Still Me (4 page)

In many other sports it's essential to be light on your feet. In tennis you can't be flat-footed and move effectively around the court. In skiing your weight is forward, reaching down the fall line. I remember when I was first learning to ski someone told me to try to curl my toes upward inside my boots because that forces your knees and weight forward. If you try to pull away from the mountain, if you raise your shoulders or take your weight off your downhill ski, you're going to slide and fall. The important thing is to stay forward.

Yet in riding, if you get too far forward before the horse leaves the ground you're likely to get into trouble. And that may have been what happened to me over that fence. As you go over a jump, your heels have to be thrust down and your butt should be reaching backwards to keep you in the center of the horse. This position is the opposite of what comes naturally. You have to train yourself to keep your heels down and stay in the middle. “On your toes” in riding invites disaster.

For more than a year I wondered if my injury was purely an accident, a freakish event, or if I was responsible for what happened to me. Buck had never stopped on a cross-country course before, so what caused him to refuse this easy fence that he could probably have walked over? Rabbit or no rabbit, shadows or no shadows, I think I may have done something to cause the accident, and I have to take responsibility for it.

I often think of my friend Tim Murray, who went sailing one day in November 1994 and drowned. Why? He took the Styrofoam flotation out of his boat because he was working on it. He went out on a windy day with no life preserver, and he and his friend—both expert sailors—raised the spinnaker. Normally this wouldn't present a problem, but two miles offshore waves were building up, it was blowing twenty-five knots, and the boat swamped. The water was forty-eight degrees, and there was no way they could make it to shore. They both drowned, for all those reasons.

My friend Robbie Robertson, an exceptional pilot, won the national championship in soaring. Right after he came home he went gliding at a different airport than usual. It was a very gusty day, and he forgot to tell the tow pilot that he needed to be towed at eighty miles an hour because he was carrying a full load of water ballast in his wings. So he was towed at sixty-five, the normal speed for low-performance canvas gliders, and they ran out of runway. As the tow plane released and climbed away, Robbie tried to pull up. He went up about one hundred feet and stalled. The glider went straight into the ground. He was killed instantly.

So I come back to my own situation, approaching that third jump on May 27. I may have moved forward before I should have, which is an easy mistake to make. On the other hand, that shouldn't have been enough to cause Buck to stop. But I've learned that to speculate endlessly about what happened serves no purpose other than to torment myself. Regardless of exactly what happened, I know now that I can't relive the event forever. If I made a mistake, I've got to forgive myself for being human. I'm in the process of doing that now.

I only fell a few feet, but I shattered my first cervical vertebra as I landed on the top rail of the jump. The second vertebra was also broken, but not so badly. Then I was fighting for air like a drowning person. It's possible that as I twisted my head and fought for air the shards of my first vertebra and the broken part of the second vertebra were cutting and damaging nerves in the spinal cord. I was probably my own worst enemy at that point.

By the time the paramedics arrived at the scene, I hadn't breathed for three minutes. They stabilized my head and managed to keep me alive by squeezing air into my body with an ambu bag. Apparently I was still conscious; later they described me as “combative.” I'm very lucky they reached me so quickly, because after four minutes of not breathing, brain damage begins. They managed to hold my head still enough to put on a collar that immobilized my neck. After I was loaded into the ambulance, they drove off the field extremely slowly, so that the rough terrain wouldn't cause further damage.

Several months later I called these paramedics and told them how grateful I was that they had saved my life. They were very matter of fact, saying that it was just part of their job. I was deeply moved by their quiet, understated response. In keeping with EMT policy, they never even told me their names.

Dana was always there when I competed, usually stationed at the more difficult jumps. Often she would videotape as much of the ride as possible, and I would spend countless evenings running the film backwards and forwards, looking for ways to improve. But this time she was still back at the Holiday Inn, where Will was having a difficult time waking up from his nap. Suddenly the phone rang. It was Peter Lazar, one of our group, and the first thing he said was, “Now, don't panic.” Dana asked, “What happened?” She's a doctor's daughter; in emergencies she is pretty steady. She immediately assumed that I had fallen. There would be no other reason for Peter to call and say, “Don't panic.” When he said, “Chris had a spill,” it occurred to Dana that this is the kind of language people use to minimize situations. (Dana's sister once crashed into a tree in a skiing accident, broke her nose, and lacerated her face: her other sister called up and said she'd had a “skiing mishap.”) Then Peter added, “I don't know why, but they had to take him off the field on a stretcher.”

Dana took Will, who of course did not know what was happening, drove to the Culpeper hospital, and found the emergency room. A nurse came in. Dana said, “Hi, I'm Dana Reeve. My husband is here.” And the nurse said, “Oh, okay.” Dana asked, “Is my husband all right? Is he okay?” The nurse would only say, “The doctor will be out in a minute.”

Dana was beginning to sense that something terrible had happened. She was still very conscious of Will, who went on talking and wanting to play. There was only one other person in the waiting room. It was all quiet and sleepy; the Culpeper facility is a really small place. Then the nurse came back and said, “The doctor will be right out.” There were the three of them sitting in silence—Dana, Will, and a woman reading a magazine.

Then she saw a helicopter landing in the courtyard, with the name
Pegasus
painted on the side. She thought: That's not for a broken arm.

Two nurses came out and told Dana the doctor wanted to see her in his office. One took one elbow and one took the other, and they walked down the hallway. Dana was carrying Will and thinking: They're holding me up. This is really serious, this is something awful.

Dr. Maloney, the admitting physician at the ER, came into the office and said he was very worried about me. But he didn't tell her I had broken my neck. Will was sitting in Dana's lap, and as Dr. Maloney was giving her the details of my injury, she felt like she was being knocked backwards with each new thing he said: I'd broken the top two cervical vertebrae (C1 and C2), I was having trouble breathing, I was on a respirator. After each new piece of information, Dana took a breath and said, “Okay, okay, okay.” She felt as if she were being punched repeatedly and had to prepare herself each time for the next blow.

Will was sitting there squeezing Dana's nose with his fingers so that she would say “beep.” It was one of his favorite games. He did that as Dana was hearing about my injury. She listened, and she kept saying “beep”—trying to remain the parent in control while receiving the most devastating news of her life.

She was very confused. If I was on a respirator, that meant I was practically dead but they were just keeping me breathing. She knew nothing about broken necks. She didn't understand how it all fit together. She said, “I have to call my father.” She needed a translation.

Amazingly, Chuck Morosini was at home that holiday weekend. Dana told him, “Chris has had a serious riding accident. It's a neck injury.” Her father said, “Oh God.” That was enough. She knew immediately that my life was hanging in the balance. The people at Culpeper said that Dana should see me before the helicopter took off, because it might be for the last time.

Dana had to collect Will, try not to frighten him with what was happening, and check out of the motel. How she got through that afternoon, I have no idea.

She also had to cope with the public. She knew the media would be all over the story, but she didn't want to deal with anybody outside the family. She knew she had to protect Will and to protect me. Her reaction was, “Everybody out, this is a crisis.” The only way to deal with it was to form a tight circle.

As Dana packed up my belongings, she was acutely conscious that I might never need them again. She collected my shaving things, my socks, and the rest of my clothes. She came across my map of the cross-country course, which I had been studying just a couple of hours before. But she remained composed, putting everything in the suitcase, looking under the bed, in the drawers, finding keys, going through all the ordinary motions of checking out of a motel.

Will wanted to play soccer. He was clearly searching for some normality now that everything had gone haywire. Dana actually went out and kicked the ball with him a couple of times, then came back in and continued packing. “Mommy has to finish packing. We have to go. They're taking Daddy in the helicopter. We have to go.”

Then they went to the front desk to check out. Earlier that day someone had come by and said, “The manager would like to have dinner with you and your husband tonight, and we have babysitters.” As she turned in our keys, Dana said, “Could you please tell the manager that we won't be able to have dinner tonight, and thank him very much?” The woman asked, “Where's your husband?” And Dana said, “He had to leave.” “Oh,” said the woman, “I really wanted a picture. Can I have a picture of you?” So Dana posed. She sat there with Will and posed for a picture because she just didn't want to explain.

Then she and Will drove to the University of Virginia, as I was being flown there in a helicopter named for a flying horse.

Chapter 2

When Dana arrived at UVA, she still had no idea what to expect. In the ER, Dr. Nadkarni, who told her to call him Mo, came in, sat down, and said, “I have some bad news.” She'd already had so much bad news. She didn't know whether the next thing would be: “Your husband didn't survive the helicopter trip” or “He's brain damaged beyond repair.”

He repeated much of what she had heard at Culpeper: I couldn't breathe on my own, I was intubated and on a respirator. But he was the first one who said, “There's a chance he may never breathe on his own.” Dana said it was like being slammed into a wall. Her whole body and head involuntarily turned to one side, as if she had been struck.

Will was picking all of this up. For a good two weeks afterwards, he would ask Dana repeatedly, “Why did Mo have bad news?” And she would have to tell him over and over that I had fallen off Buck, my neck was badly injured, and that this meant I couldn't move my body. Hearing this over and over again was part of his attempt to process what had happened. During my first week in the hospital, Will repeatedly reenacted the accident for himself on a hobbyhorse in the playroom of the pediatric wing. Again and again he would deliberately fall off the horse in slow motion, saying, “Oh, my neck, my neck.” Dana would reassure him that he was fine but that, yes, my neck was injured and I wasn't able to move.

Like everyone else Mo was wonderful with Will. Later he took him to a playroom so that Dana could spend a little time with me before I went in for an MRI. He became friends with Will, and Mo was the first person outside our family that he was willing to stay with.

Dana got Will something to eat, then went back to the emergency room. It was about five-thirty, still light out. Will was very hungry, and Dana was trying to keep him happy while keeping herself from falling apart.

A doctor brought her in to me. I was lying on a gurney, intubated and still unconscious. She met with the chief of neurosurgery, Dr. John Jane, and Dr. Scott Henson, his second in command. They told her I was extremely lucky to have survived the accident, that my head was intact, and that my brain stem, so close to the site of the injury, appeared unharmed. If there is damage to the brain stem, your face doesn't work; you can't move your mouth, can't move any of your facial muscles.

I was on morphine and Versed, completely snowed. And whenever I did become conscious for brief moments, all they could do was wash my mouth out with flavored swabs—little pieces of foam on a stick that come in cherry, raspberry, and orange. I wasn't allowed to drink or eat anything during the days before the operation. I would become semiconscious for a short time, not aware of anything much, then drift back under again. All the while Dana was sitting beside me. I felt absolutely nothing. I had no idea of my situation. Even in the brief moments when I was awake, I was still unaware.

After a few days of heavy sedation, I developed what is called ICU psychosis. When sleep patterns are disrupted for long enough, you can become disoriented and slightly psychotic. This is temporary and disappears when the patterns are restored. It has something to do with dark and light, with sleeping in the dark but sensing that you're in the light.

Apparently I would wake up suddenly, still in a sort of dream, imagining wild situations. I would look at Dana and start talking—mouthing, actually, because I couldn't speak—as if we were accomplices, members of a gang. I'd tell her, “Get the gun.” Dana would ask, “Get the gun?” and I'd say, “Yeah, get the gun out of the bag.” I kept saying, “There's foul play.” “There's foul play, they're after us.” Dana would ask, “Who?” and I'd reply, “The bad guys.” It was like a kids' game with cops-and-robbers talk. But I was clearly feeling persecuted and believing that people were out to get me. For Dana this was chilling. She left my room and told the doctors, “He's really talking strangely.” They reassured her that there was no head injury. A CAT scan had shown that my brain was fine, and when I came off the drugs the hallucinations would disappear, which they did.