The Vow: The True Events That Inspired the Movie (14 page)

I couldn’t seem to build more than a casual friendship with my wife no matter what I did or how hard I tried. When I attempted to play volleyball with her, she quit playing. When we went jogging together, her comments and complaints got steadily more personal and cutting. I never knew what to expect from one day to the next. One minute she’d be friendly and smiling, then I would do or say something she didn’t like, and in a heartbeat she would look at me and yell, “Leave me alone! I don’t even know who you are!”

One afternoon, still stinging after some sharp rebuke Krickitt had given me earlier in the day, I walked into the physical therapy room and found her lying on her stomach on the carpet, head up, chin resting in the palms of her hands, feet alternately paddling up and down. She was quiet and thoughtful.

“What are you thinking about, Krick?”

She turned her face toward me, still resting her chin on her hands, then turned back. She paused and slowly shook her head.

“Life is so confusing,” she said slowly. Then, looking back over at me she inquired, “Are we really married?”

“We’re really married, Krickitt. I love you.”

Silence followed another slow shake of the head.

Was this our new reality? I could very well be waiting for some kind of recovery or reconnection that never was going to happen. As I walked out of the room I thought,
Is this it? Maybe this is the best it’s ever going to be.
For the first time I truly let myself consider the fact that my wife might never be the same person she was before the wreck—the person I fell in love with. Very possibly, the woman I married no longer existed.

We knew that Krickitt’s mental recovery could stop suddenly at any point.
What if that happens before she remembers me?
I would think to myself, over and over again. In a way the idea that my wife might never remember me and would never be the same woman I married was harder to deal with than death. If Krickitt had died in the wreck, there would have been a clear ending to our life together. I felt that I could have dealt with that horrible situation because I understood what death was. What I had instead was a complete unknown to me—life in an hazy emotional, spiritual, and relational netherworld where my wife was still with me, but at the same time she wasn’t.

At times I wondered how our lives would have turned out if the accident had never happened. I longed and grieved for all the dreams we might now never see come to fruition. But I also came to realize that we had a chance to build a new future together. My wife was still with me. She still could have a life.
We
could still have a life. But I had to accept the fact that it would not be the life I had been looking forward to. As hard as it was, I knew God must have preserved her like this for some great purpose he could see that I couldn’t.

When Krickitt had been at Barrow for a month, the doctors started telling us she could soon be released to live with her parents and continue therapy as an outpatient. Krickitt was delighted at the thought, both because she would be spending more time with her family and because she would be spending less time with her physical therapist, who she still thought pushed her too hard.

On January 13, 1994, almost seven weeks after the accident, Krickitt moved into her parents’ house in Phoenix. From all appearances she enjoyed being around familiar things: her college yearbooks, photo albums, scrapbooks, furniture she’d grown up with, and mementos from her childhood. Her mom showed her the photographer’s proofs of our wedding pictures. They had been sent to Gus and Mary while we were getting settled in Las Vegas, and our plan had been to look at them while we were in Phoenix for Thanksgiving and pick out the ones we wanted to order for our wedding album.

We sat side-by-side on the couch as Krickitt flipped through the photos from our big day. It had all the hallmarks of a traditional wedding—Krickitt in her elaborate wedding gown, me in white tie and tails, the front of the church lit entirely by candles. Her parents and I all hoped that seeing the pictures would spark some more of those flash memories in Krickitt and give her something that might lead back to more detailed memories of our marriage. She recognized the bride in the pictures as herself, but that was all. She still had no emotional connection to me . . . or any interest in creating one.

However, Krickitt did still have an interest in her relationship with God. Soon after she moved home, she told her mother that she had a nagging feeling something was missing in her life. It turned out she missed writing to God in her journal. She had written one lone entry with the help of a friend, but then she forgot about it for a while. Since she had a renewed desire for it, her mom took her shopping for a journal. That seemed to be the answer. Although she was still mentally mixed up much of the time, she had felt the absence of communication with God in her life and wanted to make it a regular part of her routine again by writing to him in her journal. It was a bittersweet feeling for me to know that even though my wife wasn’t yet ready to get to know me again, she was ready to draw closer to God.

So the emotional roller coaster continued. One day I’d be riding high because Krickitt had walked farther than ever before on the treadmill, or she had read something she couldn’t read the day before, or she had experienced another flash memory. The next day I would drop down into the depths of despair because she had lashed out at me again for pushing her in therapy or because one more potential memory jogger—a picture, a name, a letter, a memento—had failed to bring back any remembrance of our life together.

By the time Krickitt moved into her parents’ house, I hadn’t worked in two months. My job had been the last thing on my mind. All I had been thinking about day and night was how I could help Krickitt get better. I was still getting no pressure from the administration at Highlands, and the assistant baseball coaches were gearing up for spring training without me there. My parents and in-laws, however, were convinced that the best thing I could do at this point was to get back into my everyday life in New Mexico. They suggested I move back to our apartment in Las Vegas, rejoin my baseball team, and make it a priority to restore some sort of normalcy to life. At first I was totally against leaving Krickitt. But the more I talked about it with all of our parents, the more I agreed it was the right thing to do for both Krickitt and me.

I called Gilbert Sanchez and told him I was ready to come back to work. “We obviously want you back,” he said, “but not until you’re sure you’re ready. Take your time.”

“I’ve taken my time,” I answered, “and we’re all ready to start getting things back to normal. I want the Highlands Cowboys to get off to a good start this season, and I want to be a part of it.”

My stated reasons for going back to work were both valid and true. But I didn’t tell President Sanchez the deeper reasons I was returning to Highlands. The main motivating factor behind my return to coaching was that I needed to be around something I could understand and predict and have some semblance of control over. By God’s grace I had made it as far as I had with Krickitt, but I sensed it was time to trust him even more. I had gotten to a place where I truly believed that God would work his perfect will with my wife whether I was in Phoenix or Las Vegas. Krickitt had her parents—people she remembered and loved—to take care of her. She didn’t need me to be with her twenty-four hours a day. It was time for me to get home and prepare a place for her there.

February 1 was to be my first official day back on campus, but I made one quick trip before that in preparation for my return. While I was there, I kept a fairly low profile since it was a short trip. I would soon be back for good and could see and talk to everyone then. While I was in the locker room at the university, I saw a homemade flyer about a fund drive for Krickitt and me. Obviously, somebody at school had organized an appeal to help us pay our expenses. We hadn’t said anything about the astronomical hospital bills, but anyone could have guessed that we were quickly racking them up. I was greatly touched by the generosity of the people of Las Vegas. It was a community where people had very little to give; yet they were willing to sacrifice for us. I didn’t know exactly what they were going to do, but I didn’t let on that I knew about their efforts.

I went back to Phoenix, said good-bye to Krickitt and her parents, and returned to Las Vegas for good. I was humbled and amazed by my reception. When I arrived at our apartment, I found it freshly cleaned, and there was a hot dinner in the oven. At practice the next day the players and other coaches couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive. Even though I had left them without a head coach for more than two months, they weren’t upset and they hadn’t felt abandoned. They all just wanted Krickitt and me to get better. It was an awesome testament to the value of great friends.

After that first practice, a couple of the players approached me and told me there were some people who wanted to talk to me. I realized the time had come for me to find out what this fund-raising surprise was. I followed the guys around the corner, where a group of friends, community members, and coworkers greeted me.

As I tried my best to act surprised, one of the women stepped forward. “We want you to have this,” she said as she handed me a huge jar full of money. I no longer had to act surprised, because I was floored. There was
a lot
of money in that jar. For weeks this group of people had sponsored bake sales and raffles and had solicited donations to raise money so I could fly back to Phoenix to be with Krickitt. There were checks in the jar from people I knew didn’t have enough money for their own expenses, let alone mine. There were also monetary gifts from judges and other prominent people in town. Altogether it was enough for ten round-trip flights between Albuquerque and Phoenix.

I quickly set up an ambitious plan to go to Phoenix for a few days every week. Early each Monday morning I drove two hours from our apartment in Las Vegas to the airport in Albuquerque, caught a plane for Phoenix, and stayed with Krickitt through Wednesday night. On Thursday I caught a 5:30 a.m. return flight to Albuquerque, drove two hours back to Las Vegas, and got back in time to prepare for the day’s practice with the team in preparation for our games that weekend. I was the bus driver for our away games, which meant that on some Sunday nights I didn’t get back to our apartment until well after midnight. Then on Monday morning I started the cycle all over again.

It was soon clear that this plan wasn’t going to work long-term. I already wasn’t sleeping much due to all the stress and my back trouble, and this new unrealistic schedule gave me even less time to rest.

At the same time, the calls from bill collectors were starting to get out of hand. Krickitt’s medical expenses alone were already more than $200,000. On top of that we had my medical bills, the cost of Krickitt’s continuing rehab, and other incidentals such as a replacement car for our Escort, all of which pushed the total debt even higher. By that point we knew that it was not going to be a smooth ride with our insurance company. I had gotten in touch with them soon after the accident, but it quickly became obvious we were not going to get the money we needed to satisfy the collection agencies in the amount of time they wanted us to. That meant we were facing the prospect of a lawsuit just to get our insurance carrier to pay the money we thought our premiums already entitled us to. That, in turn, meant hiring lawyers and going even further into debt.

To make things even worse, as much as I looked forward to my visits with Krickitt, her attitude toward me was on a sharp decline. On Monday afternoons I went straight from the airport to Barrow to help her with her therapy. Sometimes she would greet me in a friendly way when I arrived, and sometimes she’d just make a noise in my direction and go on with whatever she was doing.