When Carol Decker sits down to talk, she looks right at you. She
cocks her head and smiles. She gestures and laughs easily,
ducking her head so her brown-gold hair slides across her face.
She is so intent on what you say, and so thoughtful in response,
that it takes a moment to realize that her hazel eyes are
flickering back and forth. It takes another minute to see that
the right hand she waves is missing a ring finger and that her
left arm ends below her elbow. When she jumps up to answer the
doorbell, her walk has a side-to-side sway. "My new feet are
bouncy," she says with a laugh. Those feet are steel and
plastic, jointed at the ankle and attached to sleek carbon-fiber
braces that clamp to both legs at her knees. She lost her
feet—and her hand, her finger, a good portion of her skin and
her sight—to an overwhelming reaction to an infection while she
was pregnant with her younger daughter.  Her daughter, Safiya,
survived. Against the odds, Carol did, too. But three years
later, the most remarkable thing