Stronger

by Jeff Bauman

  By Monday, I was feeling frisky. “Let’s go for a ride,” I said to Chris and Tim, who had stayed with me the previous night.

  We snuck in a wheelchair. I don’t know if it was sneaking, really. We just didn’t check with the nurses. I put my board down between the bed and the chair and hoisted myself in. A clean transfer, no problem.

  I wheeled myself out of the room, waving to the nurses at their station. I’m back in the world, I thought.

  I had never seen the hallway. It was much quieter than I expected. The fever had broken, I suppose, and the press had moved on. I saw Big D in the visitors’ lounge, but he didn’t see me, so I rolled slowly past him without saying a word. When he noticed me, his mouth hit the floor.

  Kevin, who was with him in the visitors’ lounge, started crying.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I feel like I can fly.”

  It was exactly two minutes past one week since the bombing, according to Kevin, which sounds like something he would notice. He and Big D had been discussing my future (I imagine Kevin was doing most of the talking), and when they saw me in my wheelchair, and I looked so happy, with this big smile on my face, Kevin lost it. He compared it to seeing your child walk for the first time.

  Kevin’s gay, in a long-term relationship, with no plans to adopt. Sometimes, it almost feels like he has adopted me.

  We chatted for a while, Big D and I mostly taking the piss out of Kevin for being so emotional. That had always been our way in big moments, to defuse them with humor. But we were both pretty emotional, too.

  Fortunately, a man interrupted us. He wanted to shake my hand. “I was there,” he said. “I saw you lying on the ground.” He paused. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you now.”

  He had left out a sentence, but I knew what he meant: I thought you were dead for sure.

  The man’s name was Kevin Corcoran. He had been standing next to me, with his wife and daughter, when the first bomb went off. His wife, Celeste, had lost both her legs, the only other double amputee. She was really down about it, he admitted. She hated thinking about what her life would be like now. She had loved to walk on the beach. She had always been in charge. She hated feeling helpless. Their daughter, Sydney, was in the hospital bed next to her, but Celeste couldn’t hold her. She couldn’t tell her own daughter that everything was going to be okay. Sydney had almost bled to death on Boylston Street, but Kevin hadn’t known it at the time. He couldn’t find her in the chaos. He thought Sydney was okay, so he stayed with his wife. He knelt over her, hugging her. He thought she was going to die. She was covered with blood, and her feet were barely attached. Then they told him Sydney almost died, and that she might lose a leg, too. She was only seventeen.

  “It helps to see you so happy, Jeff,” he said, fighting back tears.

  He shook my hand and walked back to his family’s hospital room. I looked at Big D and Kevin. Then I turned and rolled down the hall, as far as I could, until I came to the window at the far end. Kevin caught up to me there.

  “I’m proud of you,” he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, like a father might after a difficult baseball game.

  I was bawling. I was crying so hard that tears were streaming down my face. It was embarrassing.

  “Look what they did,” I said.

  “It’s okay to cry.”

  I couldn’t have stopped, even if I’d wanted to. Outside, it was a beautiful day. I could see a garden, and downtown Boston in the distance. I could imagine the Red Sox out there at Fenway, and Ortiz calling Boston our fucking city.

  “I’m not worried about me,” I said. “I’m worried about the others. The ones who were hurt.” I don’t know if that’s true. I think I was crying about everything. But I was thinking about Sydney Corcoran.

  Kevin didn’t say anything. He just let me cry.

  “Why?” I said finally. “Why did they do this to us?”

  RECOVERY

  11.

  It was only after I moved to the secondary ICU that those kinds of thoughts started creeping in: Why? Why did this happen?

  Why us?

  And, more important, what could I have done?

  That’s the hardest part, looking at all the small decisions. What if we’d crossed the street to be with Erin’s sister Jill? What if we hadn’t walked down an extra block? Remy had moved toward the finish line only minutes before. What if Michele and I had joined her like she wanted us to? I had been about to suggest that to Michele when the bomb went off. What if the bomb had gone off one minute later? Would we all be fine now?

  Or would things have been worse?

  I think about the bomb all the time. How it blasted backward, away from the race. How because the bag was on the ground, the shrapnel came out low. My lower legs took a direct hit. They were so close to the bomb that they absorbed a huge amount of shrapnel. It instantly destroyed them—literally pulping my muscles and flesh—but that shielded people behind me. If my legs hadn’t been in the way, more people might have died.

  We were lucky. That’s what the experts say about the death toll at the bombing. It could have been worse.

  What if the shrapnel had come out higher? I was knocked out for a second after the blast. A few inches higher, and I never would have woken up.

  What if I’d taken a step back? Would the shrapnel have destroyed my hips? That was what happened to Krystle Campbell. She was standing a few feet from me, just watching a race, but the shrapnel caught her higher, near the waist, and she died at the scene.

  Or what if I’d gone to join Remy? What if I’d moved, and my legs hadn’t been there, and another person had been killed? Or two? Or ten?

  All of us have those thoughts. I know, because I’ve talked with other survivors. We all have questions. Why would God allow this to happen? Why would someone do this? I understand that this could happen, but how could it happen to me?

  The harder question is: What if? What if I’d done something different? It’s hard, because that feels like the question you can control.

  It’s not just the survivors. After the first week, when we finally had a chance to think, the doubts and guilt started to set in for all of us. My brother Chris thought he should have pushed for time off. My friend Sully said he should have been there, too. Remy was having nightmares, because she’d left Michele and me behind.

  I still remember Erin saying that first time, “I’m sorry, Jeff. This is my fault.”

  “No,” I said.

  “If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t have been there. I pushed you to go. I told you to meet me at the finish line. If it wasn’t for me, you’d still have your legs.”

  “No, Erin, don’t ever say that. It was my choice. I wanted to be there. I was proud to be there for you.”

  “But what if I hadn’t run in the marathon? What if I hadn’t slowed down? I should have been finished…”

  “Erin, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  If anybody did something wrong, it was me.

  I knew that guy was trouble. I knew he shouldn’t have been there. What if I had… tackled him or something. You get those fantasies sometimes: I stopped the bombing! But of course that would never happen, tackling a stranger in a crowd.

  What if I’d gone to the police? It was the finish line of the Boston Marathon; there were police officers everywhere.

  But I wouldn’t have had time. It happened too fast.

  But I could have said something to him. That’s the thought that haunted me. Tamerlan Tsarnaev looked right at me. He did that asshole thing, that stare where it’s like, Yeah, son, I’m in your space, what you gonna do about it? Challenging me.

  What if I’d said something to him? Not pick a fight, but just like “What’s up?” What if I’d paid more attention? Made him feel uncomfortable? Would he have left the bomb if he thought I was watching him?

  I know there’s no point to this line of thought. Sure, it would have been great if I’d put the pieces together and acte
d. I’d have been a real hero. But that’s not the way life works.

  None of this was my fault. It was Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s fault. He did this to us. Not God. Not random chance. Tamerlan. But what if…

  Erin ate herself up for weeks, worrying about it. No matter how many times I said, “Never think that way, Erin. Never,” she couldn’t stop feeling guilty.

  It’s impossible not to. I mean, I’m not the type to dwell. What if my parents hadn’t divorced? What if I’d finished college? I don’t worry about those things. What’s the point? I roll with what life gives me. I make the best of it.

  But even I doubted during that second week. After the pain diminished, and especially after I started to meet other victims. Celeste and Sydney Corcoran were standing right beside me. So was John Odom, and Krystle Campbell, who had died. I didn’t notice them at the time, but they were there, cheering for loved ones and strangers, having a great time. And now, if they were lucky, they were in the hospital, their lives blasted apart. Scared. Sad. Unsure of the future.

  It wasn’t just the story Mr. Corcoran told that affected me that day. It was the way he looked. He was so traumatized. There are some things you can never get over, and seeing your wife and daughter brutally injured seemed like one of them.

  I don’t cry for myself. I try not to be angry. I can deal with what happened, because it happened to me. But if the bombers had hurt Erin or Mom? If I was the one that had to look down at someone I loved in that hospital bed? That would be different. I would track those bastards into the grave.

  I know Mr. Corcoran now, so I know I was wrong about him. He’s not broken. He’s Boston Strong. And he’s proud. He has an amazing family. But in that hospital, that week, he looked as wounded as his wife.

  I didn’t do that to them. I never thought I did, and I never really blamed myself. But in those last minutes before the bomb went off, there was one person in the world who could have prevented all their pain. Only one. And that person was me.

  Don’t dwell on that, Jeff, I would tell myself. It’s in the past. Focus on right now.

  And I did. I may have lain awake at night, in pain and wondering about the future, but during the day, I was smiling.

  12.

  I was lucky. That’s how I tried to look at it. I was standing right next to a bomb, and I survived.

  I had health insurance. I had thousands of people who gave thousands of dollars to help me. I had top medical care—and, the doctors told me, one day I’d have the best artificial legs in the world, courtesy of a charitable fund.

  I had an amazing girlfriend.

  I had a giving family. Every day, Uncle Bob and Aunt Cathleen brought me home-cooked meals. Every other patient was eating Jell-O, while I was scarfing down beef chili and enchiladas.

  “Where do you live, anyway?” I asked Kevin one morning when he brought my daily pastries. Anytime I needed something, I’d text Kevin, and he would be there in five minutes.

  He went to the window, snapped a photo, and brought it back. “See that street?” he said. “That’s my block.” Kevin lived fourteen houses from the hospital.

  Like I said, lucky.

  By Tuesday of the second week, I could transfer into my wheelchair and roll around whenever I wanted. That was when I discovered that many victims hadn’t yet been moved out of the emergency ICU. My injuries were so horrific that there wasn’t any question about how to treat them. My legs had to come off. And since my knees couldn’t be saved, the doctors cut diagonally through the thighs, allowing my leg wounds to seal properly.

  Other people, who appeared less injured, went through multiple surgeries, trying to save their legs. Or they had severe burns, necessitating weeks in intensive care. Mr. Odom had eleven surgeries on his severed arteries. His wound was through his hip; otherwise, they would have amputated. The last victim to leave the hospital, Marc Fucarile, had metal lodged near his heart. He lost one leg and was under the knife sixteen times, for a total of forty-nine surgical procedures.

  I also didn’t have infections or complications, which can be as bad as the original injuries. My new friend Patrick, for instance, lost one leg below the knee. Having a knee is huge for amputees; it’s more muscle, and it gives you control of another major joint. If you lose one leg below the knee, you’ll be back to your normal life within weeks. Losing four joints, as I did, changes everything.

  So it seemed like Patrick would have a much easier recovery than me. Except that in order to save his knee, doctors had to close his amputation with a skin graft.

  The graft became infected, so he had another surgery to replace it. In fact, he had several more. Months later, he’s having complications: the skin grafts keep ripping away when he uses his artificial leg. Imagine that you’re walking along, and six inches of skin on your leg suddenly tears apart—and it keeps happening, again and again.

  So I was lucky. Lucky that my wounds didn’t become infected. Lucky that my surgery was straightforward and well performed.

  Which isn’t the same as saying it was easy. It wasn’t. It straight up sucked. I hated looking at my thighs. Once, and only once, I lifted them with my hands to check out the bottoms of my legs. They were covered with blood and scabs. No wonder they hurt like hell.

  In movies, a character takes a vicious beating, and the next day they stick an ice pack on a bruise and say they’re sore. Five minutes later, they’re chasing someone. But a week later, I still felt like my organs were pulped. That was what the doctors had worried about: that I was smashed inside. I guess I was lucky it only felt that way, even if I was still so messed up I couldn’t even lie on my stomach. The foot-long slice where they opened me up was too raw.

  That didn’t keep me from the wheelchair, though. As soon as they moved me to my new room, I was rolling. I don’t want to make too much of it. After all, I was just going up and down a hospital hallway. But I could visit people: not just the other victims, but their families, too.

  And now that I was out of the emergency area, more people could visit me. A lot of my friends came by for the first time that week. My nephew Cole, who was seven, dropped in for a visit after school.

  “Uncle Jeff,” he said, with a serious-little-kid expression. “Are your legs going to grow back?”

  “No they’re not, Forehead,” I said. That’s what Derek and I call Cole: the Forehead. He’s a cute kid, but he has a lot of real estate up there. “But don’t worry. I’m going to get some bionic legs.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. Don’t mess with Uncle Jeff. I’m going to be a superhero.”

  Later, a huge African-American police officer came by. He wasn’t built like Stevan Ridley, the New England Patriots running back, who had visited me the day after Julian Edelman did. Ridley was the most stacked guy I have ever seen.

  “Do you work out every day?” I had asked him.

  “Three times a day, buddy. Every day.”

  This officer was tall. He towered over me, especially since I was down in the chair. He had come to give me a few things that had been recovered at the scene. He could have sent them over, but I could tell he wanted to talk to me. He handed me a plastic bag. Inside were my driver’s license and a credit card. They looked fine, not torn or burned or anything. I just sat there staring at them, not saying anything. It’s weird, what survives.

  “You okay, Jeff?” the officer asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  I looked at him sadly. “No, I’m all right.”

  “You sure?”

  “It’s just…”

  “Name it, buddy.”

  I paused. “Do you think you can find my sneakers? I loved those sneakers.”

  The poor guy looked like he was about to faint. My sneakers had been destroyed, just like my feet. He didn’t know what to say.

  Until I laughed. “I’m just kidding,” I said.

  “Oh, man,” he said. “You got me, Jeff. You really got me.”

  He w
as a nice guy. I feel like I keep saying that, but it’s true. I met one bad person in this whole experience, but he’s dead now. Everyone else was amazing: kind, caring, giving.

  I’m coming out of this experience with damage. I guess you’d call it suspicion. I know how evil humans can be, and I’m watchful, because the bad dudes are out there.

  But I know something else, too: bad people are rare.

  Good people are everywhere.

  13.

  Wednesday, April 24, was Sydney Corcoran’s eighteenth birthday. Erin had bought her a card, and when she came in that morning, she wanted me to sign it. I had never met Sydney, but I had heard her story from her father and others. She had been in a car accident at sixteen that cracked her skull. Now, a little more than a year later, she was dealing with a severe leg injury.

  “A card?!” I said. “I’ve got to give her something more.”

  My room was filling up with flowers and gifts. My location hadn’t been made public, and Aunt Jenn had only recently posted a P.O. box address on Facebook, so these were mostly from friends and coworkers: small electronics, headphones, a guitar from a close friend. The media buyers at the Costco corporate office in Seattle had sent me a care package, so my table was full of movies, magazines, and books.

  And then there was my mandolin. My dad had mentioned my love of music in a newspaper article, so Guitar Center offered me a free guitar. But I was having trouble playing the two—one from a friend, one from home—that I already had. My damaged eardrums distorted the sound, and the echoes gave me a headache. I played at the hospital mostly to keep people from worrying. I didn’t want them to know how difficult it was to do something I used to love.

  So Guitar Center gave me a mandolin instead. I loved that mandolin; it sat beside my bed for weeks, in a place of honor. I couldn’t imagine giving away any of my instruments, even to another bombing victim.

  Besides, I didn’t know if Sydney liked music.