Stronger (29 page)
At the Java Room, I lifted myself out of the car with my crutches and walked across the parking lot. The Forefathers Burial Ground (founded 1655) was behind me, but I kept my eye on each step. Up the ramp to the sidewalk. Over the doorjamb. Erin moved chairs out of the way so I could get to a table. It took a while, one step at a time. The place was half full, and I could feel people watching me.
“Can you get me… do they have turkey sandwiches?” I asked Erin, once I was in my seat and arranging my crutches.
“Well, it’s nine in the morning.”
“Could you ask?”
“Do you want coffee?”
“I don’t know. Do they have orange juice?”
I had never been out on my legs in public before. Surprising, right? I had walked miles, ten feet at a time, and I had walked ten minutes at a stretch, but that was only at Spaulding or Mom’s apartment. I had never subjected myself to my normal life before: the one I had been working toward and dreaming about and dreading for almost five months.
It wasn’t so bad.
Erin brought me the turkey sandwich and orange juice. She had a coffee. We sat in the Java Room and talked. I told her how much I appreciated everything she was doing for me. I told her how much I respected her. I told her that she wasn’t alone. Yes, I was afraid, just like her, but I was committed.
“I want you in my life,” I told her, “not because you are here, but because you are the best and strongest person I have ever known.”
We talked about how I could help her. We talked about expectations and responsibilities. We discussed the book. It was stressing everyone out, especially Erin. She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sharing our life.
“Does it have to be now, Jeff? It feels like we’re in the middle of this.”
That was one thing the agent had told us. If I wanted to write a book, and I wanted people to read it, I had to write it now.
While the memory is fresh
, he said. He meant the world’s memory, not mine.
“What if your… PTSD…”
“I don’t have PTSD.”
“What if things get worse?”
I reached out and took Erin’s hand. “Don’t worry, my magical wonderful,” I said. “Things are going to keep getting better and better.”
We talked about the bombing, and what we’d been through. That was the morning I said I wasn’t angry at the Tsarnaev brothers. I don’t think I’d ever said it before, or even realized it. There was a place inside, maybe, that I was trying to ignore. And when I finally reached down there, and I thought about them… it wasn’t anger that came up. It was empathy. We were all in this together, even the bombers, and it sucked for everyone.
“I’d like to talk to him,” I told Erin. “Just sit down in his jail cell and hear what he had to say.” I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. I had no idea what that kid would say to me. I didn’t know him at all. “I guess that’s never going to happen.” I laughed. “I doubt his lawyer would think that was a good idea.”
We chatted for half an hour or so, until it was time to leave. We had somewhere to be, but I can’t remember where.
“I should have had an egg sandwich,” I said, as I balanced myself on my crutches. “Who has turkey for breakfast?”
Erin laughed as she cleared chairs to make a path to the door. I worked my way across the restaurant, then out to the sidewalk. When I reached the car, I realized there was a curb. It was at least a six-inch drop. I had walked around to the handicap slope to get in, but it was on the other side of the parking lot now.
Erin hadn’t noticed. She was chatting away. But when she saw me looking down, she stopped.
“I can do this,” I said.
“Do you want help?”
“No. I can do this.”
I put my crutches down at the parking lot level. I leaned forward, working the toes of my right shoe over the edge of the drop, just like Michelle had taught me. I stared over the edge, thinking through the motions. I lifted my left foot and swung it forward. My momentum swung with it, so instinctively I leaned back, and then I was falling backward, my crutches coming out from under me, and I finally learned the true value of the legs. I was out of control, but they cradled me, easing me slowly to the sidewalk. Falling didn’t hurt. It felt like I had simply sat down.
“Are you okay?” Erin asked, rushing to my side.
“I’m fine.”
She grabbed my arm by instinct, ready to pull me up.
“I’m fine. Just let me rest.” I looked around. I was sitting on the curb a few feet from our borrowed Jetta. “I’m going to scoot over to the car,” I told her, “and pull myself up.”
I worked my way over, grabbed the wheel well, and pulled. I was stronger, but I wasn’t that strong. I pulled again.
“Can you give me a hand?” I asked Erin.
Michelle and I laughed about it when I told her the story at physical therapy the next day. “What made you think you could manage a curb?” she said.
“I don’t know.” I laughed. “I can do a stair or two here, so I thought…”
“But there’s a railing here.”
“I had my crutches.”
“Crutches are different than a railing. Crutches are much harder.”
I shrugged. “I got cocky, I guess,” I said with a smile. I felt great about the whole thing. Even when it happened, I didn’t feel embarrassed. Erin was worried. As she helped lift me onto my crutches, then into the car, she was quiet.
“You okay?” she asked finally.
“I’m great, Erin,” I said, fiddling with the broken radio. “It was just one missed step. It didn’t hurt me at all.”
Three weeks later, we finally closed on our house. We were so excited, we went straight to Costco. As soon as you have that first house, you have to get that thousand-pack of toilet paper, right?
While we were there, Mom and Aunt Jenn called. “It looks like the electricity hasn’t been turned on at your house,” Mom said.
“Are they…!”
I signaled Erin not to worry, that I had it under control. “Mom,” I said, “you guys better be gone when we get there. You can come by tomorrow.”
When we arrived half an hour later, a basket of mums from Mom and Aunt Jenn was waiting for us on the front porch, along with a bucket for beer from a cousin. It was a beautiful fall day. The leaves were at the height of their color.
I kissed Erin. “We made it,” I said.
Then I swung my legs over the edge of the car seat, transferred to the first step outside the front door of my very own house, and hauled myself to the top with my hands. Erin came around with my wheelchair. She unlocked the door. She helped me inside, held the wheelchair as I lifted myself into it, and together, we rolled into our new life.
Big D came by with our furniture a few hours later. We only owned three things: a bed, a dresser, and a chair. So we put the bed in the living room, started a fire in the fireplace, and, as the sun went down and the cold moved in, Erin and I snuggled under the covers and watched
The King’s Speech
.
I hadn’t made my goal, at least not the one of walking up the stairs into my new life. My sockets were hurting so badly, I could barely put them on. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t stronger. I was strong as an ox. And I had tried. I had worked harder for six months than I’d ever worked before. In the end, something out of my control went wrong, and I needed Erin’s help, but there’s nothing wrong with that. No man is an island, right? Who said that, Darrelle Revis?
Ha, ha. Just kidding. It was a poet, right? Erin probably knows. And I’m not afraid to ask her, because admitting your limitations, and accepting help, makes you stronger, too.
A
round noon, Erin drove me down to Kevin’s row house in the city. I called when we were a few blocks away and told him we were almost there. Five minutes later, he called back.
“Where are you? I don’t see Erin’s car.”
“I’m coming,” I said. “Erin dropped me off at the corner.”
Seconds later, I heard yelling. Kevin had run out onto his front stoop, and he was cheering for me.
“Shut up, Kevin,” I said with a laugh. “I’m trying to concentrate.” The sidewalk on Kevin’s block was made of bricks. It was uneven, with popped bricks and gaps all over the place. I needed to focus on every step, but Kevin kept cheering, and that brought other people out onto their stoops, and they started shouting at me, too.
“Where’s your wheelchair?” Kevin asked, when I stopped at the bottom of his steps.
“I left it at home.”
I handed him my crutches, then grabbed his railing and walked up the stairs. I had spent a hundred hours with Kevin in the last six months, but this was the first time I’d made it into his house.
Erin came up a few minutes later, after parking the car, and we took Kevin’s convertible BMW to Fenway. It was my first time in his convertible, too, since the trunk was too small for my wheelchair. The Red Sox people were there to greet me, and I walked up the ramp from the players’ parking lot to the elevator. I had gotten my new suction sockets the week before. They fit like gloves—like Dan Marino Isotoner Gloves. I had been dragging two loose-fitting doors for a month. As the fit was getting worse, I was falling apart. But all along, I’d been gaining strength. And once the pieces fit, the work paid off. I stood right up and started to walk.
I walked to Kevin’s row house. I walked to the elevator. I walked around the stadium from home plate to first base. This was the top level, the one for the press box and suites, so there weren’t many fans around, but I shook a few hands. My friends Jess and Pat were waiting in our box. When the Red Sox invited me to the game, that was my condition: I wanted Jess and Pat to come, too.
“Jeff!” Jess said. “I didn’t know you were walking.”
“Oh, I’m walking.”
We hugged. They hugged Erin. “Did you see that?” Pat said, pointing to the field. The grounds crew had mowed a huge circle in the center field grass. Inside, also cut into the grass, were the words: B Strong.
We were sharing the box with the 2004 Red Sox, the team that brought a championship to Fenway for the first time in three generations. The team was throwing out the first pitch, so the only other people in the suite were Jason Varitek’s wife and their two kids.
“You should go down on the field with them,” she said. “You should throw the first pitch, too.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m already going down for the seventh-inning stretch.” James Taylor was singing “America the Beautiful,” and he had asked me to be on the field with him.
They came to get us between the sixth and seventh innings: me, Jess and Pat, Carlos, and three other bombing survivors: Karen, Roseann, and Heather. This time, we took the ramp instead of the elevator. It was a long walk, down four levels and then around to the groundskeeper’s entrance, but I felt strong.
“Go Jeff,” people were shouting, as they saw us coming. “Way to go, Carlos!”
People were snapping pictures, but I kept my eyes straight ahead, focused on each step. By the time we reached the field level, I was trucking. We slowed down to avoid a crowd, and someone grabbed me by the elbow.
“Can I get a picture with you, Jeff? I’m so proud of you.”