[Ed note: This post was co-written by Chuck Babbitt]
We stay up too late Saturday night and Lisa awakens too early and can't get back to sleep. That afternoon she has the final showing of the play The House of Blue Leaves. Her head is as noisy as the chattering early birds outside the window, wondering how she can spend a day on the boat and still get back, prepare and do the play on so little sleep. We are planning to take our old friends Rick and Debbie Reynolds out for a day of cruising and dolphin watching on the other side of Oahu. When I wake up I can feel that Lisa has been awake for a while. It's really best that she stay home and relax, rest her voice, exercise a bit, run her lines, and prepare to become the loud and energetic New Yorker Bunny Flingus for the last time. I head off to meet the Reynolds and Lisa, with the pressure off, falls back asleep.
When Lisa wakes I am at the helm of the Willa Mae III off of Kahe Point with Rick and Debbie watching the playful Nai'a, Hawaiian spinner dolphins, put on a spectacular show. Planning to take a jog, she put on shorts, a sports-bra and t-shirt and heads upstairs. She pours a cup of coffee and sees the flowers are dry. She puts fresh water in the vases and hydrates our little Christmas tree. Stepping out on the lanai the spatial arrangement of the flower pots catches her eye. " It would look better if I swap these two plants and put the tall one down there" she thinks. As she moves the pot from the railing it catches the string of Christmas lights and the next pot over drops, falls, and crashes onto her left foot, the terra cotta pot shattering into jagged pieces.
On the ocean we watch a lone humpback whale surface and dive.
Thinking the pain in her foot is mostly due to the pot hitting her always-sore bunion she goes to get a new pot. Wet. What's that wet feeling? Blood. Blood is gushing through the potting soil. She hobbles inside and rinses the dirt from her foot. Alarmingly she sees something white through the gushing blood in her wound. Bone? What's that? She wraps her foot in a paper towel and shuffles over to our townhouse neighbors door. "Marlin? I have a little emergency here." Our neighbor Marlin Atkinson is a marine biologist and researcher at the University of Hawaii. He checks out Lisa's wound. " I think that might be tendon. We need to get you to the emergency room."
Off Kaena Point, Debbie, Rick and I watch a graceful albatross wheel and land at the nature reserve on the point.
Marlin drives Lisa to the emergency room at Castle Medical Center. The wait isn't long and soon they are driving needles full of painkiller into her foot. All she can think of is wearing Bunny Flingus' high heels in the matinee finale in just a few hours. They irrigate the wound and pick put pieces of terra cotta. The doctor does an exam, holds her toe up and asks her to press it down. Nothing. Holds it down and asks her to flex it up. Nothing. They send her for x-rays to see if anything is broken. When things settle down Lisa sends a warning text message to the stage manager. When leaving our condo she found her old phone with the New York area code was dead so she grabbed the new phone with the local 808 number. At first she can't find the space bar on the unfamiliar keypad so the text come out "Ann@castlemedcentergettingStitchesinfoot will call when i know more should make show but smashed foot may need flat shoes lisa barnes".
Off of Waianae I put out some lures and we troll for game fish along the forty fathom ledge.
The doctor talks to Lisa and it is apparent that things are far worse than not being able to wear Bunny's high heels. She has severed the tendon in the top of her foot; the tendon that controls the big toe and is critical in maintaining balance. He tells her that she is going to need surgery within two days, before the tendon retracts toward her shin and they have to search for it with a knife. It is best that she wait and schedule the surgery in a less hectic environment than the ER, but they are going to sew her up temporarily and put her into a soft cast. A cast? Lisa calls Ann the stage manager and gives her the news. A cast? Ann makes more calls and people at the theater start scrambling. After Lisa is sewn up, bandaged and in the soft cast, she looks down and blood is soaked through and dripping all over.
On the ledge flying fish soar away from the bow of the boat and we catch and release a couple of tiny tuna called kawakawa.
Lisa sits back down and the staff redresses her wound. She talks to her director, Joyce, on the phone. "Do you have the energy to do Bunny they way you normally do?" Uh. "You could sit in a chair and someone else could do your blocking on the stage" Huh? "If you can't do it I will do the part, but we’d rather you do it, of course.” Lisa calls me and doesn't get an answer. She sends a text "Please call me on this phone".
Rick, Debbie and I swim through clouds of colorful tropical fish at the warm water outfall of the power plant at Electric Beach.
After drying off I check my phone and there is a message from Lisa. I hope she has had a relaxing day. My call catches her right before Marlin drops her off at the theater. I listen, jaw dropping....flower pot, severed tendon, emergency room, cast, going to do the play from a chair.... wtf! I pull anchor and head back to the marina. When Lisa gimps into the theater the place is so busy they barely acknowledge her. “Lisa, you're going to do the play on her crutches and cast. The props will be here... you'll do most of it from the stool by the kitchen.... Rob and Stacy will work around you.... when you are supposed to leave the stage at this point just turn on the stool and face away from the audience, then turn back when you are supposed to come back on...” The entire crew has come together and the play will happen.
I quickly rinse the boat and drive home. A fast shower and change of clothes and I make the short drive to the theater. Do it from a chair? How would that work? When I get outside the theater I hear the bell indicating the end of intermission. Well I guess the play went on. Someone recognizes me and says I can go into the dressing room where Lisa and the cast are prepping for the second act. You can feel the buzz in the room. I get a quick kiss and a snide comment about leaving her alone and then the director finds me a perch on the aisle stairs in the sold out theater. I get to watch the second act and I don't know what I missed but it is obvious the audience is totally on her side. She gets big laughs, including a mirth explosion when she ad libs a reference to her condition, and there is a big ovation when she makes her last exit across the stage on her crutches and when she hobbles out for the curtain call. I am very proud of her.
Still, she should have come on the boat.
Aloha!
Photos of the play The House of Blue Leaves (taken the day before the accident between shows) are here The House of Blue Leaves - a set on Flickr
Photos of the day on the Willa Mae III are here A Waianae Day with the Reynolds - a set on Flickr
And you must see this.... CSI Hawaii with Lisa Barnes - YouTube
