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Life's different now for injured bartender

After an accident at Philthy Phil's, a woman used to helping others learns how much friends and customers care.

By JADE JACKSON LLOYD
Published March 13, 2005

ST. PETE BEACH - Leigh Clifton has reigned over the crowds that gather at Philthy Phil's, a popular beach bar, for every minute of her 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift for six years.

Saturday through Wednesday, she was there, pouring drinks double-fisted, remembering customers' anniversaries and bringing in home-baked cakes for their birthdays.

"It's like the Cheers of St. Pete Beach," she said Wednesday, from her home near Gulfport. "It's like my living room."

At 45, she has dabbled in other things: singing, writing, working in a medical lab, freelance photography. Bartending stuck, and after 28 years, evolved into a way of life.

On Valentine's Day, two beer bottles and a loose floor mat nearly ended it.

Clifton remembers that day well. She made about $40 in tips in a few hours. She had seen a lot of regulars, like John Hughes and his girlfriend, Shelly, who had come in to celebrate the lovers' holiday. David Toland and his son, Joel, were there. She was busy.

"I was in a good mood," she said. "It was a great day, Valentine's Day."

About 1 p.m., Clifton was carrying a bottle of Miller Lite in her right hand and a bottle of Icehouse in her left when she caught her foot on a mat near the bar and went tumbling forward, toward the bar.

She dropped the Miller bottle. When she tried to drop the other one, it caught the side of the bar and broke under the neck.

Clifton's left wrist came down on top of it, slicing life-pumping blood vessels in the process.

"I bust(ed) the artery," she said. "I cut it right in half. ... It was like a fountain. (Blood) was all over the place. I looked down and all I saw was blood and tissue and veins."

Clifton knew from working in her father's pathology office years ago that when major arteries are cut, there's only a short window of time before the person bleeds to death.

She knew to apply pressure to the wound. She knew to keep her arm elevated. She knew she had to stay conscious to make sure those things happened.

What she suspected, and paramedics later confirmed for her, was that she was likely minutes from death that day. When Sunstar paramedics said they feared she wouldn't make it to a Tampa hospital before bleeding out, fear set in, Clifton said. They took her to Bayfront Medical Center instead.

"It was the longest 20 minutes of my life," she said.

After seven hours in the hospital that day, Clifton went home. She underwent surgery Feb. 23 at St. Anthony's Hospital.

The broken glass slit a main artery and a median nerve.

Clifton has worn a cast since the accident. She says she can't feel the palm or outsides of her fingers on her left hand, but the insides throb with pain. She can move her pinkie, but not much else.

At a doctor's visit Thursday, she learned that the cast will stay on for another two weeks and physical therapy will start Wednesday, exactly one month and two days after the accident. Since the nerve she severed regenerates from the neck, it has to grow all the way back down to her hand.

Her doctor told her it could take six months to a year before she knows whether feeling will return to her hand. Clifton might never lift a camera or pour a drink again.

Before the accident, the gregarious blond loved going out on her "bargain basement and blessed" sailboat, the Darby Kate. When she didn't see or hear from her mostly older clientele for a few days, she would call them at home or on their cell phones to check in.

"When I'm behind that bar, I'm like a woman with her hair on fire," Clifton said. "If I know it's your birthday, I'll have someone bring balloons. I'll bake a cake, buy a card. That's what I do."

Her days now are different.

Instead of playing master hostess to a bevy of personalities, Clifton plays full-time mommy to her three Hemingway cats and two large dogs. In lieu of monitoring her wine intake, she's careful with the Hydrocodone - similar to Vicodin - the doctor prescribed to curb the pain.

The pain is so bad, it keeps her awake at night.

"It feels like I'm holding my hand over a hot flame and I can't move it away," she said. "I'm a mess. I make my living with my hands, so this is just..."

Her voice trails off.

"You can't imagine," she said.

The bar is different, too. Clifton said the bar mat that she slipped on is gone now. When she returned to get her paycheck the Wednesday after the accident, it wasn't there.

Customers say the soul has disappeared.

"Since Leigh hasn't been there, we haven't been back," said Connie Becker, 59, Clifton's friend and customer for nearly 18 months. She and her husband, Gary, now stick closer to her Treasure Island home. They've adopted Ricky T's as their new bar of choice. "We don't go there at all."

Clark Leips said the way Clifton welcomed him and his wife the first time they entered the bar two years ago persuaded them to move to the beach.

"The minute we walked in, she greeted us like she always does and introduced us to everybody," said Leips, 68. "... I thought, "Hell, the people are friendlier out here.' "

When his wife, Barbara, died, Clifton took off work to come to her funeral, Leips said. Clifton called him the morning she cut her wrist. He told her he would be by the bar that day. When he arrived, she was already at the hospital.

He took her to get her medication and he drove her home. He said he hasn't returned to the bar since she has been gone.

"I don't know of another bartender I've ever met who had quite that ability to make people enjoy being around that situation and her, in the bar," he said. "The main reason I went there was Leigh and all the people who knew her. It's no fun with Leigh not there. The atmosphere's not the same."

Clifton, accustomed to being the one to call customers and friends to check on them, has relied on them to care for her.

Like her neighbor, Sandy, who comes several times a day to make sure the animals are fed and the sheets are changed and to keep Clifton from going crazy, or the people who have sent cards, flowers and food since the accident, so much so that she "feels like 12 people live here, my refrigerator's so stocked."

There's Ken and Hope, who hired a chef from Silver Spoon Catering to cook her as much food as she needs for the next month. And then, there's her best friend Beverly Pedaggi, owner of La Croisette, a restaurant around the corner from the bar.

Pedaggi, 48, posted a flier in her restaurant days after the accident, asking people to give money to help Leigh pay her medical bills. Pedaggi said her customers have donated more than $800 so far and more is trickling in every day.

Pedaggi, a former bartender, said Clifton is one of the best she has ever known and she's going to keep raising money "until people stop giving."

When Pedaggi told her about the fundraising effort nearly a week and a half ago, Clifton started crying. Wednesday, she choked up just talking about it.

"She's awesome," she said, yanking a tissue from the box she keeps within arm's reach on an antique coffee table. "What a friend. It really overwhelmed me, that people would be so incredibly kind."

Clifton has sought help from the bar's workers' compensation plan and insurance. They calculate payments based on wages 13 weeks prior to the accident.

High season had just begun when she hurt herself, so her payments aren't what they could be.

Clifton says dealing with the tedium of being home all day is hard. Not knowing if she'll ever return to her old life is infinitely worse.

Even here, at home, she holds court. Tall and tan, she navigates her home of eight years almost as if her bandaged left arm is an afterthought.

She shows off her photographs and her mother's paintings and is surrounded by pictures of old boyfriends and famous people she has met, including President Bill Clinton and blues great B.B. King. Pictures of her parents brighten the walls, as well, but no family lives close enough to visit.

The simple things she took for granted, like opening cat food and washing her permed, chin-length hair or cleaning her three-bedroom house are impossible now without help.

"I'm not really religious, but I'm spiritual," Clifton said. "I think there are angels all around me."

To donate to Leigh Clifton's fund, contact Beverly Pedaggi at La Croisette, a restaurant at 7401 Gulf Blvd., at (727) 360-2253. Call between 6:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

[Last modified March 13, 2005, 00:22:15]