Stronger (25 page)
And happier, too.
We met Andre for dinner one night: Erin, Byron, Pennie, Kevin, and me. He came by himself. That’s the first thing I noticed. You could see his artificial legs, but he didn’t seem to notice them. To Andre, they were no big deal.
He sat down with a smile. He was very unassuming. He was oozing swag; he just had that air, but he was also humble and down to earth. He asked about everyone, really taking an interest, and when he talked about himself… it wasn’t that he believed there was nothing he couldn’t do. It was like he never even doubted it. He talked about his work with children, and about the Challenged Athletes Fund, a charity that promoted community among amputees and donated prosthetics to people in need.
“There’s a CAF weekend in San Diego next month,” he told me. It was a get-together, he explained, for people missing limbs. No pressure, just support. He wanted Byron and me to come.
“Maybe,” I said, although I knew another cross-country trip so soon was too much. But I told my newlywed friends, Pat and Jess, about it, and they went. When they came back, they were so excited. They had all these pictures of little kids running around with each other on their artificial legs, having a great time.
Andre was planning to run the Los Angeles and the Boston marathons to raise money for CAF.
“You’re going to wheelchair-race two marathons in a month?” Erin asked, impressed.
No, Andre was hoping to complete the Los Angeles Marathon, then wheelchair across the country with a friend to the Boston Marathon, and complete it, too. The races were forty-four days apart. If they made it, it would be the fastest recorded nonmotorized crossing of the United States.
I don’t care if he makes it. I really don’t. I don’t care if he even tries. To dream that big—for it to be in the realm of possibility—is inspiring.
That’s what Andre does: he inspires. He’s strong in mind and body. Ridiculously good-looking. Highly educated. Smart. Both his parents were doctors. His sister is a famous actress. (And talk about good-looking. Wow, the genes in that family.)
I’m never going to be like Andre. He’s a purebred. Top-of-the-line legit.
I’m a mutt.
But that’s okay. The mutts are the ones who surprise you.
B
ack in Boston, I hit the gym hard. I was more tired from the trip to Seattle than I would admit, but I knew there was no time to rest. I was never going to be like Andre, but I had my goals. With Michelle’s help, I walked on a sloped surface, and on the grass outside Spaulding. On August 17, four months after losing my legs, I walked for ten straight minutes on a treadmill.
“You’re ready to start on stairs,” Michelle said.
Now this was progress.
A few days later, I started feeling pain in my right leg. I could tell the fit of my socket wasn’t right. A gap had opened at the bottom, between my leg and the plastic, and no matter how much I cinched the Velcro strap, I couldn’t get it tight. That caused the rest of the socket to move while I was walking, pinching and rubbing different parts of my thigh.
The fit is important. That’s one of the things I remember Byron and Will telling me when I met them back in June. “If you get a good fit on one of your legs, never change it. A good fit is everything.”
I talked to Michelle about the problem. She recommended I try an extra sock, which is like putting on an extra pair of underwear if your pants are too big. I mean, really? Erin always carried extra socks in her purse, so I put one on and walked a few steps. It didn’t work. The fit was still loose, and now it was pinching at the hip.
“This often happens,” Michelle told me. I had sustained massive physical trauma, not just at the point where my legs were ripped off, but throughout my body. My legs were still retaining fluid, and sometimes this fluid moved around.
“Don’t worry,” Michelle said. “We’ll get the prosthetics people down for your next session.”
I walked on my crutches between the parallel bars. I stood and made motions like I was swinging an ax over my shoulder, first the right, then the left, focusing on shifting my weight without tipping over. By the time Michelle suggested the stairs, my thighs were barking. I was confident, though, as I walked to the equipment: four wooden stairs that led up to a platform, with four more leading down the other side. It was always in the corner of the gym; I had been watching patients working on it for months.
I didn’t make it to the first step. I couldn’t raise my foot high enough.
“It’s a new motion,” Michelle explained. “It’s not just lifting. You have to kick your lower leg backward, then pull up your knee, then bring the lower leg forward. That’s the only way to clear the riser.”
It sounded like what I had been doing for months. Isn’t that how you walk? But when I tried to kick my lower leg backward, I couldn’t do it.
“Don’t worry,” Michelle said. “Nobody gets it the first time.”
With walking, everything went forward. I shifted my weight slightly, lifted one leg, then swung it in front of me. There was only a slight bend in the knee, and the forward movement contributed to my balance. Everything worked together.
But now I had to lift backward to move forward, throwing everything out of balance.
“Don’t be discouraged,” Michelle said. “You’ll get used to it.”
I stared at my foot. I tried to move it backward. Nothing happened. I was prepared for not being able to lift myself up, but I wasn’t prepared for that kind of failure. I looked at Erin. I tried one more time, sweat beading on my forehead, but it wasn’t to be.
“I can’t do it,” I said grimly.
Erin put her arm around my waist, while I held on to the railing of the stairs to nowhere.
“There’s a reason we wait on stairs,” Michelle said.
I didn’t talk much on the way home. The realization was sinking in that, for all my progress, I still had a long way to go.
It’s only been a few months
, I thought.
Stick with your goals.
But doubt was rattling around in my brain: It’s only been a few months, and think about how hard it’s been. Now think about the rest of your life.
I went home and sat in my room. I took off my legs. My undercarriage and thighs were sweaty and sore. They were always sweaty and sore. I propped my legs by my bed and started playing
MLB: The Show
. I was playing as a historical All-Star team. I had Pedro on the mound. Nobody could touch Pedro.
I heard Erin rattling around in the kitchen, trying to get dinner together. Mom came in, and I could hear them talking. Rattling around—walking around—and talking. I just wanted to get away. I called a friend, and Erin drove me over and dropped me off so I could watch the Red Sox, have a few beers, and forget.
When she came to pick me up, an hour after midnight, Erin was crying.
“What’s the matter?”
She had gone out for a few hours, Erin told me, after dropping me off. She felt good. Relaxed. But as soon as she walked in the door, Mom pounced.
I had found a house I liked online. It was one story, on a hill, with a nice, trimmed front yard. We were scheduled to see it with a real estate agent the next afternoon.
Mom was furious at Erin about the house. She didn’t think I could handle a house on a hill. Erin tried to tell her there was no harm in looking.
Mom wouldn’t hear it. She accused Erin of pressuring me. She said Erin was getting my hopes up. That the house wasn’t realistic.
“He likes it,” Erin said. “It’s the first house he’s actually wanted to see.”
“What if he wants to buy it?”
“That’s Jeff’s decision.”
“But he can’t handle a house on a hill.”
Mom had been home alone, hitting the Cavit. When she was like that, she couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t let Erin go. “I don’t understand why you need a house right now,” Mom screamed.
“Jeff’s ready to move on.”
“He’s not ready.”
“He’s twenty-seven years old.”
“He’s twenty-seven, but he has no legs.”
“So what? He can still do what he wants.”
“Why are you pressuring?”
“I’m not pressuring him.”
“Why this house?”
“He chose it.”
“But it’s wrong for him.”
“I know that, Patty. I know that. But Jeff has to learn that for himself.”
Mom started to protest, but Erin cut her off. “He has to make his own decisions,” she said. “I am not going to tell him what to do.”
Now, a half hour later, Erin was in the car outside my friend’s house, shaking. This didn’t happen in her family, she said. I knew it was probably the worst fight of her life.
“I can’t do it, Jeff,” she said. “I can’t take this.” She paused. “I’m not even sure she’s going to remember what happened.”
”Drive me home,” I said.
It was almost two in the morning, but Mom was still up, like I knew she’d be. I laid into her. I yelled at her like I never had before. She yelled back, at first, but eventually she backed down. She just… gave in.
I went to bed an hour later, but I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed beside Erin, staring at the ceiling. I hadn’t slept for months, but somehow, this was different. This hurt more.
The next day, Erin and I went to see the house. It wasn’t right for me.
I
n mid-August, Big D drove me to Watertown. Erin had lived only a few blocks away, across the Charles River in Brighton, and we’d often come over to Watertown for shopping or dinner. I liked it in Watertown, a working-class suburb that had been spruced up in the last decade. It was odd to think that here, surrounded by close-packed houses and new shopping centers, the bombers had made their stand.
I had stayed in touch with the Watertown police since meeting them at the Bruins game. We texted every few days, and I had run into their chief of police, Ed Deveau, at a charity event and then a Harry Connick Jr. concert earlier in the summer. The Charles River Country Club in nearby Newton had offered the department free golf and swimming for the day, in appreciation of their heroism, and Chief Deveau insisted I come. I was part of it, he told me. We wouldn’t have caught them without you.
My swing was a little rusty, so I passed on the golf. Big D and I met them later on the patio of the clubhouse. The first person I saw was Vincent D’Onofrio. I’m never star-struck—okay, with Pedro, only Pedro—but… Vincent D’Onofrio! I’d watched him on
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
a hundred thousand times.
Turned out he was friends with Chief Deveau. I assumed it was a police research kind of friendship, but who knows? Chief Deveau was a lifer. He had been in the trenches for years, but he had the air of a politician, in a good way. He had class.
The chief invited me right over to his table, and after a bit of conversation, he introduced some of his men. There was a lot of misinformation about the shootout circulating. Even I had questions when the story broke: How did Dzhokhar escape a whole police force? How did he manage to hit his own brother with their car, the official cause of Tamerlan’s death?
I’ve pieced it together, mostly by listening to the stories of the Watertown cops and the help of a few articles and news programs. This isn’t how they told it to me. This is my smoothed-out version of all the bits and pieces I put together that afternoon and over time. Those guys tell stories about that day—I think they feel compelled to tell stories, to try to sort it out—but they don’t brag. Not at all. They are proud, but they are humble, too. I think they still find it hard to believe what happened: that a typical sighting of a stolen car had turned into four hundred bullets fired and three bombs detonated in five minutes on a quiet residential street.
Officer Joe Reynolds had spotted the stolen car coming down Dexter Avenue from the direction of Cambridge. He thought it was an ordinary carjacking. “They always have those in Cambridge,” Chief Deveau joked.
This was three days after the bombing, and maybe six hours after the first surveillance photos of the suspects were released. MIT police officer Sean Collier had been gunned down in Cambridge two hours before. Boston was on high alert; thousands of tips had been called in to hotlines. But Boston is a city, and there is always crime, even that week. A 7-Eleven was robbed near the time and place of the carjacking, for instance, but it was totally unrelated. There was nothing to indicate this was anything other than kids out for a joy ride.
The driver obviously saw the patrol car coming toward him, though, because he suddenly turned onto Laurel, a small side street, and turned off his engine. Officer Reynolds drove past the intersection, called in the stolen vehicle, then swung around and slowly rolled into position on Laurel Street, a few houses behind the stolen car, to wait for backup.
Then Tamerlan stepped out of a second car and started shooting. He was walking toward the police cruiser, only two car lengths away, and calmly firing into the windshield. Officer Reynolds ducked, put his cruiser in reverse, and hit the gas pedal hard. A round went through the windshield, shattering the glass in his face.
