Rose Post column: There in spirit

Timothy Mullins is gone!

Gone home to Cleveland, Ohio, from the Bill Hefner VA Medical Center, where he's been since he suffered a stroke about three months ago.

And what is the Medical Center going to do without him?

Who's going to make the other patients and the nurses and the doctors and everybody else who's had the great good fortune of passing his way laugh?

Who's going to suggest that you can shake his stump goodbye, if "it won't freak you out"?

Who's going to go flying down the hall and bump -- softly, of course -- into another patient in another wheelchair to whisper that he forgot to zip his fly?

Nobody, now that Timothy is gone.

But his spirit is bound to hang around awhile. People will be asking each other if anybody's heard from Timothy lately, because he spread his joy to be alive wide and deep -- because he almost wasn't.

"He accidentally touched a transformer when it was alive," Chaplain Fleming Otey told me when he called to say the Post shouldn't let Timothy get away without telling people here about him.

"He had an out-of-body experience," the chaplain said. "He just went out of his body and watched the electricity go up his arms and turn them to charcoal, and he tells a story of faith and talks to kids at school. He went to Florida on spring break -- and told the kids the alligators didn't get fed that day so they ate his arms."

Then he told them the real story of 14,500 volts of electricity going through his body and living because an angel told him he still had work to do.

Before he left the hospital, he asked Chaplain Otey if he could witness there and let people know how strong his faith is "because you have to share the love and spread the word that God is real."

So, of course, the chaplain arranged it in Building 21 for the patients who couldn't go to the chapel and in Building 42 for elderly patients and at the chapel.

The people who heard him were so excited and impressed they asked him to call the Post and tell his story for everybody.

And Timothy wanted to tell it -- after he'd waved his stump and told everybody we passed on the way to a quiet conference room that he was leaving Saturday morning.

"I'm 48 years old," he said, plunging right in. "I walked away from death 10 times before I had heart surgery in August, 2000, two massive strokes, three mini-strokes and two bouts of pneumonia.

"And that was all after the 10 times.

"One time, in 1981, I was on a motorcycle and hit a cinder block on the freeway, broke my wrist, my collarbone, 30 percent of my body was covered with road burns and a big gap on my eye," and he leans close so I can see it.

"That was the first time I had a religious out-of-body experience," he adds.

"The second time -- this is for those non-believers --was when I was electrocuted with 14,500 volts of electricity and learned there are such things as positive aura and negative aura and also that we have angels -- a left angel and a right angel."

He found that out on a rainy Saturday morning when he was 29 years old.

"On Oct. 21, it will be 20 years."

He put hot asphalt roofing on flat roofs on commercial buildings in Cleveland, Ohio.

He'd picked up a buddy, who "operated my kettle to make sure it was at 550 degrees" and no more, "to make sure we wouldn't burn down any job sites" putting the asphalt on the roof.

"If you put on a bad roof, you had to come back on your own time and own expense to do it right. That was the difference in a good roofer and a bad roofer. If you ain't sober and of sound mind, it's dangerous work. You have to be extremely careful with hot asphalt. ...

"The building had been on fire. Three fire departments had been fighting the fire, and the power company had been called to kill the power to the plant, but instead of killing the power at the transformer, they killed it at the wall.

"And I leaned with my right hand against the transformer, and when I did,14,500 volts of electricity started up the right arm. I stood there and watched it. I screamed for my buddy to help me. He was on a wooden step. A wooden step won't conduct. But when he saw it, he jumped off the ladder and ran.

"And I said, 'Lord, help me now,' and I took my left hand and swung it to the right hand and tried to knock my right hand off the transformer. It was stuck on the transformer like steel to a magnet, and by doing that, it relayed the current back to the transformer and blew me backwards.

"It blew off half my baby toe on the left foot, and put a 6-inch hole in my belly and a hole in the roof of my mouth big enough to put a pencil eraser in.

"And I had what is called an out-of-body experience.

"I was looking down at myself being fried.

"And I started raising to the sky, and I saw bright lights and clouds, and an angel on both sides, and I heard one of the angels say, 'Lord, don't take him now. He's not done.'

"I know the Lord is not ready for me to come home because it's not my time yet.

"And I got slapped back into my body, and I flew backwards about 20 feet into a brick wall, and I looked at my hands. My finger nails were yellow, burnt, curled up and melted from the extreme heat. Electricity cooks like a microwave.

"I gathered my composure and scooted myself off the ground. Here come Bruce and all the guys, and I stayed conscious, and I got up. When they seen me their mouths dropped, and they just stared at me in awe that I was still alive. They expected to find me dead."

An ambulance attendant told him, "Son, you know you're going to lose that right arm," and Timothy's answer was to the point.

"I said, 'Sir, I don't care. I've got kids, and they need me.'

"They took me to the emergency room, took a scalpel and slit me from the shoulder to my wrist, and my arm puffed open like an over-cooked loaf of bread. It was just white fatty tissue. They had to do that to keep the body fluids from going to my heart. They would have killed me from the poison.

"They gave me a shot of morphine to control the pain. But I started freezing from my toes to the top of my head, and I woke up four hours later, and my mother and everybody was standing around me staring.

"My mom said, 'Son, what's wrong with you?' I said, 'Mom, you don't want to know. You're going to have to raise the sheet up and look under it.' She was traumatized, but she was there for me with my wife. They suffered severely."

He's sure God spared his life because of the prayers from his church congregation.

"And since then God has always been with me.

"I knew I was a chosen one. I had hindsight, insight and foresight -- and premonitions. It scared me. I didn't want it that way. I didn't believe I should meet people, read them and judge them. That's not a good feeling to have. You get confused."

He was in that hospital two and a half months and had two operations a week.

"The head surgeon told me I was the best patient he ever had," and he's proud of that.

"He took muscles out of my rib cage and transferred it to the stub of the left arm," maybe 10 inches from where it's connected to his shoulder.

"But I can move it. It helps me drive a car," he says. The steering wheel is raised, and that stub holds it and turns it, and his feet work the pedals.

"I drove 16 years without a license before I decided to get legal because they'd pulled me over 12 times. I go to court, and the court throws it out. I got tired of that harassment. Us handicapped people have as much right as anyone. I asked them what they wanted to say, and they said, 'No comment,' and never pulled me over again. It was like I was a carnival freak.

"I bowl with my feet, move bingo cards with my nose.

"When I had my arms, I volunteered at the VA hospital," he says. "I gave free haircuts and shaves and took patients out to the pavilion on weekends. Where did the idea come from? My heart. I was in the U.S. Marines in the '70s during Vietnam. But in four months it was over.

"I volunteered because the VA's always been there, but I didn't do what them guys did. Twenty-eight years ago, I realized I had a drinking problem, and I went there and they got me sober. I set the challenge. The word 'can't' isn't in my vocabulary because you can. You can do anything in the world you set your mind to."

And he knows exactly what he believes.

"I'm a God-fearing Christian," he says, "and I wish for peace and tranquillity to all mankind, and nothing but peace and happiness to all nurses and nurses' aides who do an outstanding job and their outstanding achievements for what they do for veterans at the VA hospital."

But it would have been nice if he'd won his lawsuit against Cleveland Public Power for cutting the power off at the wrong place during that fire.

And at first he thought he had.

"During the course of about seven years of me taking them to court, they were found 85 percent guilty. The court judge awarded me $1.5 million, but the appeals court reversed the decision two years later. They said I was trespassing on private property. I got nothing."

He sighs.

"The big gets bigger. The little gets littler.

"But no amount of money in the world can replace my arms, and I knew then I'd lost my wife. She told my stepfather she wanted a man with arms. That takes getting used to. She was a childhood sweetheart from 13, but I'd lost my arms.

"But I got to watch my children grow up -- Theresa, Timothy II and Sarah Emily.

"My second wife married me for money and a house."

So that marriage ended, too.

He's got a verse to fit the situation.

"A man will be happier living on the rooftop of his house than living in the house with a babbling woman."

He came to North Carolina because his dad owns five acres near North Wilkesboro. The family had been going there for 17 years on vacation, and he wanted to be closer to his dad.

"So I bought 3 1/4 acres and a cabin. I have a VA pension, and I survive. Those that complain have nothing better to do with their selves. Life has been very good to me. I don't ask for anything special. I just ask for the blessing of the Lord. The God I believe in is not short of cash."

He carried logs into his fireplace.

"At my cabin in the winter, I've got plumb privacy. You can sit there and watch the deer come down from the mountain with their babies and lift up their heads to get the best leaves to eat.

"And the grey-tailed foxes come down off the mountain, and they're smart. They look to the left and to the right to make sure no car was coming. And my wild turkeys wake me up at 6 in the morning with gobble, gobble, gobble. What else could you ask for?"

He'll go back, he says, "as soon as I can convince my sister and my mother that I'm all right. I want to be buried right there."

But he came here to the VA Medical Center several months ago because he had a stroke that paralyzed his right side, and if it hasn't given him back his arms, it's given him a wheelchair made by Sunrise Mobility in Eden, and that wheelchair has become legs and arms.

He doesn't need arms to operate it on his own.

And it helps with his legs.

"The stroke paralyzed my right side, but now that I've been through physical therapy, I've got some of my balance back."

But not all.

"I have to be very careful when I walk."

But that a computerized wheelchair?

With that, he can't run, but he can speed --and did through all those VA hospital tunnels that connect one building with another.

It has miraculous head pads and a knee pad.

The right head pad makes it turn to the right and tilt. The left pad makes it turn to the left. And his knee activates the speed and makes it go forward and into reverse.

That other knee, he implies, is lazy.

"It just sits there."

But he keeps tabs on the other three spots with the "brain," a small computer screen in the arm rest area that tells him what is working and how fast.

It's not only painted red, white and blue, but the chair looks like it's wrapped in the American flag. Those are good colors to go with his U.S. Marines t-shirt.

A part of him hated to leave the hospital where he feels everybody loves him and he loves them in return.

He remembers getting upset about his condition only one time, and he turned to God.

"I said, 'Lord, why not take me now instead of letting me suffer like this?' "

And then he knew why.

"I knew I had to show people how. I had to do a lot of soul searching to show myself I can do it and show God I will do it, and He promised me that he'd never let me down.

"If it wasn't for God and the physical therapists convincing me that I could walk again, I'd still be lying in bed with doubt, but I had faith and trust in them, along with my Lord."

He couldn't wait to get discharged Saturday when his sister, Betty Zimmerman, got here to take him home.

"I want to get on with my life. God comes first in my life, my family second, and I'm third."

And he wants everybody to know what to call him.

"Call me Stubs," he says. "That's my nickname. If you call me 'No Arms,' I'll ignore you."

Of course, you won't call him No Arms. He's got arms in that wheelchair with its head and knee pads and brain that tells him -- and them -- exactly what they're doing or should be doing -- and Stubs had no problem shaking his goodbyes. That short stub didn't freak out any of his good VA Medical Center friends.

Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com.