Stronger

by Jeff Bauman

  He feels like a freak. “There was no escaping all these people,” Tim writes, “all their pity and all their questions.” In the article, only Erin makes me happy. Or if not happy, at least comfortable.

  “Seeing her was the best part of his day now.”

  I know the article is accurate. Tim spent weeks trailing me, watching everything I did. I look back on all the times I laughed with Michele and other survivors. I remember good times. But I was that guy in the article, too, just wishing everyone would leave me alone. In many ways, I still am. I feel separate from the people around me now, even my family and friends. I feel like they’re watching me, like you’d watch a toddler who is happily playing with blocks, but you never know, they could hurl themselves down the stairs at any minute.

  It was hard work at Spaulding. Hard work. When my publisher asked me what I wanted people to know after reading the book, one of the things I said was, “I want them to know how hard it was.” Moving a two-joint artificial leg, meaning an artificial knee and ankle, takes six times as much strength as moving a regular leg. So I had to get stronger. I had to work myself to exhaustion. Not much is ever accomplished without hard work.

  I just wanted to feel normal.

  When the photographer, Josh Haner, came to shoot a slideshow presentation for the New York Times website, that was what I kept saying: “I just want to be normal.” I said it so sadly.

  Was I really that morose? There isn’t much humor in Tim’s article, or in the slideshow. Because they were with me so long, they caught my quiet moments. Those moments were real, but were they the real me?

  Maybe that laughing, joking guy wasn’t the real me. Maybe I was hurting inside.

  No, I was definitely hurting inside. But the wisecracking patient was me, too, because I never spent much time alone at Spaulding. Erin was usually there, of course, and I could be vulnerable with her. But I had to be “Bauman” for my family, and for the twenty or thirty friends who visited me, including a few people I hadn’t seen in years.

  There were dozens of strangers, too: cops, EMTs, marathon volunteers, security guards. Carlos came by a few times, and I met the medical tech running alongside him in the iconic photograph. (I still haven’t met the woman pushing the wheelchair, Devin Wang, who was a twenty-year-old Boston University student at the time, but I’d like to.) These people were dealing with their own issues, and they needed closure. They needed to feel like we’d won. How could I not meet everyone and tell them how grateful I was?

  And how could I seem grateful if I wasn’t smiling?

  “I’m getting stronger,” I told them. “I’m going to feel normal soon.”

  I felt most comfortable, though, with the other survivors. We were from different economic groups and different parts of the country, but we shared the strongest bond. I don’t ever want to see the bloody photographs of the crime scene. But I’d love to see a computer simulation—one of those with the blocky figures that don’t even look human—of where all my friends were standing when the bomb exploded. I’d love to get the sense of the moment that brought us together.

  I wasn’t a fan of our group counseling sessions with the Spaulding psychologist, Dr. Chris Carter. Tim Rohan quoted me as saying the bombers were clowns, but that was only because Dr. Carter asked me. I preferred not to think about the bombers.

  And I hated the way people broke down in therapy group. I wanted to be supportive when someone started crying, saying they were depressed and scared, but I also just wanted to get out of there. Of course they were depressed and scared. We all were. I was flipping terrified. The last thing I needed was to hear more about it.

  I preferred more informal interactions, like our group workout sessions. There were usually three or four of us on mats in the corner, pulling on lat bars or doing leg lifts with weights tied around our stumps. Once my stomach healed, I did sit-ups and push-ups, both surprisingly difficult without lower legs. My PT Carlyn had to hold my thighs, or I would have tipped backward on every crunch.

  My most common workout partners were Patrick and Jess, newlyweds who each lost a leg. I think what they were facing was even harder than what I was going through. I would never trade a missing limb to Erin, even if that meant I’d get a leg back. I’m sure Patrick and Jess would have each lost both limbs if it meant the other could be whole. That’s what love is.

  But Pat and Jess were so good-natured, always smiling. They never seemed down, even when talking about their difficulties. I was inspired just talking with Pat and Jess about their lives together. Where they were from. What they were like before. What they wanted from their marriage. Pat was a youth pastor, and they both loved Erin, so I think they were hoping to inspire me to propose.

  But they weren’t above taking the piss, either. In one exercise, I would sit on a cushion and Carlyn would throw a medicine ball to me. I was supposed to catch it without falling over, because walking on artificial legs is all about balance. It was impossible. I’d fall back or to the side every time I caught the ball. And Pat and Jess just laughed at me, calling me Weeble Wobble because I always bounced back up. I mean, it sucked; everything about it sucked. We didn’t have much choice but to crack each other up.

  The other member of our group, at least for a while, was Ben. He had been hiking in Utah, felt sick, and went to bed. Three months later, he woke up out of a coma with all four of his limbs amputated, all because of a rare bacterial disease. That was so much worse than what I had gone through. That makes no sense.

  And yet Ben was the happiest dude. He loved life.

  On one side, there’s Tamerlan, who grew up in Cambridge. Yes, he was from an immigrant family, and yes, they were poor. But he could have been anything. He had opportunity. And yet he hated life. Hated the world. Hated everyone in it.

  On the other side, there’s Ben, with no legs or arms, who’s smiling every day, just because the sun is shining. And when it’s cloudy, he’s smiling at the rain.

  Then there was Steve, who was clearly struggling. He had lost a leg, but it wasn’t his injury that bothered him most. It was the fact that his young son had been beside him. He had seen the blood and felt the heat. He had seen a dead body, and his father injured on the ground. Steve had reached out to him. He had tried to crawl to him, but his son had stared at him, frozen in horror.

  And then someone had come and taken him away. They scooped him up, leaving Steve on the ground, unable to move, screaming for his son.

  It bothered him. He dwelled on it every day: what his son must have seen, what he must have felt. Steve always looked sad, even when he smiled. Maybe that was how I looked to Tim Rohan when I was lying in my bed, staring out the window at the beautiful spring day, wondering why.

  But that was not what I remember most about Steve. I remember the day ALO, my favorite funky California jam band, came to the fifth floor at Spaulding. ALO hadn’t played in town since the year before. That will always be a special show, because after the concert, I met Erin. Hard to believe I had only known her for a year.

  When my friend Shanette found out ALO was coming back to Boston, she tracked down Zach Gill, their singer, who also played in Jack Johnson’s band. She told him about me: how I was a huge fan and had been injured in the bombing.

  “Do you think you could stop by and see him?” Shanette asked.

  “Sure,” Zach said, “but we don’t have any transpo to get there.”

  So Shanette crammed all four band members and two of my other friends in her old Toyota Matrix. We thought the band was just coming to say hello, but they brought their instruments and set up in the fifth-floor visitors’ lounge. My friend Kevin O’B. brought a platter of sandwiches from Meat Again and lemonade (no beer in Spaulding), and it was a party.

  “Let’s get Steve,” I said to Shanette. Steve and I had talked about guitar a few times, so I knew he was into music.

  Steve came down. ALO jammed. The sun shone through the windows and on the Mystic River outside. I have a video, but about two minut
es in the thing turns upside down. Stupid smartphones.

  After a while, Zach asked me to jam. My hearing was still bothering me, though, so I said, “Let Steve play for a while.”

  Steve declined, but you should have seen the smile on his face as he sat in his wheelchair, watching the band. That’s what I remember: him looking so happy. When I think about where Steve is now, I imagine him at home, playing with his kid, and that smile on his face.

  When I think of Spaulding, that’s what I try to think about: the good times. The good friends who made it happen. The good people I met.

  But there are other memories, too. Like my first real shower, almost three weeks after the bombing. I turned on the water, expecting a fantastic experience—have you ever gone three weeks without showering? It’s awful. But as soon as the water hit my skin, I smelled it: that hellish barbecue on Boylston Street. It was streaming out of my hair and off my skin, like it was coming out of my pores. And suddenly, I was there, lying in the street, on fire. I didn’t see the blood, but I felt the terror. My thighs started shaking, and then my whole body started convulsing, like I was having a seizure. I bent down in my shower chair with the hot water running over me and started screaming, without making a sound.

  18.

  We had two other memorable visitors at Spaulding, a couple of soldiers from the Wounded Warrior Project. I saw plenty of famous people during my recovery: Bradley Cooper; Shawn Thornton from the Bruins; Julian Edelman, Stevan Ridley, and “Gronk” from the Patriots. Dustin Pedroia, Jarrod “Salty” Saltalamacchia, and John Farrell from the Red Sox came by Boston Medical Center and spent one of their rare off days with us.

  They were good guys. I liked them a lot. But nobody was more inspiring than those soldiers. And I can’t even remember their names! I’m not sure I ever knew them. They were “soldiers,” I guess, like I am a “Boston Marathon Survivor.”

  They had actually visited us before, in the ICU at Boston Medical. I was in such a haze in those days, though, from the drugs and pain, that I don’t remember it very well. But I definitely remember them walking into the rehab room at Spaulding during one of our group sessions. I think we all stopped in midstretch, and all the medicine balls fell to the floor. Mine did, anyway. I know walking into a gym doesn’t sound like much, but these soldiers had lost both their legs above the knee in combat. They had to have four artificial joints, just like me. And they walked into a room full of people… with confidence… like it was nothing special.

  That was what I wanted. I wanted to be able to walk without fear or embarrassment. Up until that moment, I’d never seen it done before.

  The soldiers were touring rehabilitation centers, talking with and encouraging people who had lost limbs. It was motivational speaking, I suppose, except they weren’t just speaking, they were leading by example.

  When they said, “You can do it, Jeff. You can walk,” I believed them. I didn’t believe my family, or my doctors, or even my therapists. Not entirely. I thought I did, and I wanted to, but there’s a difference between thinking something is possible and seeing it in practice.

  Those two soldiers made me believe. Because they’d been there, just like me, and they were walking without crutches or even a noticeable limp.

  “Give it one year,” one of the soldiers told me. “It’s hard work, but give it a year and I guarantee you, buddy, you’ll be walking.”

  Those first weeks of rehab are fuzzy. They float in my memory, because of the drugs and the pain. Sometimes, it feels like they never really happened. But I remember those words.

  One year.

  One year from now, I thought later, alone in my room, means the 2014 Boston Marathon. I had never had a goal. I had dreams and expectations, but nothing specific. I was working, but I wasn’t sure exactly what for. Now I saw it.

  A chance to give back to Boston.

  A chance to show the bombers, on our city’s special day, what they had accomplished. Nothing.

  At the 2014 Boston Marathon, I was going to walk.

  19.

  During my second week at Spaulding, Erin had to go back to work. Her office had said she could have a month off, but after three weeks, they realized they needed her. The department was nearing the end of a two-year project, and they couldn’t complete it without Erin. She’s one of those people whom you don’t realize how much she is doing until she’s gone.

  We had never talked, during those first three weeks, about what Erin needed. I never thought about it, and she didn’t want to bother me. I didn’t want her to go back to work, for selfish reasons. I can’t explain why exactly, but I was afraid to be without her. I told her to stay with me, that I had enough money to support her now, thanks to the generosity of strangers, even if Brigham and Women’s fired her.

  She told me she wanted to go back. That she needed the routine. Work, she said, would help her eat better and sleep more regularly. She might even get back on her running schedule. She felt run-down and out of shape. She needed a way to help herself so that she’d be able to help me. She was trying to convince herself, I think, as much as me. It was only later that she told me that she cried when her boss told her she had to come back early, and that she spent most of the first week crying at her desk. She never cried around me.

  I missed her immediately. As I feared, Spaulding was completely different without Erin. She still spent her evenings with me, but it was hard during the day. She had done all the little things for me: reached for the Kleenex box, picked up the television remote when I dropped it, handed me my guitar when I wanted to play. She knew when to talk, and when I wanted to just lie down. She knew not to ask me if I was okay or if I needed anything. When Mom or Aunt Jenn frustrated me, Erin put her hand on my shoulder. When physical therapy beat me up, Erin helped me into my wheelchair. We even figured out how to lie in bed together, affectionately, without banging my legs. It felt good to feel her body next to mine. I wanted to feel that for the rest of my life.

  Erin made me feel comfortable in a way nobody else did. And I needed that, especially then, because I was facing the first big challenge of my public life: a Boston Bruins game.

  May was a good month for Boston sports. By May, it had become clear that the Red Sox didn’t suck, as expected, and they weren’t the cranky, “chicken and beer” malcontents of the past two seasons. They seemed genuinely lovable again, even if they eventually (and inevitably, considering their bullpen) lost their battle for first place with the hated New York Yankees.

  The Boston Bruins, our hockey team, were in the playoffs, and of course I’d been watching. I had my Bruins hat and my playoff beard, which I wouldn’t shave even for the photo that accompanied the GQ article. Erin grumbled about that. She didn’t understand. Every hockey fan knows you don’t shave during a playoff run.

  I hadn’t attended a hockey game in twenty years, because the games were so expensive, especially after buying beer, so I wasn’t that familiar with the arena traditions. When the Bruins asked me to be the honorary flag captain, I had to ask what that meant. They told me that before each game, a fan was invited onto the ice to wave a Bruins flag, while a huge Bruins banner was handed from section to section around the arena. It pumped up the crowd and got them cheering before the team hit the ice. For the second game of their series against Toronto, the team wanted me to wave the flag.

  You might think I’d be thrilled, right? If I was willing to grow a beard for the Bruins, surely I could wave a flag for them.

  I said no.

  It hurt to sit for more than twenty minutes in my wheelchair, I explained.

  I didn’t have a way to get to the game.

  I hadn’t been outside a hospital since the bombing.

  That was all true. But really, it all came down to something else: I was scared. I didn’t like the idea of being out in public. I felt vulnerable. If another terrorist attack occurred, or if someone targeted me, there was no way I could run. I’d be a sitting target.

  And I didn’t want anyo
ne to see me. As long as they didn’t see me, they could think whatever they wanted about me: that I was a hero, or whatever. I wasn’t a hero, though. I was a guy in a wheelchair with no legs. Why would anyone want to see that?

  It was one thing to be in Spaulding with other victims. They understood. We could joke about it. But what did the public know? They had legs. They could walk wherever they wanted.

  I wasn’t like them anymore. And I wasn’t like those soldiers at Spaulding. I couldn’t walk into a room. I couldn’t even stand up. How could I inspire anyone?

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Jeff,” Erin said. She always told me that: You don’t owe anyone anything. You need to do what’s best for your recovery.

  I wanted to be at the game. I wanted to see the Bruins in the playoffs. They were offering me a seat in a luxury box.

  And not going… in the end, it felt like chickening out. I didn’t want to hide. I had to go out eventually, I told myself, so why not now?

  “Will you come with me?” I asked Erin.

  “Of course.”

  That was important, to be with people I trusted. So I talked to the Bruins. They let me bring six people, and that convinced me I could do this. I invited my dad, who was the biggest hockey fan I knew. And his son—my youngest half brother, Alan, who had a weekend off from boot camp. I hadn’t seen Alan since the bombing; he’d been in Air Force boot camp when it happened. Because of the strict rules of boot camp, we’d barely even talked on the phone. Big D came, too, of course, and Sully, Erin, and my cousin Mary Kate, Uncle Bob’s daughter.

  We received a police escort from Spaulding to the TD Garden. It was only a mile, but the traffic was thick. I sat in my wheelchair, in my Bruins jersey, staring out the window at all the other fans in black and gold. I could see a few drivers craning their necks as the police escort nudged them onto the shoulder, and a few more cursing at us. Typical Boston. Even though I was in a handicapped van, they probably thought I was a politician.