Stronger

by Jeff Bauman

  “I’d like to talk to him,” I told Erin. “Just sit down in his jail cell and hear what he had to say.” I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. I had no idea what that kid would say to me. I didn’t know him at all. “I guess that’s never going to happen.” I laughed. “I doubt his lawyer would think that was a good idea.”

  We chatted for half an hour or so, until it was time to leave. We had somewhere to be, but I can’t remember where.

  “I should have had an egg sandwich,” I said, as I balanced myself on my crutches. “Who has turkey for breakfast?”

  Erin laughed as she cleared chairs to make a path to the door. I worked my way across the restaurant, then out to the sidewalk. When I reached the car, I realized there was a curb. It was at least a six-inch drop. I had walked around to the handicap slope to get in, but it was on the other side of the parking lot now.

  Erin hadn’t noticed. She was chatting away. But when she saw me looking down, she stopped.

  “I can do this,” I said.

  “Do you want help?”

  “No. I can do this.”

  I put my crutches down at the parking lot level. I leaned forward, working the toes of my right shoe over the edge of the drop, just like Michelle had taught me. I stared over the edge, thinking through the motions. I lifted my left foot and swung it forward. My momentum swung with it, so instinctively I leaned back, and then I was falling backward, my crutches coming out from under me, and I finally learned the true value of the legs. I was out of control, but they cradled me, easing me slowly to the sidewalk. Falling didn’t hurt. It felt like I had simply sat down.

  “Are you okay?” Erin asked, rushing to my side.

  “I’m fine.”

  She grabbed my arm by instinct, ready to pull me up.

  “I’m fine. Just let me rest.” I looked around. I was sitting on the curb a few feet from our borrowed Jetta. “I’m going to scoot over to the car,” I told her, “and pull myself up.”

  I worked my way over, grabbed the wheel well, and pulled. I was stronger, but I wasn’t that strong. I pulled again.

  “Can you give me a hand?” I asked Erin.

  Michelle and I laughed about it when I told her the story at physical therapy the next day. “What made you think you could manage a curb?” she said.

  “I don’t know.” I laughed. “I can do a stair or two here, so I thought…”

  “But there’s a railing here.”

  “I had my crutches.”

  “Crutches are different than a railing. Crutches are much harder.”

  I shrugged. “I got cocky, I guess,” I said with a smile. I felt great about the whole thing. Even when it happened, I didn’t feel embarrassed. Erin was worried. As she helped lift me onto my crutches, then into the car, she was quiet.

  “You okay?” she asked finally.

  “I’m great, Erin,” I said, fiddling with the broken radio. “It was just one missed step. It didn’t hurt me at all.”

  Three weeks later, we finally closed on our house. We were so excited, we went straight to Costco. As soon as you have that first house, you have to get that thousand-pack of toilet paper, right?

  While we were there, Mom and Aunt Jenn called. “It looks like the electricity hasn’t been turned on at your house,” Mom said.

  “Are they…!”

  I signaled Erin not to worry, that I had it under control. “Mom,” I said, “you guys better be gone when we get there. You can come by tomorrow.”

  When we arrived half an hour later, a basket of mums from Mom and Aunt Jenn was waiting for us on the front porch, along with a bucket for beer from a cousin. It was a beautiful fall day. The leaves were at the height of their color.

  I kissed Erin. “We made it,” I said.

  Then I swung my legs over the edge of the car seat, transferred to the first step outside the front door of my very own house, and hauled myself to the top with my hands. Erin came around with my wheelchair. She unlocked the door. She helped me inside, held the wheelchair as I lifted myself into it, and together, we rolled into our new life.

  Big D came by with our furniture a few hours later. We only owned three things: a bed, a dresser, and a chair. So we put the bed in the living room, started a fire in the fireplace, and, as the sun went down and the cold moved in, Erin and I snuggled under the covers and watched The King’s Speech.

  I hadn’t made my goal, at least not the one of walking up the stairs into my new life. My sockets were hurting so badly, I could barely put them on. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t stronger. I was strong as an ox. And I had tried. I had worked harder for six months than I’d ever worked before. In the end, something out of my control went wrong, and I needed Erin’s help, but there’s nothing wrong with that. No man is an island, right? Who said that, Darrelle Revis?

  Ha, ha. Just kidding. It was a poet, right? Erin probably knows. And I’m not afraid to ask her, because admitting your limitations, and accepting help, makes you stronger, too.

  SIX MONTHS AFTER

  THE BOMBING

  October 30, 2013

  Around noon, Erin drove me down to Kevin’s row house in the city. I called when we were a few blocks away and told him we were almost there. Five minutes later, he called back.

  “Where are you? I don’t see Erin’s car.”

  “I’m coming,” I said. “Erin dropped me off at the corner.”

  Seconds later, I heard yelling. Kevin had run out onto his front stoop, and he was cheering for me.

  “Shut up, Kevin,” I said with a laugh. “I’m trying to concentrate.” The sidewalk on Kevin’s block was made of bricks. It was uneven, with popped bricks and gaps all over the place. I needed to focus on every step, but Kevin kept cheering, and that brought other people out onto their stoops, and they started shouting at me, too.

  “Where’s your wheelchair?” Kevin asked, when I stopped at the bottom of his steps.

  “I left it at home.”

  I handed him my crutches, then grabbed his railing and walked up the stairs. I had spent a hundred hours with Kevin in the last six months, but this was the first time I’d made it into his house.

  Erin came up a few minutes later, after parking the car, and we took Kevin’s convertible BMW to Fenway. It was my first time in his convertible, too, since the trunk was too small for my wheelchair. The Red Sox people were there to greet me, and I walked up the ramp from the players’ parking lot to the elevator. I had gotten my new suction sockets the week before. They fit like gloves—like Dan Marino Isotoner Gloves. I had been dragging two loose-fitting doors for a month. As the fit was getting worse, I was falling apart. But all along, I’d been gaining strength. And once the pieces fit, the work paid off. I stood right up and started to walk.

  I walked to Kevin’s row house. I walked to the elevator. I walked around the stadium from home plate to first base. This was the top level, the one for the press box and suites, so there weren’t many fans around, but I shook a few hands. My friends Jess and Pat were waiting in our box. When the Red Sox invited me to the game, that was my condition: I wanted Jess and Pat to come, too.

  “Jeff!” Jess said. “I didn’t know you were walking.”

  “Oh, I’m walking.”

  We hugged. They hugged Erin. “Did you see that?” Pat said, pointing to the field. The grounds crew had mowed a huge circle in the center field grass. Inside, also cut into the grass, were the words: B Strong.

  We were sharing the box with the 2004 Red Sox, the team that brought a championship to Fenway for the first time in three generations. The team was throwing out the first pitch, so the only other people in the suite were Jason Varitek’s wife and their two kids.

  “You should go down on the field with them,” she said. “You should throw the first pitch, too.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I’m already going down for the seventh-inning stretch.” James Taylor was singing “America the Beautiful,” and he had asked me to be on the field with him.

 
They came to get us between the sixth and seventh innings: me, Jess and Pat, Carlos, and three other bombing survivors: Karen, Roseann, and Heather. This time, we took the ramp instead of the elevator. It was a long walk, down four levels and then around to the groundskeeper’s entrance, but I felt strong.

  “Go Jeff,” people were shouting, as they saw us coming. “Way to go, Carlos!”

  People were snapping pictures, but I kept my eyes straight ahead, focused on each step. By the time we reached the field level, I was trucking. We slowed down to avoid a crowd, and someone grabbed me by the elbow.

  “Can I get a picture with you, Jeff? I’m so proud of you.”

  I knew it was a bad idea. There were dozens of people, and if I stopped to talk with them, more would arrive, and I’d be standing on my artificial legs all night. But I could never say no. So I was relieved when security hustled toward me, saying we had to get to the field.

  A round of applause burst out, with people yelling and cheering.

  “Thank you, Boston,” I said. I looked over and saw a group of fans in St. Louis Cardinals jerseys. They were clapping, too.

  “Thank you, everyone,” I said, nodding toward them. Then I smiled. “Go Sox!”

  We had to wait in the groundskeeper’s tunnel, a few feet from the field, for a long time. The Sox were leading going into the inning, but the Cardinals loaded the bases, the Sox made a pitching change, and Breslow overthrew third base into center field, giving the Cardinals the lead.

  I can say it now, because the Series is over and there’s nothing to jinx, but I wasn’t worried. The Red Sox had ended the season with the best record in the American League, but nobody thought they were the best team. They lost the first game of the American League Championship series to the Detroit Tigers (probably the best team) and were down by four runs in the eighth inning of the next. Two losses at home, to start a best-of-seven series, would probably have been the end. Then the Sox loaded the bases with two outs, and David “Big Papi” Ortiz hit a screaming line drive to right center field. Torii Hunter, the Detroit Tiger outfielder, leapt to make the catch, barely missed it, and fell headfirst over the wall. Grand slam. Score tied. “Salty” Saltalamacchia got the walk-off hit in the next inning to even the series, and after that, it was all but over.

  Sure, the Red Sox were still underdogs. They still had to win six more games, against the best in the world. They were still only ten outs from a crushing defeat, until Big Papi roused them with a fiery dugout speech in the sixth inning of Game 4 in St. Louis.

  But the grand slam was the turning point. It was the American minutemen racing down the hill to the Old North Bridge in 1775 and defeating the British in the battle still celebrated on Patriot’s Day. You work and work, you get a little better every day, more together, stronger, and then one day something happens, and you believe. Only five people died in Concord in 1775, but a bridge had been crossed, and after that, it was all over except for eight years of brutal war.

  Maybe I should end this book with the Red Sox winning the World Series. Big Papi was the MVP, of course, after reaching base 19 times in 25 at bats, one of the greatest individual World Series in history. My boy Salty? He’s probably most famous for his throw to third base in Game 3… which skipped into left field and lost the game for the Sox.

  Or maybe he’s most famous for stopping the victory parade at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, now permanently painted on Boylston Street, and placing the championship trophy there.

  I wasn’t at the parade. And I wasn’t there for Game 6, when the Red Sox won a championship at Fenway for the first time since 1918. The Sox and the Bruins invited me to four games during that summer. The Boston team lost them all. I had to stay home.

  But I was there for Game 2 (a Red Sox loss, of course). I was on the field in the middle of the seventh inning, when James Taylor sang “America the Beautiful,” and the whole crowd sang along. I didn’t have to walk in the marathon next year, I realized then. I was going to walk, no doubt, but it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t special. I was only one in the crowd, one of the millions. This was our story, not mine. We were together—the Fenway crowd, Boston, all the good people of the world—and that made us unbreakable.

  There was a picture of us, the row of bombing survivors, plus Carlos, in the newspaper the next day. We are lined up along the third-base line, and I’m in the middle, with my crutches in one hand. I’m not even using them for balance. I am just standing there, calmly, like it’s nothing.

  Like it’s no effort at all.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to everyone who saved my life at the Boston Marathon, not just my friend Carlos Arredondo, but everyone who touched my life that day. Thank you to everyone who helped; thank you to everyone who ran to help without knowing if they would be hurt or killed. I would not be here without you.

  Thank you to everyone who has supported me in my recovery. Thank you to Dr. Kalish and Dr. Crandell, the staffs at BMC and Spaulding, all the businesses (like Blunch and the Colonnade) and people (like Tanya and Isabel) who gave when my family needed it most, and everyone who sent me their love and prayers. Thank you to Matt Gobeille, who sent me the special guitar, and all you kids with lemonade stands.

  Thank you to the Red Sox, Bruins, and Pats. Thank you to every celebrity who reached out to victims and their families, especially James Taylor, Kim Taylor, and Ellyn Kusmin, who treated me so well.

  Thank you, Boston! My city. Never broken, only stronger.

  Thank you to the people who helped make this book happen: Bret “The Hitman” Witter, Anthony “A-Train” Mattero, Peter “No Nickname” McGuigan, and everyone at Foundry Lit + Media, especially Matt Wise and Kirstin Neuhaus.

  Thank you to all the fantastic people at Grand Central: Jamie Raab, Sara Weiss, and Deb Withey in editorial; Ann Twomey, who designed the amazing cover; Jimmy Franco; Emi Battaglia; and Carolyn Kurek, Mark Steven Long, and Giraud Lorber, who turned a bunch of pages into a real book.

  I have so many family and friends that I can’t possibly list everyone. So to make it simple, let me just say thanks to my three families: the Baumans, the Joyces, and the Hurleys. I love you all. Even you, Forehead.

  Thank you to Katlyn Townsend, who stepped in when we needed her and never stepped away; Kevin “Heavy Kevy” Horst, who is unstoppable; John “Nacho Man” Sullivan; Remy Lawler; Michele Mahoney; United Prosthetics; Carlyn Wells and Michelle Kerr; Tim Rohan and Josh Haner; Kevin Sullivan; Elaine Rogers; Pat and Jess; the Corcoran family; and Ryan Donaher, who helps Erin take the trash to the dump and never lets her buy him lunch.

  Thank you to the hundreds of people at Costco who treated me like part of their family, even though most of you didn’t know me. Thank you especially to James Sinegal, Craig Jelenek, Maya Holt and the whole Nashua crew, Byron Spear, Will Fifield and his wife, Stephanie, Stacy Thrailkill, Judith Logan, and Pennie Clark Ianniciello, who made me believe this book was possible when I wasn’t sure.

  Thank you to Chief Ed Deveau, the Watertown Police Department, and all the cops, firemen, first responders, EMTs, bomb techs, and FBI agents. You guys are the real heroes.

  And finally, to my magical liege, my E: I am thankful for you every minute of every day, even when I’m playing MLB: The Show.

  This book was written for my fellow survivors and their families and friends, and in honor of Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Sean Collier.

  Michele, Remy, and me with our marathon swag, just before leaving for the finish line. This was the last photo taken before all three of us were injured in the bombing. (Photo courtesy of Remy Lawler)

  The famous bombing photo. I think of it as a picture of triumph, because three people are saving my life. But I still don’t like to look at it. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

  Big D, Aunt Jenn, and me at Erin’s Team Stork fundraiser on April 1, 2013, only two weeks before the bombing. (Photo courtesy of Jenn Joyce Maybury)

  My half-brother Alan and me at the beach in
Seabrook, New Hampshire, in 2011. (Photo courtesy of Alan G. Bauman)

  Erin and me in the fall of 2012. This photo hung on my IV while I was in the intensive care unit at Boston Medical Center. (Photo courtesy of Erin Hurley)

  Playing one of my donated guitars at Spaulding. I couldn’t hear the notes very well because of damage to my inner ears, but look at the signatures! (Photo courtesy of Jenn Joyce Maybury)

  My physical therapist, Michelle Kerr, works on my right leg during a session at Spaulding. Believe me: It usually wasn’t this gentle. (Photo courtesy of Jenn Joyce Maybury)

  One of Erin’s favorite photos: the two of us with her best friends, Remy and Michele. This was taken in Michele’s room at Spaulding, about three weeks after the bombing. (Photo courtesy of Remy Lawler)

  Mom and me. (Photo courtesy of Jenn Joyce Maybury)

  Erin’s family and friends, including Remy and Michele, at the Portsmouth Half Marathon in Maine. It was tough being in the crowd, but we did it for Erin. (Photo courtesy of Gail Goodson)

  My childhood idol, Pedro Martinez, demonstrates how he grips a changeup, while Erin and Carlos’s wife Mel look on. He surprised me on the field at Fenway before my first pitch on May 28, 2013. (Credit: Josh Haner/The New York Times/Redux)

  Relaxing with my E. a few innings later. I wouldn’t have been there without her. (Photo courtesy of Jenn Joyce Maybury)