Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me

by Jerry McGill

  “Ummm, not really.”

  “I see.”

  Debra knew. I’m sure she had seen many cases like mine. Some even worse. I’m sure Debra had experienced death in that hospital. But telling a thirteen-year-old kid that he was never going to walk again for the rest of his life was not part of her job description, and she must have been shocked to realize that after this long, nobody had bothered to break the news to me. I’m almost certain she confronted Dr. Dempsey about it because not long after that he came into my room and pulled the curtain around us, a sign that he wanted a private moment with me.

  I was accustomed to daily visits from Dr. Dempsey, but this one had a different feel to it. Normally he was jovial, even when drawing blood from me. But at that particular moment he seemed tense, as if surrounded by a cloud of some kind. His tone was much more serious. He began by explaining to me the nature and history of spinal cord injuries. He went on to break down the different levels of paralysis as if he were teaching a class on it. He ended by telling me what my level was. I was a C-5/6 quadriplegic. This was based on the entry point of the bullet and where it lodged.

  “Historically,” he stated plainly, “no one has ever fully recovered from this type of injury. For the rest of your life you will be seated in that wheelchair.”

  Immediately my mind jumped to a patient I had met the previous month. He was named Leslie and he was introduced to me because Dr. Dempsey wanted me to have some kind of role model and support system. Leslie was in his mid-twenties, a handsome black man who was in a wheelchair. He too had been shot, but his shooting was not a mystery. He had been shot in an attempted robbery. Leslie had been shot very low in the back and thus his paralysis was not as severe as mine. He had full range of mobility in his arms and hands and his balance was perfect. His upper body was greatly developed, giving him broad, appealing shoulders. He looked like a sitting bodybuilder. I had seen Leslie down in therapy recently and he had begun to use a walker. His upper body was so strong he could pull his legs along as he stood upright.

  I mentioned Leslie to Dr. Dempsey and asked if I’d be able to stand up and move just like Leslie did. Dr. Dempsey calmly explained to me that Leslie’s injury and my injury were two very distinct kinds. He explained that I was a quadriplegic and Leslie was a paraplegic. For the first time he also explained to me in detail how the bullet was still sitting in my neck and always would remain so. Because it had lodged so close to my spine it would have been dangerous to remove it, so they just let it stay there. Enough tissue had developed around it that it would always stay firmly in place.

  While listening to my good doctor talk, I just sat there emotionless and nodded. I was fascinated and still not grasping the full concept of never being able to walk again. I asked him, “Are there ever any special cases?” He responded that he had not heard of any and he had been in this business a long time. He encouraged me to talk to Judy about it. Talk to Irit about it. Talk to Cheryl about it. But I didn’t. I wasn’t really ready to discuss it yet, not because it saddened me, but simply because the very concept was too much for my immature brain to grasp in a ten-minute conversation. The very idea that I would never walk again was one I simply could not fathom. After he left I turned the television back on and proceeded with life as I knew it. I did what was most comfortable to me.

  It would take about another month or so for the reality of it all to settle in my mind. The great release of emotion that everyone had been expecting and waiting for would come unexpectedly during a therapy session with Irit. She worked tirelessly with me trying to get me to a point where someday I would be totally independent, able to perform every single action on my own without assistance. In the beginning I had numerous doubts that I would ever reach that point. There were times when transferring from my wheelchair to the mat in the therapy room that I would fall and Irit would have to catch me before my face slammed into the floor. Lucky for me she was always there to catch me. She would hold me close to her like a baby in her arms and lift me back up until I was seated upright again.

  If there was one thing I definitely feared it was being dependent on my mother and sister for the rest of my life. Judging from my relationship with them, I knew that that scenario would lead to sheer misery for all involved. I wanted so badly to be able to sit up straight with the knowledge that I was my own man. Yet in those early months it didn’t seem like my upper body would ever be strong enough to support me. One day while attempting another transfer from wheelchair to bed I lost my balance and fell to my left. Irit propped me back up onto the mat as she’d done a dozen times before. Exasperated, I looked up at her.

  “Am I ever gonna be able to do this on my own?” I asked, sounding somewhat desperate. She looked at me, sensing the despair in my voice. Her face softened, but she did not speak. “No, seriously,” I continued. “Am I gonna ever be able to do any of this stuff without you helping me?” I needed some kind of reassurance right then and there, but Irit had too much respect for me to give me any kind of false hope.

  “I don’t know, Jerome. I really can’t give you that answer at this moment. These things take time.”

  That was not the answer I was looking for. Before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face and I was struggling to speak. Irit got up and calmly cleared the room of all the other therapists, who were sitting around doing their paperwork and socializing. After she closed the door she sat back down in front of me, a box of tissues in her hand. Between sniffles I muttered to her. My heart had never felt so thick with anxiety.

  “I just don’t want to live my life this way.”

  And then Irit did something I will never forget, not for as long as I live. To this day, whenever I hear someone tell an anti-Semitic joke I cringe a little. I do it because I am thinking of Irit and remembering this moment above all others. At this moment of my greatest vulnerability, Irit started to cry, too. Quiet tears, nowhere near my heaving sobs, but she was crying nonetheless. I wish you could have seen us, Marcus. What an amazing picture life had created at that moment. And just think, if I had left Dean’s house an hour earlier or even stayed over one more night, well, odds are that Irit and I would never have met. Yet here we were, sharing one of the most touching moments of my entire life.

  “What are you crying about?” I asked her, a smile forming.

  “I’m crying because you’re my guy, that’s why. I want to help you get through this.”

  I wonder, Marcus, if you’ve ever known a love like this. Have you ever had someone care about you so much that when you hurt, they hurt? When you need, they need? It is this kind of love that can make all of the difference in the world. And who knows, maybe without this kind of support and affection, maybe without it you do turn into someone cold. Someone without remorse. Someone without a discernible conscience. Maybe you become the kind of person who can point a gun at a child walking down the street and pull the trigger hoping to obliterate a life. And maybe, just maybe, in the long run it is you who needs more support and more understanding than the rest of us. Because maybe, just maybe, growing up deprived of love is the worst thing that can happen to a person.

  Maybe he who never cries is doomed to live in a prison of his own heart’s making. I want to thank you for putting me in touch with these emotions, Marcus. I really do. To you, I am eternally grateful.

  INT. HOSPITAL ROOM—DAY

  JEROME sits up in his wheelchair in front of a canvas. He is painting. He wears a splint on his right wrist and a paintbrush has been fitted into the slot, helping him to move the brush across the canvas. He goes to dip his brush into one of the cups of paint and he accidentally knocks the cup over. Red paint splashes onto the floor. Jerome tries to pick the cup up but he cannot reach it. He sighs in frustration. SUBTITLE: WITH ADJUSTMENTS COMES GROWTH

  eight

  I’m not certain that the notion that I would never walk again ever really, truly settled in while I was in the hospital. Yes, I accepted what Dr. Dempsey had told me and worked hard with my rehab
team to enter into a new phase, but, again, when you are that age, Marcus, there are some things that your young, undeveloped brain simply cannot work around. There are things one simply cannot fully envision.

  I think in a way this inability made things easier for everyone to manage. Who knows, had I accepted that reality early on I might have grown so despondent that my attitude would have been an impediment to my growth. Maybe I would have become a Negative Ned when I needed to be a Positive Pete. Is it possible that the mind works in such an ingenious manner that we take in only what we need to help us move forward and push down a lot of the gunk that will keep us mired in darkness? Surely this would explain how some of us process and ultimately repress early childhood traumas like molestation and child abuse, no?

  I don’t really have any answers, but what I can tell you is that for the remainder of my time at St. Vincent’s I was a generally happy kid, focused on my goals and happy to celebrate every new achievement—and there were a lot of them. I remember in the beginning I had to wear those splints that Irit had made for me to perform all of my tasks. The splints were a workable solution but they were a bit of a nuisance as they were difficult for me to apply myself and I often needed help getting one on.

  Then something remarkable happened. One morning I noticed a sharp pain in my left hand. I knew I hadn’t done anything to cause such pain to occur and it concerned me some. The discomfort grew over the course of two days to the point where I had to be given painkillers to make it bearable. The medical staff had no explanation for it and took to monitoring my discomfort level. The pain eventually subsided over the course of the week and when it was all gone I had made a brilliant discovery: I could move the fingers in my left hand, to the point where I could grasp and clench things. The fingers in my right hand were still essentially numb but in my left hand I had sudden strength and power. The doctors reasoned that the pain in my hand must have been the nerves coming back to some level of their previous strength or something along those lines.

  Either way, I had suddenly gained a much higher level of independence. As long as I used my left hand to perform tasks, I didn’t need the splints Irit had made. As a result, I went from being a natural-born righty to being a forced lefty, which was just fine with me. I could even write a letter again. Although at first my handwriting was not as good as it once was, over time and with steady practice I grew to have neat, legible penmanship. I kept waiting and hoping that I would feel a similar pain in my right hand and that eventually I would regain strength and mobility there, but it never happened. For the rest of my life my left side would always be stronger than my right side.

  Looking back on this period I think it highlights a wonderful metaphor for the way life works sometimes: I had to go through several days of pain but in the end I came out of it a stronger, more capable person. I have found this to be a fairly consistent pattern.

  Other things started to come back to me little by little as well. For the first few months I had needed medical assistance to move my bowels and urinate. Things like suppositories, taken once every other day, and a catheter inserted into my urethra helped me to perform these basic tasks. You can imagine for yourself, Marcus, that this was an area of my life that could very easily cause me a lot of angst and embarrassment depending on how much of it I could or couldn’t control.

  After a few months I began to notice certain urges coming from my stomach and bladder area. At first I wasn’t really sure what they were and what exactly to make of it all. When I told Dr. Dempsey about those sensitivities he started me on a program of monitoring them. I began to pay very close attention to what my body was doing during those times, trying to glean any bit of information that could potentially be helpful to me. It took several months, and there were numerous “hits and misses” but the urges gradually transformed and grew stronger. I learned how to read the signals for what they were and get to the bathroom in time to act on them. Eventually I learned of methods to actually manipulate my body to give me even greater control in that area.

  I cannot begin to tell you what an enormous difference this capability made in my overall positive regard for myself and for my self-esteem. I bet you take that ability for granted, don’t you, Marcus? Most people do. I bet you simply go when you want, where you want, and are done with it all in a matter of seconds or minutes. But for some people with disabilities, this aspect of life is a major challenge and a source of regular concern and anxiety. I have known people who basically remain reclusive shut-ins because they cannot get this part of their daily existence under control and feel they risk great embarrassment should they venture out into the public world. And so once again I find myself grateful for the “little things” that have made life easier.

  Don’t get me wrong: Not everything necessarily went my way and not all of the changes that were to occur would be positive ones. One morning I woke up with a horrible fever and I simply could not stop sweating profusely. The doctors treated me with aspirin and antibiotics but I could not stop dripping sweat from my pores. It progressed to the point where several times a day I had to have my hospital gown and my sheets changed as a result of their being drenched in sweat. At the same time I also began experiencing severe chills—right down to my bones, it seemed—and I would spend several days both sweating and shivering in uncontrollable fits of agony.

  This horrible cycle lasted for about two weeks and when it finally broke Dr. Dempsey said it was most likely due to the fact that I had acquired an acute adrenal gland disorder, a condition most common to spinal-cord-injured quadriplegics. Basically your adrenal glands control your ability to sweat, and mine were now totally malfunctioning and out of whack. For the rest of my life I would never sweat like your average person does. This can cause major health issues under certain circumstances. For example, when I am out in extreme heat and sunlight, my body is not producing sweat, the body’s natural cooling system. Instead that heat and moisture get trapped inside my skin, causing my temperature to rise rapidly. If not treated soon this can lead to heat exhaustion, heatstroke, even death.

  To this day I have to be very careful on overly hot and humid days. I must drink fluids and continually cool myself down. As you know, Marcus, our New York summers can be brutal, and there were many occasions when I chose to simply stay indoors all day in July and August rather than risk exposure to the cruel sun. I have had dangerous situations once or twice before when I stayed out in the heat longer than I should have and suddenly found myself feeling faint and disoriented. One of those times I was working in Mexico, and had it not been for the quick reaction of a good friend and colleague, I might have died out in the scorching Guadalajara street. It’s a serious condition that I have learned to monitor over the years.

  An even more serious, if not the most serious of all the changes to my body developed over a long period of time. Due to the way I lay in bed during those first couple of months when I could not get up, my spinal column began to slowly curve. When I could finally sit up again, my upper body tilted most uncomfortably to the right. If you were looking at me straight on I looked like I was seriously deformed. That’s how bad the curve of my scoliosis was. How the doctors did not foresee this or work to stop it I do not know—I think negligence was definitely a part of it—but by the time they actually moved to treat it, it was basically too late. And they greatly botched the first treatment. At first they fitted me in a full-body brace. They molded it around me in bed using hot plaster and I absolutely hated the entire thing. The brace was extremely uncomfortable and prohibitive. I often felt like I was itching underneath it and couldn’t scratch anywhere. Imagine if you will, Marcus, that you are forced to wear a shell like a turtle for several months and you already had awfully limited movement to begin with. It drove me nuts.

  Then Irit discovered a terribly unfortunate flaw in the brace. She could see that under my left armpit I had developed a large, fleshy raw patch where the brace rubbed against me whenever I leaned that way. Irit had noticed it whe
n she detected a harsh smell emanating from that area and had examined me closely. As it turned out, the area under my arm had grown infected and began oozing a pus-filled secretion. It was absolutely disgusting. The brace was removed immediately and for weeks after I had to take antibiotics that made me nauseous and gave me gut-wrenching cramps and severe diarrhea.

  Roughly two years after that, I had my first major surgery ever. It was decided by a team of specialists that the best method to correct my scoliosis would be to graft a steel rod onto my spine, a common procedure for people with weak spinal columns. The rod was named a Harrington rod and the idea was that it would force my spine straight; it was kind of like gluing a toothpick to a rubber band. The surgery was performed after my freshman year in high school, and once again I would have to endure wearing a brace afterward. This brace was even more uncomfortable than the first one. For an entire year I could not remove it, and as a result I was unable to take a shower. I would wash up every morning in the bathroom sink but I still felt insecure. I was sure that everywhere I went people could smell me.

  When it was finally removed after a whole year the results were mixed. I still leaned awkwardly to one side but the angle was not as pronounced as it had been. It was the most we could hope for, the best that could be done.

  To this day, if you are sitting across from me you probably notice that I don’t sit up fully straight. If I have my shirt off you will see that my rib cage protrudes freakishly out of my right side. I guess I’ll never be a swimsuit model. When I go through a metal detector the rods set it off. It has made for some amusing moments in airports.

  There were other complications, Marcus, but I won’t go into a long, dreadful laundry list. Like so many things in my life, the good has outweighed the bad, so I find it unhelpful to dwell on those less enjoyable times. I will say that I envy many of my friends who can state with pride that they have never spent a single day in the hospital. That is a real thing to be proud of. Hospitals are not fun places. I made the most of it all and have great admiration for the dedicated staff who do their best to make one’s time there bearable. But I wouldn’t wish a hospital stay on my worst enemy.