by Brian Boyle
Most afternoons, my parents guide me to the back porch for fresh air. I sit back in the cushioned lounge chair and enjoy watching the autumn breeze flow through the leafy branches of the cedar, oak, and dogwood trees in our backyard. When I was little, my dad and I used to go for long walks in the same woods that I’m looking at now.
One day, my good friend Rachel from high school visits. In my frail state, I feel embarrassed. She’s extremely attractive. I want to jump off the porch and hide under the bushes. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. But her warmth and caring quickly melt away any anxiety. It turns out that she is well past shock—she visited me at the hospital many times, though I have no memory of this.
Rachel begins stopping by the house several times a week. I enjoy her company. She never makes me self-conscious about my appearance. She even begins thinking about becoming a nurse.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, I’m scheduled to attend physical and occupational outpatient therapy sessions at the Child and Adult Rehabilitation Center, which is located about thirty minutes from home. As soon as my parents wheel me into this place, I know that I am going to like it.
The woman at the desk politely gives us a quick tour of the center, which is slightly larger than a regular doctor’s office. The focus is on individualized treatment. My first therapist is a pleasant sixty-year-old woman named Carroll. She’s tall, nearly six feet, with short dyed-blonde hair, and a constant smile.
We start with improving my balance, since standing unassisted will help me walk on my own. She suggests yoga and tai chi moves. This works well because I practiced yoga while on my high school swim team. Our coach was an Olympic swimmer from Czechoslovakia who wanted me to be more flexible and fluid in the water.
Carroll has me sit on a pillow on a small wooden bench as I try to follow along with the tai chi and yoga routines from a DVD playing on the television. Even as I’m stressing my body, there’s a meditative quality that lessens the pain.
I spend my second hour of physical therapy with a black athletic woman named Tosheeda who used to run track in her home country of Jamaica. I love her Caribbean accent. “Hey, mon, I know you can lif’ da weight with your leg. Push, mon, push!” She is more aggressive than Carroll. It’s like I have a yin and yang team on my side.
Even though the weights that Tosheeda straps to my ankles are only two and a half pounds each, my calves and quads ache after several leg lifts. Then she straps the weights to my arms. Throughout each set of arm raises, she carefully monitors my blood pressure. By the time I finish, I’m drenched in sweat.
On Thursdays, I have occupational therapy with the gentle, calm Cameele, who is pursuing a post-graduate degree and works part-time in the mornings. We do exercises that will help restore the nerves in my left arm and shoulder. These include rolling a rubber ball up a wall and raising and lowering my left arm. She also uses an E-Stem, which is a nerve stimulation device that will help reactivate (I hope) the nonworking nerves in my shoulder that were damaged by the dump truck slamming into the driver’s side of the Camaro. The nerves are stimulated by tiny electrical impulses that travel from the equipment box to conductive patches on my arm and shoulder. I feel a slight tingling sensation as the muscle fibers are zapped from the low voltage. Cameele says that when people have severe nerve damage in their shoulder, they usually don’t have feeling in their fingers. But somehow I’m able to move my fingers, hand, and forearm.
My first week of outpatient therapy goes much better than expected. Despite the prospect of many months, if not several years, of therapy, working with these three wonderful women won’t make it so bad.
My chief concern, however, is with my dad, whose behavior has become odd and erratic. He barely speaks to us. He walks around the house with a blank look, unsmiling and constantly tense. He will stare for hours at the television even when it’s not turned on. Often he has difficulty breathing, and I catch him clutching his chest in discomfort. He won’t tell me or my mom what’s wrong. He becomes defensive and angry whenever we ask.
He’s completely different from the person who would remain in my hospital room, while my mom would run out crying. For some inexplicable reason, their roles have reversed. She’s the strong one now. He has emotionally shut down as if he has post-traumatic stress. The strong family warrior has turned into a shell-shocked returning vet—listless, moody, with an invisible injury draining him of vitality.
I begin to think that he’s angry with me, that he’s having trouble accepting the fact that I’m just a five-eleven big baby who needs constant care. I regularly do my breathing exercises with an inspirometer device, but now I don’t want him to watch me struggle to get the little blue ball to rise in the plastic tube. One late morning, I’m working the inspirometer and achieve my personal best for a single breath: a quarter of the way to the gauge’s top. My dad is in the kitchen with my mom, but I know he’s eyeing me. He then walks over to my bed and wants to know how difficult it is to get the blue ball to rise to the top. I hand him the device so he can find out for himself. He aligns the tube and inhales. The blue ball rises so fast it almost cracks the plastic tube. He gives me back the inspirometer without saying anything. He walks away, his right hand rubbing his chest, but instead of heading to the kitchen, he goes outside so he can be alone on the back porch.
What was that all about? Why is he so troubled? Is there anything I can say to lift his spirits and return him to our family? Does he need to hear the same kind of tough-love speech he gave me in Intensive Care when I was ready to call it quits?
I decide to speak with him, but first I have to get out of bed. I carefully lift my bony legs over the side of the bed, listening to the joints pop, as I rest my feet on the carpet. I have trouble standing up, even as I push off the bed with my arms. I will have to crawl. I go ten feet when I see my dad through the sliding glass door as he sits in a picnic table chair under an umbrella. He’s simply staring at the sky. There is such sadness in his eyes. His hand is over his chest and he looks pale. All of a sudden he turns in my direction and our eyes meet. Right then, my mom appears in the living room and sees me on the floor. She screams and tries to help me up, but I quickly tell my mom to go help my dad instead because he looks like he is having a heart attack. She runs outside, then darts back inside to call 911.
Three paramedics arrive within minutes. They rush over to me because I’m still lying on the floor, but I tell them to go outside because my dad is the one in grave danger. They sprint out to the porch with their duffel bags of medical gear. They strap a blood pressure cuff around his arm, while checking his vitals and asking him questions. Two more paramedics race around the rear of the house pushing a gurney toward my dad. As soon as they get to him, they gently lift him onto it and wheel him back through the house. My dad looks down at me on the carpet and says that he loves me. The room begins spinning. It’s almost like a tornado has just come down from the sky, snatching up my dad in a flash, then whirling away.
Mom comes running down the stairs and quickly helps me get off the floor and into my shoes. She grabs my hand and guides me to the garage to her white Nissan Xterra SUV. She assists me into the passenger seat, then lugs the heavy wheelchair into the trunk and lays it flat on its side. She speeds out of the driveway, kicking up dirt and gravel as we follow the ambulance that is already several minutes down the road.
We get to the local hospital called Civista Medical Center, which is only fifteen minutes from home. My mom jumps out of the car, taking out the wheelchair from the trunk and placing it on the ground. She comes around on the passenger side where I’m sitting and helps me out. I can’t keep up with her frantic actions, so she slows down and gets me situated in the wheelchair. She pushes me across the parking lot and up onto the sidewalk and into the emergency area. We head straight to the front desk to see where my dad is. The young female receptionist says that they are currently running several tests on him and that we should take a seat.
My mom wheels me over to th
e corner of the room and positions me next to two open seats by a set of red double doors that lead into the inner dwellings of the emergency unit. I lower my head in my hands in disbelief. When are we ever going to get a break? I peek between my fingers to see who else is in the waiting room. A young boy is resting an ice pack on his knee, a middle-aged woman is holding a baby in her arms, and an older man has white gauze covering part of his head. All this waiting, even if it’s only minutes, fills me with anxiety about my dad’s health. And to think: this is what my parents did for months—wait and wait and wait.
A half hour passes and still no news. My mom browses a celebrity gossip magazine but I can tell she’s agitated. A woman comes walking through the double doors and stops right in front of us. She’s wearing a blue EMT uniform. She has short grayish-blonde hair, glasses, and is smiling. She seems to know me, but I have no idea who she is.
“You must be Brian Boyle. I’d recognize that beach blond hair anywhere,” she says. “My name is Dawn-Moree Dugan and I’m the Assistant Chief for the Ironsides Volunteer Rescue Squad. I was at your accident scene. Boy, you were a fighter. You were the second strongest person our crew ever dealt with, the first being a 250-pound Maryland sheriff. So give me a hug, handsome!”
I slowly get up and give Dawn a well-deserved hug, while profusely thanking her for saving my life even though I have no memory of what happened. I ask her what she remembers.
“Well, Brian, a majority of the people who are hit the way you were die in their vehicle right then and there at the accident scene. They may have been struck by a small car or SUV and do not make it. But you were hit by a dump truck and survived! It’s almost unbelievable. You were trapped in your seat and even the Jaws of Life couldn’t extricate you. We had to remove your shorts and swimsuit for your body to slide out. You had to be rushed to Prince George’s Hospital trauma unit within minutes. The medevac guys thought that was all the time that you had left because of the massive blood loss.”
Dawn pauses and stares intensely at me. “I’m looking at you right now and I’m absolutely amazed. I can’t believe it. There were so many things that could have gone wrong that day, but you made it through. It is safe to say that luck was definitely on your side.”
Dawn can’t stay because she has to leave on a 911 call. Someone just fell off a ladder at his house. She gives me another hug and tells me to stop by the Rescue Squad when my dad feels better.
Her words leave me wondering: How or why did I survive the crash? Think of all the odds stacked up against me. The Camaro could have caught on fire with me still in it. The gas tank was on the driver’s side, and that was where the dump truck slammed into me. What if I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt? Which window would I have flown through from the impact? But the seat belt saved my life, despite breaking my clavicle. What if the rescue team hadn’t been able to get me out of the car in time? What if there hadn’t been a helicopter to take me to Prince George’s Hospital? The local hospital where I’m at now could not have saved me because they don’t have the technology.
Finally, the girl at the front desk signals to us that we can see my dad. My mom pushes me in the wheelchair through the red double doors as we follow a nurse down a long empty hallway until we reach a small room with a pink cloth divider. An old man is sleeping in one bed, with an oxygen tube under his nose. I look past him and see my dad’s shoes poking out from the other side of the pink divider. We go around the curtain, and there he is—lying in the bed with his shirt off and several electrodes attached to various areas of his chest, arms, and lower neck. He appears calm, but his bloodshot eyes tell another story. He says that the doctors ran several tests on his heart and did some blood work, and they ruled out a heart attack. It turned out to be a panic attack caused by stress and anxiety.
Mom sits down in the chair next to him. I remain in my wheelchair, wishing I could do something to make him feel better and reduce his stress. What did he always do when I was in Room 19 to make me feel better? I know. I untie his shoes and slide them off his feet. He shoots me a curious look because he’s unsure what I’m doing. I start rubbing his feet, and we both begin laughing.
CHAPTER 20
THE TRACK
My parents encourage me to leave the house with them when they go out for errands. But the day trips to Home Depot and Lowe’s fail to excite me because I have to be pushed around in a wheelchair. Shopping makes me self-conscious. I feel strangers’ eyes bore right through me and see all the scars zigzagging across my neck, chest, and stomach. I definitely look sickly. My hair is falling out. The doctors told me that this might happen because of all the medication that had flooded my system. Home and the therapy center are the only two places where I don’t feel like a freak.
On the bright side, I’m gaining weight. The doctors monitor my protein intake on a weekly basis to make sure that my body is able to process it. There’s a real concern because my gall bladder and spleen were removed. They give me the green light to consume whey protein powders like I used to take when transforming from swimmer to discus thrower. There are several jugs of protein already in our kitchen closet, and I quickly go through them. My parents take me to one of the vitamin stores, where we spend a small fortune on multiple containers, but I know the money is well spent. More weight and muscle equals more strength.
I now drink two protein shakes with my meals. Along with the shakes, I also eat two protein bars. I’m getting about 150 grams of protein a day. The interesting thing about consuming all that protein is that you have to exercise to turn it into muscle—otherwise it will be stored as excess fat. I learned this lesson in my sophomore year when I tried to put on weight too quickly, thinking that the protein powder would magically turn into muscle all by itself. That’s what the magazine ads always said. But I became bloated instead.
My younger cousins Matt and Hayley, who live in Annapolis, like coming over to hang out. Matt just started high school and Hayley is still in middle school, and they are the brother and sister I never had and always wanted. Matt and I are similar in many respects. We act the same, talk the same, and very much look the same—but with different color hair. We grew up together, played the same sports, and listened to the same music. We could read each other’s thoughts, and we both prefer to keep our feelings to ourselves.
Every day when my parents would leave the hospital, my mom would always update my Aunt Kati, her sister, about my condition. Kati would then relay the information to my Uncle Tom and then to Hayley and Matt, but Matt would never want to hear the news. He refused to accept that his cousin and best friend was dying. The first time he came to see me in the hospital, he brought me his personal CD player with some Jimi Hendrix CDs. I was the one responsible for introducing him to Jimi and he thought that I would be able to listen to him. But at that time, I was deathly ill and still in a coma.
Hayley later told me that while I was in the hospital, her brother would sit in his bedroom all day and work on art that was dedicated to me. His art included digital photography of swimming idols, rock legends, mythological beings like Thor, and comic-book icons like Iron Man. Hayley would write down thoughts in her journal. If the news about my condition was good that day, she would jump up and down with happiness. If it was bad, there would be tears of sadness.
Now that I’m home and spending a lot of time with Matt and Hayley, I can tell that the accident has taken a psychological toll on her because she is so young. She began having panic attacks whenever she went outdoors because in the back of her mind she constantly thought that what happened to me could also happen to her. I tell her that we don’t have the power to decide what will happen to us today or tomorrow, but we do have the power to decide how we can react to those events.
On weekends when they visit, we watch movies together. They help me do my exercises, listen to me when I need someone to talk to, and every time I have to get up to walk somewhere they are on both sides of me, making sure I get there safely.
My grandmother and
grandfather on my mom’s side, whom I call Nana and Big D, have also been a great help and brighten my mood. I think the reason that I love art is because Nana inspired me to be creative and use my imagination at an early age. She loved telling me stories about what it was like growing up in Newfoundland. But with her diabetes and other ailments growing worse, we now mostly talk about medical matters.
Joe Lineberger, my grandfather, is called Big D, which is short for Big Daddy. He was born in Maiden, North Carolina, in 1931. His first job was picking cotton in the fields, and the few cents he earned each week he gave to his mother. He excelled in academics and athletics and was accepted by Duke University, where he had to work two jobs to pay for his schooling. In 1953, he entered the Air Force as a second lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Training Corps program. He served in overseas assignments that included Thule Air Base in Greenland, Pepperell Air Force Base in Newfoundland, exchange duty with the Royal Canadian Air Force in Ottawa, and Headquarters Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.
He accomplished all of this with a wife and five children and is now one of the highest-ranked officers at Andrews Air Force Base. I use his successful background and career as motivation to fortify my own determination to resume a regular life.
The first step back to normalcy is liberation from the wheelchair. I have gone from standing for several minutes to hobbling the fifteen feet from my bed to the kitchen table. I stop and rest, then shuffle back to the bed. Several hours later, I do it again. Soon, I’m able to walk further. One regular trip is the twenty-five feet from the hallway door to the garage. I’d get to the doorknob, stop and rest, and then return to my bed. The most difficult part about learning how to walk again is stairs. Once my foot makes it onto the first step, I have to catch my breath, rest, and five minutes later I do the same with my left foot. Descending steps is just as tiring and laborious.