Compounding matters further, the door of an Aviat Husky A-1C looks nothing like an actual full-framed commercial airplane door. It’s more like a car window that’s hinged in the middle. One section (the glass part) opens upward, while the other section (a metal part) opens downward—like two halves of a clamshell. This means that the stirrup I mentioned above is largely blocked from view when exiting the plane.
Then, slightly off-center of the door, two long stabilizing rods (called wing struts) attach to the bottom of the plane and extend upward from the base of the plane to the farthest tip of the wing. To climb in or out of the plane, a person needs to navigate around the struts.
Located in front of the struts are the plane’s front tires. The tires look like you should be able to climb on them to use as a step when exiting the plane. The easiest way out pushes you toward the front of the plane rather than the rear.
When Lauren climbed out of the plane, it’s safe to assume she exited in the manner that would feel most natural to her—presumably by going forward onto the tire. Picture Bo and Luke Duke from the old TV show The Dukes of Hazzard sliding out the window of the General Lee. A few days earlier Lauren had been flying in a different plane that had larger, balloon tires, and when she flew in that plane, she had probably learned this other method of exiting a plane—by stepping onto the tire. So that way of exiting likely felt most natural to her.
There is footage of the accident scene, which was taken by the fixed security camera mounted on the rear of the hangar. The tape proves some things, but even then all the details aren’t conclusive. Mike has seen the video, along with FAA administrators, but I haven’t. According to Mike, due to the way the plane’s body is positioned between the camera and the plane’s door, it’s impossible to see Lauren exit the aircraft or impact the propeller.
Nevertheless, exiting the plane by stepping in front of the wing strut would have put Lauren in harm’s way, because it would have placed her on the side of the strut closest to the propeller, not closest to the tail of the plane.
So why didn’t Lauren see the propeller?
Next time you ride in a commuter plane, the kind that takes you from a hub city to a smaller airport, take a good look out the window at the propeller. Even at moderate airspeeds, a spinning propeller disappears. You can look straight at it and see landscape on the other side like you’d see through a picture window. The propeller itself becomes a faint, smudgy circle—almost invisible. Some propellers are partially colored red, which creates an effect similar to placing a reflector in the spokes of a bicycle wheel, and in perfect weather conditions during daylight hours, you can see a faint red circle. But Lauren’s accident happened on a drizzly, dark evening, with no stars out and a limited moon. There were strobe lights on the plane and a taxiing light on, as well as light coming from the back of the hangar, but Lauren climbed out of the plane on its darker side. The propeller would have been impossible to see at night.
Which brought up the last question in my mind: Could this have happened to anybody? This required some research at a later date than the afternoon of Mike’s tour.
The technical term for being hit by a propeller is “prop strike,” a broad term that refers to any time an airplane’s propeller contacts anything other than air. This contact might be with flying birds, treetops, the ground, the top of a mountain, animals on the ground, or humans. In 2011 the FAA reported more than ten thousand wildlife strikes, many involving plane propellers, and acknowledged that the number is undoubtedly higher.6
A more precise description is a “prop-to-person” strike, the term given by the FAA to reference only propeller to human contact.7 Prop-to-person records began in 1982 and include accidents involving both helicopters and airplanes. A friend of mine reviewed the records from 1990 through Lauren’s accident on December 3, 2011, and eliminated the helicopter accidents, leaving only airplane results. The numbers showed that during this twenty-one year time period, ninety-one serious or fatal prop-to-person accidents with planes occurred.8 Serious injuries included fractured arms and legs, severed fingers and limbs, and being struck in the head. Each year, an average of four people in America experience the same type of accident Lauren did. In other words, even though a prop-to-person strike is not as common an accident as, say, a highway collision, over the past two decades there is ample evidence of people walking into still-spinning airplane propellers.
The records showed that the people involved in these accidents worked in a variety of careers, including civil engineers and medical doctors—obviously highly intelligent people. One of the more widely-publicized prop-to-person strikes happened in 1983. Jack Newton, one of Australia’s most successful golfers in the 1970s and 1980s, had a near-fatal accident when he walked into a spinning propeller of a Cessna airplane he was about to board at the Sydney Airport.9 It was dark at the time, and there was heavy rainfall, which greatly reduced visibility. The accident cost him his right arm and eye, and he also suffered severe abdominal injuries.
Newton was at the height of his professional career at the time. You might expect that life was pretty much over for him after the accident. But fortunately he came back in big ways. It wasn’t overnight, though. Newton spent months in rehabilitation and needed multiple surgeries, including facial reconstruction. Eventually he returned as a television and radio golf commentator and a newspaper reporter. He went on to design golf courses and travel as a public speaker, as well as serving as the chairman of the Jack Newton Junior Golf Foundation. Newton even taught himself to play golf again—one-handed. From his right-handed stance, he learned to swing the club with his left hand. Today, he scores in the mid-80s.
Jack Newton made an amazing recovery. But in the tense weeks following the day of Lauren’s accident, we didn’t know if life for our family would ever return to normal again. I say this because there was one more factor in the accident we learned about, a fact that became one of the most difficult for us to get our minds around. We learned about this from the surgery reports, and it relates to the propeller itself.
Immediately after the accident, Mike covered up the propeller with gunnysacks and tape to prevent the news media from taking pictures of it. For days to come, reporters and TV crews milled around his house, hoping for a lucky break. They were all over his property, in his driveway, in his backyard. Mike even caught people trying to break into the hangar. He had turned the propeller over to the FAA, per regulations. It’s currently sitting in an FAA evidence room in an undisclosed location and set to remain there for the next two years. The plane itself was taken in the dark to a shop in Kansas to be repaired. The prop that was on the plane originally, the one that hit Lauren, had two blades. The prop on the plane now has three. There’s no real advantage in a three-bladed or two-bladed prop, Mike explained; it’s just whatever the pilot prefers.
Yet the blade remained a key factor due to two of its characteristics: speed and shape. The Husky’s engine idles at about 625 to 675 rpm.10 This means that at idle speed each blade of the propeller moves in a complete circle no fewer than ten times every second. An airplane propeller is not flat like a butter knife. It’s curved like a windmill in order to grab the air. What we found out was that only the edge of that swinging windmill caught Lauren, but because it was curved, the edge caused a huge amount of damage. How much of the propeller touched Lauren? Picture the width of one and a half dimes.
One sixteenth of an inch. That was the sum total of the propeller’s blade that touched her. All that damage to my daughter was caused by the merest hint of moving steel.
To me, that’s one of the darkest, most ironic parts of this accident. If only Lauren had been positioned the slightest fraction of an inch in another direction, the blade would have missed her entirely. On the other hand, if the blade had struck one-sixteenth of an inch closer to her subclavian artery, she almost certainly would not have survived. Such a random, miniscule partition separated life from tragedy that night. So many random factors swirled together into a
perfect, horrific storm.
Knowing that the accident could have happened to anybody doesn’t make it any easier in my soul. I so wished I could have been there that night. I don’t know for certain whether there is anything I might have done to prevent the accident. Maybe kept my eye on my little girl more closely.
After seeing where it happened, I kept examining the details of the accident, over and over again. I couldn’t help it. Maybe that’s what a father’s heart does when there are so many things he doesn’t know.
What I do know for certain is that the wind blew from the north that evening, and all would have been different, if only the wind had blown from the south.
CHAPTER 20
The Next Twenty-Four Hours
Brittany
The paramedics who treated Lauren later told reporters that when they first arrived at the accident scene, the extent of Lauren’s injuries “took their breath away.”11 With the large amount of blood she’d lost, the lacerations to her head, and her skull fracture, the first responders thought for sure she wouldn’t survive. Or if she did, there would be significant brain damage.
During that first long night in the hospital after the accident, our family was gradually introduced to the severity of Lauren’s injuries. We’d heard the magic word “stabilized” earlier that same evening, so we were fairly certain Lauren wasn’t going to die. But the other question—whether or not she would still be the same Lauren—loomed large in our minds.
The medical staff was sensitive in their approach to filling us in, yet they were honest, too, and we didn’t want them to be any other way. Everyone we met that night who cared for Lauren was truly amazing. It helped to soften the wave after wave of bad news that came our way.
The brain surgery came first, I remember. The surgeons had to remove bone from her skull that had broken and lodged in her brain. This was one of the most frightening parts of the night. There is a great deal of difficulty in such procedures, the surgeon explained, and much could go wrong. The left frontal lobe of the brain, where Lauren was hit, controls a person’s personality, including impulse control, social behavior, memory, and language.12 Many people with brain injuries never completely recover, and for the rest of their lives they display irrational, aggressive, or inappropriate behavior. Even if Lauren’s brain did function normally again, she would probably need to relearn all basic functions, beginning again as a little child would.
As the hours wore on, the litany of harsh news continued. I just felt stunned that night. I think we all did.
When the brain surgery was completed and was determined to be successful (as far as they could tell that night), another team of surgeons worked on Lauren’s hand. It had actually been severed just above the fleshy part of the base of her palm. If it had been severed an inch higher on the arm (at the wrist), they might have been able to reattach her hand. But as it was, the hand was destroyed, and they needed to amputate the remaining tissue even farther, taking everything off just below her wrist bone. That way she’d be able to wear a prosthetic easier, they explained.
Lauren’s left collarbone had been completely shattered. There wasn’t much of it left, and another team worked on her shoulder and upper chest to stabilize the area.
Her eye had been sliced almost completely in two, and her skull and facial bones had been fractured both above and below her eye socket where the blade had hit. Surgeons installed plates under the skin above and below her eye to provide rigidity to the area. They planned to remove the eye the next day, after her body had rested awhile, but at 6 a.m. they changed their plan. The one bit of bright news was that they’d seen some cells in the eye starting to repair themselves, so they were going to try and knit the eye back together, in hopes that she might see out of it again someday.
One of the continual problems throughout the night, said surgeon after surgeon, was the need to clean out Lauren’s wounds and prevent infection. The propeller was as sanitary as any piece of exposed steel, I guess, but it had noticeable traces of grease, dirt, and bug remains on it, like you’d expect to find on the grill of a car. They had cleaned the wounds as thoroughly as possible, but they were honest in reminding us that Lauren was still highly vulnerable to infection.
At about 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 4, the hospital’s staff told us to go home and get some rest. Surgeons planned to begin their attempt to repair Lauren’s eye at 10 a.m., and they expected her to be in surgery until 4:30 p.m. There wasn’t anything we could do in the meantime, they explained. We didn’t want to leave, but we saw the wisdom in it. Everyone had been up all night and in a constant state of tension. My dad was dealing with a bad cold on top of everything else. He was particularly wrecked.
Shaun and I went back to our house and tried to sleep for a while. Then we got up and drove over to Mom and Dad’s house. I don’t think anyone had slept more than fifteen minutes. Mom said they had just tossed and turned. Dad spent most of the time pacing around the living room, a cell phone in his hands. He had a nervous, panicky look in his eyes, even when we got there, and Mom told us Dad had kept saying, “We need some people here with us. We need people around us.” I feared that Dad himself would need to be hospitalized soon. He was in total shock, alternating between acting panicked and behaving like a walking zombie.
Soon our good family friends, David and Elizabeth, arrived. Then Chris and Dana came over. Mike and Shannon. Chris Wilson. Brian and Tammy. Other people trickled in the rest of the day. By noon, sixty people filled the house. People brought casseroles, vegetable trays, and baskets of fruit and bread. It felt like a reception after a funeral. Dad spent most of the afternoon on the couch sandwiched between David and Brian. Dad lay in the fetal position, utterly exhausted, his head on David’s lap.
Friends began to take charge of our family’s functioning for us. Lo’s best friend, Caroline Clark, set up a communication website on CaringBridge.org, along with my mom’s friend Sharon Kendall, the mom of Carter, the guy Lauren had sort of dated in ninth grade. The purpose of the website was to get updates out to family members and friends and to communicate specific prayer requests to people. Sharon and Cindy Kitchen volunteered to organize all meals. Another couple, Tracy and Denise Metten, stepped forward and rented a hotel room for my parents near the hospital, so they could spend every waking minute with Lauren and wouldn’t need to drive back and forth to the house in Dallas through traffic every day.
People everywhere were following the story. Calls and e-mails started coming in almost immediately from people wanting to donate money for the inevitably huge medical bills. Sharon said she’d set up a bank account to receive donations.
Throughout the day while Lauren was in eye surgery, my parents were in contact with the surgical intensive care unit (SICU). About every thirty minutes another phone call came with a new update on Lauren’s condition.
Later that afternoon, just before Lauren got out of surgery, we went back to the hospital. About one hundred people were already there, standing outside the SICU, waiting for us. James was there. Shaun had texted him earlier to fill him in, and Shaun and I both gave him a big hug. “Whatever it takes,” James said. “Whatever she needs.”
“I know,” Shaun said and gave him another big hug.
I’d say we were all sort of functioning again by then. Even Dad. When Lauren came out of surgery, they let the immediate family go in to see her. Lauren wasn’t technically in a coma, but she was completely unresponsive—in a heavy, induced sleep due to all the medication she was on. When we walked into the SICU and saw Lauren lying there, Dad lost it again. He couldn’t stop crying. Lauren had a breathing tube down her throat and a feeding tube in her nose, and she was hooked up to a wall of monitors. Mom was more pragmatic, I’d say. She was mentally rolling up her sleeves, bracing herself for the marathon of care to come. We were allowed to stay only a short while.
The story was first aired on the TV news in Dallas that evening. Just a local station reporting. We didn’t even see it until somebody t
old us about it. A local kid gets into an accident. We didn’t imagine anything would come of the story.
Anything at all.
The medical team explained that Lauren would be heavily drugged all Sunday night—the second night after the accident—with no possibility of waking. So they sent us home again. Mom and Dad went to the hotel near the hospital, and Shaun and I prepared to go back to our house. We knew the head of the SICU, a nurse named Carol, from church. She said she’d look in on Lauren throughout the night. We felt more secure knowing Carol was there.
Shaun and I walked to the parking lot outside the hospital, got into our car, and sat silently for a moment. He put his hand on mine and held it tightly. I looked straight ahead out the windshield, then made the mistake of turning and looking into my husband’s eyes. While Lauren was in surgery all that first night, I had kept it together. Mostly, anyway. The next day when I had seen my parents so shaken at their house, I had kept it together then, too. Today when I had seen Lauren in the hospital bed, I purposely hadn’t allowed myself to cry. Half of Lauren’s hair was shaved, her head swollen to the size of a beach ball. I had no idea if my sister would ever be the same person she’d always been. Yet through it all I had steeled myself.
No matter what happened to my twin, I’d do whatever was possible to help her get better. With every ounce of strength I had, I would be there for her. The decision had been made instantly, even long ago. I knew all our family had made the same determination, Shaun included. I could see it in his eyes. We were just processing it in different ways.
Still Lolo Page 15