I dreamed that my toes acted like your claws. I really believed it yesterday. But it was only a stupid dream.”

Maybe Mum was right. Coming back to the zoo was too cruel. Tara allowed her tears to fall.

Walter fussed about. Tara managed a smile at him. At least he was in a better frame of mind. Maybe she had really helped him.

The prickling behind her eyes began again. This had nothing to do with her crying. This was about seeing. Tara’s vision sharpened. She saw the movement. A spider, large enough to interest a bored owl.

She breathed deeply and allowed her vision to be taken over. The vision become once again a full experience. Listening, smelling, wings flexing, claws clenching, beak opening. She was Walter as he flew and snapped up the spider.

The experience exhilarated Tara. There was the excitement of using her body, even if it was really Walter’s. The spider, though, did not taste so good. Even Walter agreed with that. “What can we do?” she whispered.

Michelle shrugged. “Walter is old.”

Tara was asking about stimuli for the owl. The head keeper was not giving her any good answers. But Walter’s age meant he was unlikely to respond to many of the enrichment games the zoo offered. He would prefer to sleep. “I feel I’m letting him down.”

“Tara! No way. He has so much life to him since you started visiting. But he is old. His world is closing in.”

That night, Tara did something she had not tried since the crash. Her parents were out for the evening, otherwise they would have stopped her. She loaded the wheelchair up with bedding and wheeled herself out into the garden.

There, as the stars came out, she closed her eyes and thought of Walter. There was no response to start with. She waited and took in the night. The air was cool against her cheeks. There were small rustlings in the trees, but no bird calls. The scent of the neighbour’s newly mown lawn filled her nose making her want to sneeze.

The night grew colder and darker. Tara hoped Walter would pick up on her invitation soon. She needed to be inside again before her parents arrived home. The rate she was going, they would return and she could not begin to explain what she was doing.

Prickling behind her eyes told her Walter was with her. Suddenly she could see. The other eyes took in the data she did not have the capacity to notice. The images moved, subtly, minutely. Shadows evolved into 3D images, items she immediately recognized.

Walter stretched his wings, and Tara discovered her shoulders were pulling back, into a more upright posture.

Suddenly she was flying. The joy; hers and Walter’s bubbled as the old owl guided her on a journey into the trees, down beside the fence, across the compost bin.

Together, they explored a world Tara had not known existed in her parent’s back garden. The neighbour’s cat startled them both, as it wandered through. It looked so different via Walter’s vision, Tara took a moment to recognise it. Instead of the tubby orange cat she knew, it was a sharp, light grey shadow.

The cat was heading to the compost bin. Walter and Tara watched. Walter flew up into one of the trees to wait.

A shuffle of leaves.

Walter swooped down, silent and precise. He stretched out his claws.

Pain racketed through Tara’s body. The bond between her and Walter faltered, flickered and reformed. Walter and the cat were almost eye to eye, both pouncing. Surely that was impossible. The cat was bigger and faster. A flick of its paw sent Walter tumbling.

Tara cried out as Walter attempted to recover. He flew for a branch but, disorientated, missed. He tried to right himself, but the tree trunk was too close. He hit head first.

A tiny cracking noise and Walter blinked out of Tara’s eyes. She opened her mouth to gasp with horror. A scream erupted instead as her entire body burnt in agony.

“Tara! Tara, honey. What happened?” Mum was there.

Was it all a bitter nightmare?

The pain was subsiding. Tara knew she had to try. To find out if Walter’s gift had been just a dream. It was going to hurt like hell. Still, she pushed the blanket off her legs so she could see. She then bent her ankle and curled her toes in a clumsy semblance of a claw.

“I can move!” She screamed in pain and joy.