Stronger

by Jeff Bauman

  “I’m not going on the ice,” I said.

  “Come on, son,” my dad said.

  Erin squeezed my hand. “It’s all right,” she whispered.

  I had told the Bruins this might happen. I haven’t been outside since the bombing, I’d explained. I’m screwed up. I can’t guarantee anything.

  They said they understood, but I knew I was letting them down. I tried to think my way through my fear, but the more I thought about the crowded arena, the more I felt trapped. It was like being on the high dive… in front of a crowd… in my wheelchair. Staring down at the water wasn’t going to help. I wasn’t even comfortable with the idea of sitting in a private box.

  I probably should have practiced being outside, I thought. I probably should have spent time around people I didn’t know to see how it felt. But there was no way I could back out now.

  “I can’t do it,” I said again. “I’ll watch the game, but I can’t go out there.”

  We reached the arena and pulled into the loading dock next to the ambulances. There was a short ramp, and then we were so close to the ice you could feel the chill. The public relations people for the Bruins were waiting. I had told them no media and no interviews, so it was a small group.

  “Are you ready?” they asked me.

  “Let’s do this thing,” I said.

  I still don’t know why. It was just… when I got into the arena, I suddenly felt like I could do it. No, that I should do it. And most important, that I wanted to do it.

  They handed me a huge flag, about six feet across. Erin pushed me to the mouth of the tunnel. I chatted with the Bruins people, trying not to look at the crowd across the ice. Breathe, Jeff, I told myself. You can do this.

  Then the lights went out completely, and the music started pumping. I couldn’t see a thing as Erin rolled me along a carpet over the ice. It was pitch-black, until words started appearing on the Jumbotron overhead:

  By now you all know his inspirational story

  His perseverance in the face of great adversity represents all that is…

  BOSTON

  (flash, flash)

  STRONG

  The arena lights came on, and I started waving the flag like crazy. I just kept waving and waving, trying not to look around. It felt like I was at the bottom of the ocean. The crowd rose up and up, climbing away from me into the shadows, but their enthusiasm wasn’t scary. It was contagious. I pumped a fist, and a huge cheer rolled over me. It was like being onstage at a concert. I swung the flag as high as I could. It tangled around the pole, and Erin stepped up to untangle it for me. The crowd didn’t stop. They cheered louder. I pumped my fist for them, a huge smile on my face. Usually, the flag says Bruins. This one said Boston Strong.

  They weren’t just cheering for the team. They were cheering for our city.

  People kept coming up to me in the private box afterward, wanting to shake my hand. The whole game, people kept slapping me on the back, telling me how proud they were. In the van on the way over, that would have terrified me: strangers, backslapping, a screaming crowd. But in the moment, it felt right. These people weren’t staring at me. They weren’t expecting anything. They just wanted to let me know they cared.

  20.

  A few days after the game, Kevin took me out to lunch. He was back at Costco, but he still checked in with me every day and often came by. This was only my second time out of the hospital; I think Kevin had to talk the nurses into letting me go. Kevin is good at talking people into things.

  We went to Flour, one of the restaurants that had given my family and me free meals when I was at BMC. I transferred from the car to the wheelchair with ease, and the owner treated us to a cart full of food. Afterward, Kevin took me for a haircut. Ever since the shower, I had hated my hair. The ’fro had to go. I was allowed to be away for only two hours, but that was enough. I hadn’t brought any pain medicine with me. By the time we got back to Spaulding, my legs and back were sore from sitting so long in my wheelchair.

  By then, I knew I would be discharged. Most patients stayed in Spaulding for at least two weeks after receiving their artificial legs, but I had already been in hospitals for a month. I badgered my doctors to send me home, and I even enlisted the help of my physical therapist, Carlyn. Behind the scenes, Erin was working just as hard to get me home. She knew how much the Island of Misfit Toys affected me. Even in Spaulding, with my fellow survivors, I felt like I was on display. My doctors finally agreed that as soon as my stomach incision healed, I could transition to outpatient care, as long as I agreed to come in for physical therapy four times a week.

  On my last day, Carlyn asked if I wanted to try a special workout. Spaulding had several boats and kayaks that could be launched from behind the building, and Carlyn thought the kayak would be perfect for me.

  So around 10:00 in the morning, Carlyn and I slipped into two kayaks, then into the Mystic River. Boat therapy is common in Boston, and I can see why. Uncle Bob had often taken me out in his bass boat on the Concord River, sometimes floating all the way to the Old North Bridge, where the first battle of the Revolutionary War was fought, but there was nothing like being in a kayak in the middle of the city. The boat just glides along the water beneath you as the warehouses slip past, and with no need for legs, it was almost possible to stop missing mine. It wasn’t long before we were rounding the point into the harbor. I was hoping to paddle next to a freighter, but there were only small boats on the water that morning.

  Once in the harbor, we headed south, toward downtown. Before long, I could see the three spires and sails of the USS Constitution, the oldest ship in the United States Navy. Commissioned in 1794 and named by George Washington, it had been a symbol of Boston for almost a hundred years. We paddled toward it until it towered over us, and although we couldn’t get close enough to touch it, because of barriers in the water to protect it from people like me, it still felt like I was touching Boston history.

  I slipped out of Spaulding a few days later, on May 17, 2013, one month and two days after the bombing. My family had argued for weeks about where I would go. My dad wanted me with him in New Hampshire. Uncle Bob and Aunt Jenn wanted me to move in with them. They never said it outright, but they were worried about Mom. She had been handling herself well, but what if a crisis occurred? What if I fell, or needed quick medical attention? Mom wasn’t good in a crisis. And everyone was worried about her stress.

  Erin couldn’t believe that I was caught in the middle of it. “This drama isn’t good for you,” she’d say.

  I didn’t think anything of it. My family had always been like that. They cared for each other so much that they couldn’t help but argue, and they tried to help so much that they always got in each other’s way.

  “What does Jeff want?” Erin always said, whenever they asked her opinion. “That’s the only thing that matters. It’s his life.”

  If I had my choice, and my legs, I’d have moved in with Erin. But she lived on the second floor of a classic Boston triple decker—a three-story house with an apartment on each floor. The stairs were rickety and uneven, and they curved around a corner. I knew there was no way I’d ever go in that apartment again.

  In the end, there was no drama at all. I decided to go back to Mom’s for a few weeks, as I always knew I would, while Erin and I looked into getting an apartment together. The media loved reporting when survivors left the hospital, but I kept my leaving quiet. There was no media coverage, no party, and no sad good-byes, especially since I’d be back four days a week for therapy. Uncle Bob and Aunt Cathleen pulled up to the door, threw my wheelchair in the trunk, and we were gone, just the three of us, with Tim Rohan and Josh Haner from the New York Times following in their own car.

  About ten miles down the road, Uncle Bob noticed we were being followed. I wasn’t listed in any directories, and we were keeping my home address a secret. I didn’t like the idea of media waiting for me, as they had been in Aunt Jenn’s driveway once when she came home from visiting
me in the hospital. I didn’t want to worry that some nut-jobs would be outside my front door with a rifle, saying, “This guy is a symbol. If we take him out, we send a message.”

  So Uncle Bob called a friend in the Chelmsford police department about our dilemma, and I have to admit, he seemed to enjoy the conversation.

  “It’s taken care of,” he said.

  And he was right. Just outside Chelmsford, there was a huge banner hanging from the highway overpass: WELCOME HOME JEFF. BAUMAN STRONG.

  “Your aunt Cathleen never could keep a secret.” Uncle Bob laughed.

  And just beyond the sign was a police cruiser. As soon as we passed, the sirens came on, and the car following us was pulled over. Apparently, the occupants were from a national news organization, and the officer had a nice time interrogating them, especially when Tim and Josh went cruising past.

  “But that’s the New York Times,” one of them complained.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I’d like to help you, but I can’t pull someone over just because they work for the New York Times.”

  He delayed them for only a minute, but it was enough to get us home.

  21.

  There was a fund-raiser for me that night at the Chelmsford Radisson, organized by Sully and his sister. It was a raffle and dance, with a pay bar, in the big banquet room at the hotel. It was a coincidence that it fell on the night I arrived home; Sully and Brooke had been planning it for a month. No one, including my doctors, expected me home so soon.

  I intended to make an appearance. People kept calling me, and I kept telling them I would be there. But I didn’t want to go. I’d been pushing myself hard to get home; it was a huge moment when I rolled through the door and into our living room–kitchen. (It’s a three-room apartment.) After spending a month trying to get home, the last thing I wanted to do was leave.

  I was tired. Really tired. And in that condition, or maybe any condition, I had no desire to see everyone I’d ever known. There were four hundred people at the fund-raiser, Sully told me. They were serving Bauman Bionic Brew. I had to see it. The label was a picture of my face on the body of Iron Man. People wanted to toast me. They wanted to say hi. But the more excited they were to see me, home and well, the less excited I became.

  “Just say no,” Erin said when I called her for advice. “They never planned for you to come, anyway.”

  But I couldn’t say no. And when I hedged—“I’m tired, guys”—they wouldn’t take the hint. My friends kept calling.

  “We miss you, bro.”

  “It’s a party.”

  “Bauman always shows up for a party.”

  About halfway through, my dad came by the apartment. He wouldn’t come into Mom’s apartment, where he knew he wasn’t welcome. He stood in front of the building and tried to convince me to put in an appearance.

  “I’ll drive you,” he said. “It will be easy.”

  He didn’t understand. Nothing was easy.

  Finally, around eleven, I lay down in my own bed for the first time in a month and tried, unsuccessfully, to fall asleep.

  The next morning, Mom called my brother Tim. Tim’s a plumber, has been for years. He had become friends with the Odoms in the hospital, and Mr. Odom, who owned a mechanical contracting business in California, was helping him finally get into the pipefitter’s union. The circle of kindness, you know. It keeps going on.

  “You need to get over here,” Mom told Tim. “Jeff wants to take a shower, but he can’t reach the knobs. He needs one of those handheld shower nozzles.”

  “Ah, Ma, I told you he was going to need that last week.” It was obvious Tim wasn’t feeling too good. “Okay,” he muttered, when Mom wouldn’t let it go. “I’ll come over this afternoon.”

  “No, Tim, you gotta get over here now. Your brother needs you.”

  Tim showed up a half hour later. He looked like hell, and he was hopping on one foot. He couldn’t even put his right foot on the ground.

  “We went to the Hong Kong after the party,” he admitted. “Vinnie gave us free drinks. For Bow-Man, he said. The whole place was toasting you. Bow-man! Bow-man! I tripped on a sprinkler head coming out.”

  “Sniper on the roof!” I yelled, imagining Tim going down like he’d been shot. I still say that to Tim whenever I see him. “Sniper on the roof!”

  Like I said before, nothing good ever happens in the Hong Kong.

  The next day, Tim’s lower leg was a balloon. Turns out he’d broken his foot the week before, when he dropped a cast-iron bathtub on it. He’d tweaked the break when he tripped outside the Hong Kong.

  But he came through for me, like he always did. He installed the handheld, and that afternoon, in Mom’s apartment, I took my first pain-free shower since losing my legs.

  The sutures holding my thighs together came out a few days later. “Compared to everything else you’ve been through, this will be a breeze,” my surgeon, Dr. Kalish, told me in the exam room at Boston Medical Center.

  I didn’t believe him. My legs looked bad. These weren’t stitches, they were metal wires, and most of them were covered with bloody masses that looked like boils. I made the mistake of checking on them the day I got home. I immediately texted Dr. Kalish a few photographs. He said, yes, they were infected, but don’t worry, he’d take care of them when the sutures came out.

  Now here he was, telling me not to worry again, before leaving me with a resident, who raised her pliers, smiled nervously, and said, “Ready?”

  I lay back on the table and stared out the window. An American flag was flying at half-staff. I thought about Martin, Krystle, and Lingzi Lu, who had all died at the bombing. And Officer Sean Collier, who had been sitting in his patrol car when the bombers snuck up from behind and shot him five times, twice in the head. I wondered if the flag was for the victims of the bombing, or if the hospital had moved on. Had another tragedy occurred? Or did the flag often fly that way? Surely someone died at Boston Medical Center every day.

  By the time those thoughts had crossed my mind, I was crying. I gritted my teeth against the pain and felt the tears rolling down my cheeks. I wanted the resident to be finished, but sometimes, when she yanked hard, I cried out, and she stopped.

  “Oh, okay. Do you need a break?”

  I shook my head no. Dr. Kalish came back to finish me off. There were ten deep sutures that needed a surgical hand. I whimpered, according to Tim Rohan in his New York Times piece, as Dr. Kalish tugged and jerked the wires through my skin. I stared at the flag, flying at half-staff. It looked like a storm was coming.

  Then it was over.

  Dr. Kalish wiped the blood off his instruments, shook my hand, and said, “You did it. I hope that wasn’t so awful.”

  Or as Tim put it: “After this, there would be no more procedures. There was nothing more his doctors could do. His legs would be this way for the rest of his life. Learning to walk again, and whatever happened after that, was up to him.”

  Poetry. Pure bandbox poetry. But you can save it for Matt Harvey’s elbow, son.

  I’m walking.

  WALKING

  22.

  I was hoping to be measured for my artificial legs at BMC the day my sutures came out, but after the operation I was too bloody and sore. So two days later, Mom drove me to United Prosthetics in Dorchester, a south Boston neighborhood. The company had been founded in 1914 by Philip Martino, an immigrant from Italy who was trained as a shoemaker. That’s what their website said anyway.

  Paul Martino, Philip Martino’s grandson, told me a slightly longer story. He said his grandfather actually started carving wooden legs in his kitchen in 1903. He carved every leg by hand for a specific patient, then wrapped the wood in leather and provided a leather cable to hold it in place. Two of his customers liked their new legs so much, the three of them went into business together. They eventually received a government contract to provide artificial legs to soldiers wounded in World War I, and they had been a fixture in Boston ever since.

  It
was cool, listening to this guy talk about the company. I could tell he loved his family, and he loved fake legs. It was even cooler when he pointed at a shelf, and there they were: real pirate-style wooden legs that old-timers had actually used. The office wasn’t fancy. It was in a nondescript industrial area and looked like an old police barracks. But it had history. It was like a museum of legs in there.

  “This is your leg,” Mr. Martino said. “The Genium.”

  Mr. Martino had come to Spaulding a few weeks before to give me my shrinkers, tight cotton mesh socks designed to shape the ends of my legs. The shrinkers were so tight they pushed some of my sutures into my thigh, making their removal more painful, but it was a necessary step. Legs become sensitive after they’ve been blown apart; they couldn’t have handled the pressure of the sockets otherwise.

  During that visit, Mr. Martino showed me the Genium. The manufacturer, Ottobock, had agreed to donate my pair, and the installation was being covered by donations. “We had a lot of calls from concerned citizens,” Mr. Martino told me. “They told us to make sure that kid gets the best. These are the best.”

  Still, actually holding the thing was intimidating. The Genium wasn’t wooden, and it wasn’t one of those legs that’s plastic and flesh-colored, so at first you don’t notice it, until something sticks in your mind as not quite right, and you do a double take.

  The Genium looked like a Terminator leg. I mean that part at the end of the first movie, when you think Arnold Schwarzenegger is burned up in the tanker explosion, but then he comes out with just his metal skeleton, and they show his legs clanking along, with motor sounds, like nothing could stop them. The Genium was metal and plastic, with a titanium joint and a metal plate that attached to my socket—the part that would slip over my thigh—with four industrial-size bolts. Nothing about it seemed human. It had steel rails and a metal pole for adjusting your height and what looked like a piston hidden behind a plastic shin, which moved as the leg bent. Etched on the front, like the brand on a bicycle, were the words: Genium Bionic Prosthetic System.