Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead (7 page)

N
ow that I can finally converse, it feels like a jailbreak for my mind. Newly freed, I’m determined to ask questions that have circled in my mind like birds of prey hunting for food. Number one priority is finding out why I am here. I keep hearing those two words “car accident,” but I have no recollection of being in one. I drive a black 1994 Camaro that I bought from my mom for $2,500. It’s a vanity muscle car, but its V6 engine wasn’t build for speed. I’m a safe and cautious driver, with no arrests, citations, warnings, or even a single speeding ticket. My friends say I drive like a granny. So how could I have been in a crash, and not just some fender bender? I never raced, drove drunk, or did anything that many eighteen-year-olds often do that raises their parents’ auto insurance rates. And if I was driving, what happened to the Camaro or the other driver? Were there any passengers with me? What time of day did the accident happen? Why can’t I make sense of any of this? What is preventing me from remembering?

Before the morning nurse arrives, I begin rehearsing the battery of questions that I will ask her. I hope she obliges and answers them. All I want is the truth. It’s time I find out the facts. Then I reconsider this strategy. She might feel like she has to protect me from knowing too much if the doctors think it might cause agitation and impede my recovery. But my parents will level with me, won’t they? So I will wait until visiting hour before I become Perry Mason.

Meanwhile, I fantasize about water. I’m told that I can’t have a sip of water until I pass the swallowing test. Swallowing test? I guess they want to see if I can drink under their supervision. I will have to just wait and suffer.

I’m pleased to see that the morning nurse is Victoria. She is tall, around five feet eleven, and has blonde hair that’s usually tied up in a ponytail. She has cared for me numerous times and is always smiling. We exchange small talk at long last. She prepares me for the day’s first physical therapy session. My blood is taken, IVs reset, gown changed, and hair combed. I find out that I’m no longer on morphine, though I’m still on the ventilator because my lungs are weak.

My main physical therapist, Francine, walks in and is excited to see that I’m able to greet her. She is usually all business. Or maybe she was only like that with me because I couldn’t speak.

Both Francine and Victoria lift me from my bed onto the angry chair. The way it’s positioned, I can get a closer look at the photos pinned to the wall. In most of them, I’m in a good mood, smiling. Yet I feel discouraged seeing the muscles I had developed over the many years of weight training and competing in sports. There I am getting ready for a race at a local pool, talking with Coach Covey before a track meet, doing one of my bodybuilding bicep poses. There are several pictures of me with my parents that were taken on our trip to Jamaica in June. Photographic evidence of pre-accident Brian is nearly impossible to reconcile with the present. I must have lost over seventy-five pounds. How am I ever going to get back into shape again? Is that even possible, or will I be confined to a wheelchair? The walls start closing in on me again as I feel the dark, looming pressure of the unknown tightening its grip on the future. I look away from the photos. Thankfully, my therapy session is starting.

We begin with the usual routine of lifting legs, squeezing hands, and pushing feet forward. As we go through each set, I tell them—it’s so great to talk!—that it hurts my tailbone when I sit for very long in the angry chair. Victoria says that the pain is due to my broken pelvis, which was shattered in the crash. Since I lost a lot of weight, the tailbone is putting additional pressure on nerves in the area that used to have a lot more body-fat support. She finds a small donut-shaped yellow cushion and places it under my butt. Wow! That’s so much better. The pain practically disappears and I thank her for the good deed. She walks outside my room to work on my medical records and daily paperwork.

Under Francine’s guidance, I lift my right arm ten times. Even with her direct and serious personality, it’s clear that she is amazed at how rapidly the recovery has been going. I glance up at the clock, and I see that it’s almost eleven. My parents will be here soon. Will I be able to ask them about the accident? I decide to first test the waters with Francine.

“Um, what other bones were broken besides my pelvis?”

She looks confused. “Nobody has told you?” she responds. I continue to stare at her with a blank look, letting her know that I’m clueless. “Well from your medical records and from talking to your nurses and doctors, I don’t really think anybody thought you were actually going to make it. I remember a few weeks ago, I would pass your room and when I looked at you, my heart would break, every single time. You looked like you were in so much pain. I see a lot of patients come in here who are in really bad shape, but you looked like you were ready to slip away any minute. Some people who have undergone much less trauma do die, but here you are. I don’t want to frighten you, but I feel like I’m talking to a ghost.

“And, as far as your injuries, I know that many of your ribs were broken, both lungs were collapsed. I was told that your heart had shifted to the opposite side of your chest, but it kept beating because you were fit and healthy. You’re like Superman to have gone through what you have, or maybe your heart is just made of iron. Whatever it is, your recovery is beyond belief. You had so many surgeries and operations while you were in the coma. Some of your organs, like your spleen and gallbladder, were removed. You had kidney dialysis, life support, and a ventilator keeping you alive.”

Yes, I think, I’m still alive.

She adds, “Because your pelvis was badly damaged from the impact of the crash, that’s my big concern at the moment. I’m sorry to have to say this, but it will be another miracle if you can walk again. On the bright side, look how far you have come already.”

I now know why my parents and everyone kept telling me that I only had a few broken bones. They never mentioned that I was going to be a cripple the rest of my life. All the progress that I have made has just been canceled. Why did I have to ask Francine? I start crying. She tries to console me, but it’s too late.

For the rest of our physical therapy session, I remain quiet and sullen. I try to smile and nod every now and then, but it’s completely artificial. My spirit is broken. I’m damaged goods. What will it be like to never walk again? How will this change my life? When I graduated high school a few months ago, I never thought that the bright future I had planned was going to turn into something as awful as this. The day of my graduation, as I walked across the stage, the school principal should have said, “Mr. Boyle, congratulations, here’s your diploma. And by the way, in several weeks, all your goals and dreams will be destroyed in a car accident. Best of luck to you in the future.”

When Francine leaves, I’m in a foul mood and I do something that I shouldn’t. A white sheet covers me from the waist down. Naturally, I’m curious to see what the rest of my body looks like. From seeing my arms and legs, I know I’m rail thin and have agonizingly come to accept this unfortunate fact. But what does my stomach look like and what about everything below that? I slowly raise the sheet and lift up my hospital gown for a peek. I notice the invading catheter, but as I raise my eyes upward to my stomach and lower chest, the view is revolting. It’s much worse than anything I had ever imagined. I have never seen anything as dreadful as this. I knew I was pretty messed up from the accident, but this is totally gruesome. It looks as though I have been ripped open many times by the assistance of scalpels and finely sharpened blades. The only thing missing is the carved signature from the surgeon who did all this fine work. What detail, what craftsmanship. I have scars all over. My stomach has been sliced open from the middle of my chest all the way down to my belly button, and the wound is ugly and red. There are even tiny segments of the skin that have not yet fully closed, and I can actually see tiny holes that go deep beneath the layers of skin. I have another long cut that goes all the way across the lower area of my left pectoral. My body is ruined.

Ever since middle school, I always tried to take care of my physique by eating well and weight training. It started when I joined the basketball team in sixth grade. Every day after practice, I would jump rope for several minutes, do an endless number of sit-ups and push-ups, and run whenever I got the chance.

When I saw the formation of my very first abdominal muscles, the workout craze really hit strong and I weight trained everyday after that. It wasn’t really a macho kind of thing that led me to this lifestyle, but more a feeling of being healthy that made me enjoy doing it. The feedback that I happily received from the girls was a big plus too.

Throughout high school, I stayed in shape and actively participated in sports, never getting caught up in the party scene. Shortly after graduation, one of my close friends, named Rachel, persuaded me to pursue modeling. She has the look—tall, blonde hair, long legs, cute face, and she had been modeling for several years. She said that I was the type of guy some agencies were looking for. Shortly after graduation, I received a phone call from a modeling agent in California who wanted me to fly out and attend college near L.A. because he thought I could get work with Calvin Klein Underwear and Abercrombie & Fitch. Unfortunately, I never made the trip west. Instead, I’m in Intensive Care, morbidly staring at my wretched, gone-to-hell body.

When Victoria returns, I hurry to lower the sheet in embarrassment. I give her a fake grin. My parents are following closely behind her, and my dad is carrying a bottle of Mountain Dew. I’m eager to see them. It’s a timely diversion from thinking about my Frankenstein torso.

Victoria says that they have a surprise. I can have my first drink. She hands me a small red plastic cup of ice and gives me instructions. I can chew ice but I should let the ice melt so that my mouth will eventually create a swallowing reflex. If I’m able to accomplish this, then I can move onto a sip of water.

I look at the red cup in my hands. I’ve dreamt of this moment. I bring the cup closer to my lips and feel the cool vapors rising up and caressing my chin, mouth, and cheeks. I can’t wait any longer. I slowly bring the cup up, letting the small chips of ice slide into my mouth. My teeth instantly feel a sharp tingling sensitivity to the coldness, but I slowly adjust to it as I swish the ice around my mouth with my tongue. After several seconds, the ice starts to break down into a cold liquid. I feel the tiny muscles in my throat cooperate as the liquid slides down my dry, sandpapery throat. I feel the chill in my stomach. I take another mouthful of ice, a little more this time.

Victoria hands me another red cup, but this one is half-full of water. She repeats the instructions—allow the water to float in my mouth until I feel the need to swallow it. I bring the cup to my lips, pour some of the clear, delicious substance into my mouth, then swallow it. Gaining confidence, I swig down the rest of it in a quick frenzy.

I’m now lusting for some Mountain Dew. My dad seeks permission from Victoria. She nods yes. He unscrews the top and places the plastic bottle in my hands. Without even thinking about how this would be any different from water, I gulp down the Dew. Instantly, I feel an intense burning sensation in my mouth as if I’ve just drunk a cup of sulfuric acid. That hurts! The burning travels all the way down to my fragile stomach, where it’s bubbling. Even with all this discomfort, I continue to drink the painful nectar until the bottle is nearly empty. Oh man, that was delicious in its own crazy way.

The next test is eating Jell-O. Victoria tells me to do the same thing I did with the ice, but instead of just letting it dissolve in my mouth, I should try to chew it up into small slimy fragments. I dip my spoon into the gelatin and scoop out a small amount as if I am digging for gold. I bring it to my mouth and cautiously bite up and down. I don’t know if it’s really doing anything, but I can tell that it has changed its form in my mouth. I nervously swallow, feeling the soft gooey clumps slide down into my stomach, mixing with the fizzing Mountain Dew. Victoria and my parents start clapping. They tell me that I did a good job. I have just passed my swallowing test with flying colors. I’ve taken another small step into reentering the realm of normalcy.

From now on, I will no longer receive nutrition from the feeding tube in my nose. Instead I will be eating “soft” food, which will be first mixed in a blender before being served. I’ll be like a baby bird receiving food that’s already mashed up by its mother. Nonetheless, I’m thrilled, because anything is better than being fed through a tube in your nose. The only bad news is that the feeding tube must be taken out. And yes, Victoria tells me, without anesthesia.

Victoria leaves the room, and I’m alone with my parents. My mom opens up the window blinds behind my bed to let in sunlight.
Ellen
is on. I go back and forth between watching the show and demonstrating to them the progress that I have made with my physical therapy: lifting legs and right arm, wiggling fingers, pushing my feet forward and backward.

They seem happy, content watching me. Then selfishly, I drop the bombshell.

“Exactly just what happened to me?”

They are startled by my question. Mom shoots a nervous glance toward Dad to gauge his reaction. He pauses for several moments, then says in a measured, cautious voice, “Well, son. You were in a really bad car accident.”

“Yeah I know that, but what
really
happened? I want to know how and where the accident took place. Was I driving? Did I have any passengers? I’m just trying to understand how I got here, that’s all. The last thing I remember is being at your company picnic.”