Stronger

by Jeff Bauman

  I never saved that $900 for college. Costco kept me below forty hours a week, a standard practice in retail, so I was making less than $16,000 a year. I was sharing an apartment with Sully, my best friend since third grade, and his girlfriend, Jill, and I was still barely breaking even. Then Sully and Jill broke up, and we couldn’t afford the apartment, so I moved back in with Mom.

  It was a typical move in my life. Easy. Because of my childhood, I’d never gotten too attached to a space, and I never accumulated much stuff. Even at twenty-six, I didn’t own a computer. I didn’t have a possession to my name except a cell phone, a guitar my grandmother had given me a $100 check to buy on my eighteenth birthday, and a twelve-year-old Volkswagen Passat. I drove the Passat an hour to Concord, New Hampshire, every other week to visit my dad. He fixed transmissions at AAMCO, and they let him use the shop after hours. That was the only way we kept my beat-up car on the road.

  It was a great life. A great, great life. I was happy. I had my own car, my own room, and enough money for an occasional trip to Boston. I had a bunch of friends from high school, so I was out every evening before Mom got home from the dinner shift. And because I didn’t have anything, nobody asked me for anything. They let me be who I was: a quiet kid. Happy-go-lucky. Always trying to make sure everyone had a good time. I was young. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I was in no hurry to get there.

  Then I met Erin.

  It was May 2012, eleven months before the bombing, and a few weeks after I’d sworn off the Hong Kong for the eleven hundredth time. Some friends and I had gone into Boston to see ALO, one of my favorite bands. Afterward, we went to a party at someone’s house, and Erin was there. She was easy to be around. Interesting. Beautiful. We hit it off right away. She later told me what she liked most about me was that I was so nice.

  Ouch, E. That kind of stings.

  Unfortunately, Erin lived an hour away in Brighton, an in-town Boston neighborhood that’s the kind of place you live after you graduate from college and before you have kids. It was a commute, but I knew after our first date—Flatbread Pizza in Somerville, followed by Prometheus, in hindsight not the most romantic movie choice—that she was worth it.

  Erin wasn’t like my friends in Chelmsford. She had been born in Alabama and raised in Amesbury, Massachusetts, in a house with solar panels and a wood stove. She graduated from Lesley University, a mostly girls’ college in Cambridge, where she ran cross-country and met Michele, my future fellow bombing victim. Erin had a career. She was a program coordinator in the anesthesiology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital downtown, and she was planning to go back to school for a master’s degree in health administration. Her boss wanted to promote her. Erin just needed the degree first.

  Unfortunately, our schedules were a mess. She worked a typical eight-to-six. I usually worked the closing shift at Costco, so I didn’t get off until after 8:30. That meant I couldn’t get to Brighton until ten, about the time Erin was getting ready for bed, since she had to get up at 6:30 for work. And I worked weekends, too, so we often went weeks without a good chunk of time together.

  But we made it work. I spent nights in Boston with Erin and her roommates: Remy, her best childhood friend, and Michele, her best college friend. We discovered favorite bars and coffee joints. We went to Washington, D.C. We went on an overnight rafting trip to Maine, something I had been wanting to do for years. When the junk shop at the end of Erin’s block turned into a takeout chicken wing counter, it felt like destiny.

  “She’s so nice,” Mom said, every time Erin stayed over in Chelmsford.

  Ha-ha, E, that word got you, too!

  But it’s true. Erin is nice. She’s not a party girl, but get a few beers in her and she’ll break out the dance moves. I guess it would make you uncomfortable if I said sexy, right, E? But it’s true. Erin puts the sexy in nice. But she preferred a nice quiet home-cooked meal, and a nice quiet life.

  In August, with the relationship heating up, I invited Erin to my nephew Cole’s seventh birthday party. This was a big deal, because Cole’s birthday was the event of the summer for my extended family. Aunt Jenn was older when she had Cole—she was Uncle Dale’s third wife—so she spoiled him. Even she admits it. For his birthday, she gets the jumpy house, and the catered barbecue, and invites everyone. There are usually eighty people at Cole’s birthday party, most of them relatives.

  Fortunately, I was working at Costco that Saturday, so Erin and I had an excuse to show up late, after most of the guests had left. This was, after all, the first girlfriend I’d introduced to the whole family. I hadn’t had to before. Most of my past girlfriends had been around my family forever.

  “Great girl,” Uncle Bob said, in one of his rare serious moments. “Good head on her shoulders.”

  By which he meant: She had a plan. She was going places.

  And she was. Erin had worked her way through college. She was successful, and she was going to be more successful in the future. She wanted that for me, too. She never judged me because I didn’t make much money and lived with my mom. She didn’t care about that.

  But she believed in me. She wanted me to finish college. She thought I had a future as an engineer.

  “Maybe next year,” I told her. “When you go to grad school, I’ll go back to college. We can study together.”

  I meant it, except maybe for the studying. I’d been telling Mom I’d go back to college for years, but Erin made me see it as something I shouldn’t just say. If we were going to have a life together, it was something I should do.

  But then, sometime that winter, we started to drift apart. Maybe I got cold feet, I don’t know, but I started to skip trips down to Boston to visit her. After six months, I told myself I was tired of the drive. I was cooking chicken and ribs all day at Costco. I was helping customers. I wanted to go home after my shift and relax. Play some guitar in my room. Watch a Bruins hockey game with Sully and Big D.

  Erin was frustrated that I kept breaking dates. “I changed my plans to be with you,” she’d say.

  “I’m sorry,” I’d say. “I’m tired.”

  We talked about moving in together, so we wouldn’t have to commute to see each other, but that would have meant quitting my job, so nothing came of it.

  “You aren’t really committed,” Erin would say. It wasn’t a complaint. It was a statement of fact.

  “You need to do what you say you’re going to do,” she would tell me. “If you make a promise, you need to be there.”

  That was big for Erin. She was a planner. She loved a routine. She had always been a runner, but that winter she was training for the Boston Marathon. Brigham and Women’s needed to upgrade their neonatal intensive care unit, so a group from the hospital was running to raise money.

  “It feels good to be helping,” she said. But it also meant less time together.

  That Christmas, I bought Erin a nice camera at Costco. A few weeks later, I bought myself a guitar. It was a Yamaha Acoustic Electric, on sale at Guitar Center for $200, and I couldn’t resist. That’s a bargain.

  I’ve always loved playing guitar. Nothing too serious. I just find it relaxing. I’d jam with my half brother Chris on my dad’s back porch in Concord, New Hampshire, or sit in my room and work on songs. I knew some guys who played at clubs in downtown Lowell, the center of the local music scene, so I started heading down there to the open mic nights with my friend Blair. I wouldn’t play. I was more of a listener. Blair would yell at the bands. We’d drink a few beers, and maybe a few too many. I’ve never been into any other type of drug or alcohol. I like beer.

  “It’s fine to go out and have a good time with your friends,” Erin said. “I want you to do that. But not all the time.”

  She was right. When I first started skipping visits to Boston, it was because I was tired. Now I was skipping Erin to drink and listen to music with Blair.

  “I can’t do it,” I told him next time he called. “I got plans.”

  But…
I don’t know. It wasn’t enough. Erin and I were having a great time together, but it wasn’t enough. I kept screwing up. I remember one day in February, the dead of winter, heading up to my dad’s house in New Hampshire and walking in the door with the usual twelve-pack under my arm.

  “What’s happenin’, Big Csilla?” (It’s pronounced “Big Chilla.” My stepsister, Little Csilla, has the same name.)

  She could tell right away something was wrong. “Where’s Erin?”

  “Ah, we broke up.”

  “What happened?”

  “I broke one too many promises.”

  I don’t like talking about personal stuff, so that’s what I said, over and over again, since everyone in my family had to ask. We broke up. I had called Erin two days after. I told her I loved her. She said it wasn’t enough.

  I didn’t see her again until March 29. That was the day of her marathon fund-raiser at Sissy K’s, a bar in Brighton. We had talked about the fund-raiser a lot, and she had worked on it for months, so I knew it was important to her. That was why I came—to support her. I even brought Big D and Aunt Jenn. There was dancing and a DJ. How could I not bring Aunt Jenn?

  I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be there until I saw Erin. She wasn’t expecting me, but she smiled as soon as I walked in. I could tell she wanted me there, and that was when I realized the only place I wanted to be was with her.

  I don’t remember our conversation. When she asked what I was doing there, I think I just said, “I told you I’d come.”

  We left the party together, and that was that.

  Two weeks later, Erin woke me up at 5:00 a.m. It was Monday, April 15, 2013, Patriot’s Day, and the day of the Boston Marathon. As planned, I drove Erin to Hopkinton, where the race buses would take the runners to the starting line. It was hours before the first wave of runners, those in wheelchairs, started at 9:40. Erin was in the third wave, starting at 10:40, but there were already twenty thousand runners milling about, ready to go.

  “You better win,” I told her as I kissed her good-bye. She laughed. Then I went back to her apartment and went to bed.

  I saw her again around 1:30, near mile 18 in Newton. Remy, Michele, and I had told her to look for us there, near the start of Heartbreak Hill, the hardest climb on the course. I had a poster-board sign that said: “Run E(rin) Run!” Remy and Michele had oversized fans for Team Stork, the charity Erin was raising money for.

  We pushed through the crowds lining both sides of the street until we could see the runners streaming past. The fire station down the block had a live band, and people were dancing and cheering. Two soldiers with rucksacks marched past, raising money for veterans. Another dude was running in a hamburger costume; I have no idea why. I had never been to the marathon before. I’d seen it on television, but I hadn’t been in the crowd. Being there made me realize how special it was. The race was 137 years old, the oldest continuously held marathon in the world. It was huge, and it was ours. Our holiday. Our tradition. Our pride. It wasn’t just a sporting event, I realized; it was a celebration. Winter was over, it was a beautiful day, and everyone was alive and dancing.

  In fact, Remy, Michele, and I were having so much fun, we almost missed Erin. We noticed her right as she passed us, and we had to chase her, yelling her name. She circled back and gave us a group hug, smiling, even though she was exhausted.

  “I’ll see you at the finish line,” I said, giving her a kiss.

  Erin nodded. “I’ll be there.”

  And then she was gone, up the slope toward Heartbreak Hill. It seemed so trivial at the time, like the most ordinary thing in the world. I guess that’s usually how it is before bad luck, or random chance, changes your life.

  FIRST DAYS

  2.

  The bomb went off at 2:49 on Monday afternoon. Within seconds, the man in the cowboy hat was leaping the barricade guarding the finish line and racing toward the carnage. The second bomb went off when he was halfway across the street, but he kept coming. They all kept coming to help us: police officers, race volunteers, bystanders.

  Strangers were huddled over victims on the ground, assuring them that it would be all right, that help was on the way, that they weren’t alone. People were stripping off sweaters and belts for tourniquets. Some held wounds closed with their hands. The Boston bomb squad ripped into backpacks and packages with knives, a so-called “slash-and-tag.” They figured if there were two bombs, there probably was a third to kill the people trying to help. That was usually how terrorist attacks worked. A “slash-and-tag” on a third bomb would probably kill the bomb squad officer, but it would save other lives.

  At first, it was reported as an electrical fire, or maybe a sewer explosion. Manhole covers sometimes blew off without warning. But it didn’t take long for word of bombs to spread. Posts and tweets from the scene. Cell phone pictures of blood on the streets. Boston is a small city, about one-sixth the size of New York City. Within minutes, everyone was on social media, trying to find out if their friends were okay.

  No one could reach me. Family and friends called and texted, but there was no answer. The bomb had either shattered my cell phone or sent it flying. I remember trying to find it when I was on the ground. I wanted to call Mom and tell her good-bye, don’t worry, I’m not suffering, I’m just going now, I had a good life.

  But the phone was gone. I couldn’t reach anyone, and no one could reach me. Then they shut down the towers, and all the cell phones went dead.

  The first pictures came out almost immediately thereafter. They were long shots of the scene: The concussion from the bomb blast shaking a camera that had been filming the race. The force of the blast knocking down a runner about to cross the finish line. The plume of smoke.

  Then the first photo of a recognizable human face: my face. It was the now-famous photo of me in the wheelchair, with the man in the cowboy hat running beside me. Everyone calls it “iconic” now, but at the time it was horrifying. I had a cut above my eye, and one on my cheek. My face was pale and filthy from powder burns. My shirt was charred and bloodstained. And I had no legs.

  Above the knees, I looked like any victim of a tragedy. It could have been a house fire, or a vicious brawl, that injured me. Below the knee, my legs were gone. Not shattered, but completely blown off. The only things remaining were a few pieces of ragged flesh and one long thin bone sticking down from my left knee.

  Thanks to the man in the cowboy hat, I was the first victim to leave the scene of the bombing and the first to reach Boston Medical Center, less than two miles away. Within fifteen minutes, I was on the operating table, the emergency room surgeons slicing off the ripped ends of my legs and cauterizing my wounds. That saved my life.

  And yet the photograph was faster. Even as the surgeons sawed into me, my face was popping up on websites. Someone recognized me and posted it to my Facebook page. Word started to spread among my friends. Before long, the photo was being shown on news reports.

  My cousin Derek was paving roads with one of Uncle Bob’s crews. He saw it on his break. “I couldn’t breathe,” Big D told me later. “I could not even breathe.”

  Aunt Jenn saw it at the zoo, where she had taken Cole to celebrate Patriot’s Day. She immediately took him home. She has never let him look at the photo.

  Sully clicked on my Facebook page and saw a cropped version, the one that shows me only from the waist up. Then he clicked on another site and saw my legs. He screamed, he told me, and fell to the floor.

  My stepsister Erika saw it on television at the restaurant where she was waitressing. She called my dad at AAMCO. “Dad, Dad, did you see the picture? Jeffrey’s on the news. He’s hurt.”

  “Are you sure?” my dad shouted. He kept shouting until he found the photo online, and then he started to cry.

  They even saw it at the Costco where I worked. They were watching bombing coverage in the break room, when my picture suddenly appeared. They couldn’t reach me, so “Heavy Kevy” called the other phone number on file.


  It was Mom. She was finishing her lunch shift and hadn’t paid much attention to the bombing. She didn’t even remember I had gone to the race. Typical Mom.

  “No, I haven’t heard from Jeff,” she told Kevin. “Why?”

  “He was at the marathon.”

  It dawned on her then. “Oh no, did he get hurt? Did he get hurt?”

  “I think he might have.”

  “Is he alive?” she screamed. “Tell me, is he alive?”

  “I don’t—”

  “What do you mean? What happened? Is my son alive?!”

  “I don’t know his condition. I’m sorry. But he is alive. I think you need to call the hospitals.”

  By then, Mom was hysterical. She put her friend on the phone, went to an empty table, and started crying.

  Soon after, Aunt Cathleen, Uncle Bob’s wife, called her. “I’m coming to get you,” she said.

  “Is Jeff all right? Please tell me Jeff is all right.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s alive. There’s a photo. I can’t look at it. Bob said it’s bad.”

  “That’s not my son,” Mom said, when she finally saw the photo an hour later. By then, she was back home. “That is not my son,” she said. My face was so pale and scorched, it didn’t even look like me.

  “That’s him, Patty,” Aunt Cathleen said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Look. That’s his favorite shirt.”

  That afternoon was chaos. Complete chaos. I’m sure it was chaos all over the city, but especially in my family. Uncle Bob called doctors, trying to get a medical opinion based on the photograph. Mom’s sisters called each other for information and support. They called every hospital in Boston, again and again, but without any luck—nobody could find me. Mom and Aunt Cathleen went to the local police station, desperate for news. Even the police couldn’t help.

  Finally, someone at Boston Medical Center said, “Wait. We have someone here with a similar name.”