Superhero

by Chris Nickson

  In some ways, he’d been luckier than Chris. But they were very different actors. Travolta had come out of television. For Chris, stage work lay at the heart of his performances. That was where he kept returning to center and replenish his artistic self. He was content to be working regularly, as part of the ensemble, finding the level that seemed to suit him best.

  The other film on his agenda was a remake of Village of the Damned under the direction of John Carpenter, which appeared with an R rating. The original, in 1960, had been based on John Wyndham’s novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, and had spawned a sequel, The Children of the Damned.

  This version didn’t exactly set the world alight. Quite the opposite; in fact, it quickly disappeared into welcome obscurity. And as Dr. Chafee, acting alongside Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski, and Mark Hamill—all once big names like Chris—he could have been forgiven for thinking he’d wandered back into some acting twilight zone himself.

  Still, it was work, and a movie, and he wasn’t about to turn it down. Every little thing was a job to be savored and done as well as possible.

  During 1994, he’d return to the stage again, for what would turn out to be the last two occasions, although no one could have foretold that. In March he was briefly in New York, as the narrator for a single revival performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Allegro at City Center; then in the summer he went back to the Williamstown Theatre Festival, with which he’d had such strong associations, to help them celebrate their fortieth anniversary. He and Julie Hagerty performed Love Letters, which had done so well a few years before, and he read a scene from John Brown’s Body, in which he’d starred at Williamstown in 1989.

  From there he moved into an extremely busy time. He worked on a trilogy of westerns for CBS, which would eventually air under the title of Black Fox. He did all his own riding, often several days at a time for the shots, and, said director Robert Halmi Sr., “He was so in control. He did all his own stunts.”

  There was a job as narrator for a 4-H Club video designed to prevent head injury while riding. He did a similar public-service announcement for the American Equestrian Association, posing for a helmet-safety poster.

  He was set to take part in Francis Ford Coppola’s remake of Kidnapped, with his scenes due to be filmed in Ireland in June 1995, and negotiations were also under way for Chris to direct his first feature. It really did seem as if he was on the rise again.

  But television movies had become his real bread and butter, pieces like Black Fox, or the movie he now contracted to make for HBO, Above Suspicion. In the last few years, dramas made for cable had come a long way. They had an artistic edge free from network constraints, and their quality was often as good as anything the cinema could offer. So when the opportunity to stay in L.A. and take the lead in one of these movies came, it was a chance to be grabbed, particularly when the part seemed so meaty and challenging. As Officer Dempsey, he had to portray a police officer wounded in the course of duty, a man who was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, even contemplating suicide at one point, and suspecting that his wife and brother might be having an affair.

  It was such an eerie irony. This was the last movie Chris would make before his accident, and the last to be screened. His work was excellent, as good and luminous a performance as he’d ever given on-screen. His research had even taken him to a spinal-cord trauma unit, where he’d seen the effects of paraplegia and quadriplegia. With chilling prescience, he commented to Hard Copy, “You see how easily [spinal injury] can happen. You think, God, it could happen to anybody.”

  As 1995 began, Chris was a contented man. He was growing older gracefully. He might have lost the lead in Jefferson .in Paris to Nick Nolte, but there was still plenty on his plate. There were other jobs waiting, he had his family, and there was his political involvement. He’d become a well-rounded individual, happy with his lot in life.

  And as one of the heads of the Creative Coalition, he found himself back in Washington, fighting for the National Endowment for the Arts again. This time the battle was more or less to the death, however, as a Republican Congress wanted to eliminate the NEA. It was more than just a financial move, since the NEA was viewed by the right as a symbol of all that was wrong with America—liberal, arty, and immoral.

  Along with other actors, Chris appeared at the National Endowment for the Arts Advocacy Day, an attempt to rally support which might halt the actions of Congress, speaking to the crowd in a measured way, coming out in favor of deficit reduction, but pointing out that there was no reason to “fear the arts.”

  In the event, they were successful. The NEA remained, but with its funding cut 40 percent. It was, the Coalition thought, “a moral victory.”

  By the end of May Chris was ready for a vacation. He’d been riding for a few years, and owned horses. There was a chance to take part in a show at Commonwealth Park, Virginia, over Memorial Day. It would make a perfect getaway for himself, Dana, and Will. Located close to the Blue Ridge Mountains, they could explore and relax, and Chris could ride the tension out of his system. He might not win anything—he hadn’t yet advanced to the level where he was likely to be a serious competitor—but he relished the idea of a challenge.

  It all sounded perfect.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Looking forward to the long weekend, Chris, Dana, and Will flew down to Virginia in his plane and checked into the Culpepper Holiday Inn. He was ready to ride on his newest horse, Eastern Express, which he’d purchased in California earlier in the year.

  Chris had taken up riding a few years before, and had soon begun to compete as a show jumper. He was under no illusions that riding was an easy sport.

  “Horse jumping is the most dangerous thing I do,” he’d told the Associated Press, and for a man who enjoyed flying, gliding, skiing, and scuba diving, that was quite a statement. He’d been thrown three years earlier, while competing in Canada, but had sustained no injuries.

  The event he was about to participate in was the spring horse trials of the Commonwealth Dressage and Combined Training Association, one of the more prestigious on the amateur circuit. It would be a three-day meet, covering all facets of horsemanship, and held at the Commonwealth Park equestrian grounds, which covered some two hundred acres of ground in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains, well away from the hustle and bustle of the cities. Chris would be one of three hundred competitors, all eager to prove themselves and their horses.

  He’d been down in the area before, looking for Thoroughbreds he could buy. That was how he’d originally come to hear of the trials, another opportunity to push himself and his mount against both obstacles and time. In some respects he hadn’t changed from the young man who got his thrills learning to fly some twenty years earlier. If there was a challenge that stretched his body and his mind, he relished it. But at the same time, he took every sensible precaution, wearing both a protective vest and a helmet.

  Chris even had his own colors, the blue and silver of his alma mater, Princeton Day School. He comported himself like a professional, but in fact he’d just moved up from the novice category. He’d won one event, in Vermont, a year before, then placed third in the New England novice championships. With his height and weight, it was unlikely he’d ever make the first rank—he was simply too big—but he was still determined to advance as far as he could.

  In Commonwealth Park he was up against some very good riders, people who were able to devote more time and money to it than was possible for him. Even so, at the end of the first day, he was acquitting himself well.

  After the dressage stage on Friday, May 26, he found himself in the middle of the pack, a very encouraging result. Dressage was the real test of discipline and communication between horse and rider, with the mount required to perform set, intricate steps on command. To work well, man and creature needed to be quite empathetic with each other. That he’d done so well on Eastern Express, a horse he hadn’t had much chance to work with, was quite an achievement, especially since he was
up against so much experience.

  What he was relishing, though, was Saturday, which would see the cross-country jumping phase. The course consisted of fifteen fences set through several miles of the park, with the emphasis on clearing each obstacle cleanly, riding against the clock. It was demanding, both mentally and physically, for all the participants.

  And on Sunday, with that out of the way, the final part of the horse trials would be the show jumping, the highlight for many, and for those who’d arrive to watch, perhaps the most familiar of all the different events.

  On a cross-country course, every jump has to be approached differently. Judging them to perfection is both an art and a skill, creating exactly the right momentum, the perfect speed and balance to clear, land cleanly, and gallop on. There is no room for any lapse of concentration when a rider has to think not only of himself, but of a half ton of animal between his legs. The horse has to trust its rider implicitly, and immediately obey even the most subtle command.

  Chris set out, and easily cleared the first two fences, riding well, making good time, and pushing Eastern Express. This was their chance to move up in the field and end up in a good position for the final day’s show jumping.

  He came in for the third fence, nothing particularly difficult, just three feet high and made of wooden rails set in a zigzag.

  “The horse was coming into the fence beautifully,” Lisa Reid told People. She was an experienced trainer who knew how to judge horses and riders. “The rhythm was fine and Chris was fine, and they were going at a good pace. The horse put his front feet over the fence, but his hind feet never left the ground. Chris is such a big man. He was going forward, his head over the top of the horse’s head. He had committed his upper body to the jump. But the horse—whether it chickened out or felt Chris’s weight over its head, I don’t know. But the horse decided, ‘I can’t do this.’ And it backed off the jump.”

  Chris, his center of gravity so far forward, was unable to stop. The horse halted, but he kept on moving, pitching out of the saddle and over the horse’s head. It seemed to onlookers as if he banged his head on the fence before his forehead hit the ground, and he lay sprawling, completely motionless.

  Later, Chris would only be able to recall that his hands had somehow become tangled in the bridle.

  “The bridle came off, and my hands were tied up in it, and I couldn’t break my fall. Otherwise, it would just have been a sprained wrist.”

  A medical crew was immediately called, but the first person on the scene was Helmut Boehme, who’d organized the weekend of trials.

  “He was unconscious when I got there. He was not moving. He was not breathing.”

  The first task was to resuscitate Chris, and the medics did just that, pumping air into him to keep him alive on the journey to Culpeper Hospital. As soon as he arrived it became obvious that he was severely injured, and was going to need specialized spine treatment. A quick decision was taken to fly him to the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, some forty-five miles away. They had the capability to deal with Chris’s injury.

  Within an hour of the fall he was in Charlottesville, transferred by helicopter, and being evaluated in the emergency room.

  Dana had been called—she and Will hadn’t gone to the cross-country event—and as she drove from the Holiday Inn in Culpeper the doctors tried to assess the full extent of Chris’s injury. Certainly the signs weren’t good. He was still unable to breathe without help, and he hadn’t yet regained consciousness.

  Word had traveled quickly that it was Christopher Reeve who’d been injured. Someone had alerted the press, and the news that he’d been hospitalized had already gone out on the wire. Reporters from all over the globe were taking the next available flights to Washington, preparing to drive south. In his career Chris hadn’t returned to the big time. Now, as a victim, all the newspapers wanted to know about him.

  Dana was able to sit with Chris, who was still unresponsive. Will was being looked after by the nurses; Dana didn’t want him to see his father that way, to have that image imprinted on his mind. She’d called Chris’s parents and his brother, Ben, who were all making arrangements to travel down. Barbara Johnson had called Gae Exton, who’d gathered Matthew and Alexandra, both teenagers now, and had taken the first transatlantic flight to Dulles Airport.

  She and Dana had never met before, but this was no time for rivalries or comparisons.

  The hospital released a preliminary statement about Chris as the first of the media people arrived. It seemed to say a lot, but remained typically vague, noting only he was in “serious but stable” condition, and that he had “a cervical injury and is under close observation.”

  But the real truth was that the doctors didn’t know much more than that yet.

  Reporters continued to flood into the facility, trying to get more information, wanting to see family members, to have anything at all to write beyond the bare-bones press release. But they couldn’t have what didn’t exist, and the last thing anyone in the family wanted was to face the media.

  Chris finally regained consciousness after four long days, and that was a first step; there was no coma. But he couldn’t breathe on his own, and he still couldn’t move. He was paralyzed.

  When he came to, Barbara Johnson told NPR, “he was confused” and “mouthing but not speaking words … . He was asking what had happened. It was tough. You could see him struggling.”

  It was more than tough for Chris, and it was a waking nightmare for those around him. They were being hounded by the press, who were also questioning doctors and nurses, anyone they could find. Chris’s press agent in Los Angeles knew no more than they did, possibly even less, since her information was coming at second hand from Dana and Chris’s parents, and there was nothing they wanted released yet because, until the tests were complete, no one could really know how grave the situation was. The only thing that was immediately apparent was that Chris wasn’t about to get up and walk anytime soon.

  It would be Wednesday, May 31, before Dr. John Jane, the neurosurgeon in charge of the case, would be able or willing to offer more information, saying that Chris might require surgery to stabilize his upper spine, and that any speculation about Chris’s long-term condition was “premature.”

  That made it all sound relatively straightforward, but the reality was much grimmer. As one member of the hospital staff put it bluntly, “They are praying for a miracle.”

  The following day Dr. Jane elaborated on the injury, pointing out that Chris had “no movement or spontaneous respiration.” He’d sustained a fracture of both the first and second cervical vertebrae—almost the worst place to receive a spinal column injury, even though, thankfully, the cord had not been severed, which was what the doctors had initially feared. Had that happened, his chances of survival would have been slim at best. Even now his life still largely hung in the balance, and he’d developed pneumonia in one lung, a condition which didn’t especially worry Dr. Jane, pneumonia being common in these cases.

  “He’s alert but cannot make sounds because a breathing tube has been inserted into his windpipe … . He cannot control his expiration, so what he has to do is to say words in an exaggerated fashion and use local breaths to make a sound, and it doesn’t work badly. It’s not good for back-and-forth rapid conversation, but it’s good enough to communicate.”

  Once he did come to, it didn’t take long for Chris to realize just how grave his situation was.

  “Dana and I were alone in the hospital room … . The doctors were saying I might not pull through. I remember saying to Dana that maybe it wasn’t worth the trouble, maybe we should just let me go. If Dana had looked at the floor or taken a pause, it would have been difficult because I would have thought, ‘She’s just being noble.’ But without missing a beat, she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘But you’re still you and I love you.’ And that saved my life right there. That put an end to any thought of giving up. Then my three kids came in … .
And I asked myself, ‘How can I possibly leave them?’”

  “I could see how much they needed me and wanted me,” he explained to Barbara Walters later, “and how lucky we all are that my brain is on straight. The thought [of dying] vanished and has never come back.”

  Not that the dark times didn’t come crowding in on him as he lay in the hospital bed.

  “The demons would get me in the middle of the night. In my dreams I’d be whole, riding my horse, playing with my family … . We’d be making love, we’d be doing everything. And then suddenly I’d wake up and it’s two in the morning and I’m lying in bed and I can’t move and I’m on a ventilator … . Those are the worst times.”

  As terrible as Chris’s injury was, with the spinal cord not cut there was still a chance of recovery. Essentially, he had a break in the nerves of his spinal cord, “like the bridge is out,” he’d say later. But the best odds the doctors were willing to give for his survival were fifty-fifty. Most immediately, once the pneumonia had gone, he needed an operation to fuse the fractured vertebrae and stabilize his head and neck.

  By June 5 he was in good enough condition to be wheeled into the operating theater and given into the hands of Dr. Jane.

  “We have a ninety percent success rate,” Jane announced beforehand, “and if it fails, we’ll simply try again. The mortality rate is four percent.”

  It would be a while until they knew if it had worked. If it did, Chris would be able to sit upright again, and his chances of making a recovery might improve. He might even be able to move a little. But the dark reality was that it looked unlikely that he’d ever manage to walk again.

  The surgery, which normally took five hours, extended slowly to seven, the minutes ticking by. The C-1, or top vertebra, had been shattered, and every minuscule bone fragment had to be found and cleaned out before other bone from Chris’s hip could be placed between the two vertebrae, and then everything was fused together with titanium wire, which was finally attached to the head, using microscopic holes drilled in the skull.