Stronger (8 page)
“Oh.” Silence. “Who are they?”
“Bradley Cooper is a movie star, Mom. He was in
Silver Linings Playbook
.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of him,” she said, although she clearly hadn’t. She paused. “He’s handsome. I knew I should have done my hair.”
I was telling Erin about that a few hours later. “I guess there’s a silver lining to being famous, right, E?” I said, twirling the football.
Then I looked down at the flat place in the sheets where my legs should have been. No, I thought, this still sucks.
T
hat afternoon, most of my relatives left the hospital. There was a candlelight vigil on the Chelmsford Center common that night to honor the victims of the bombing, and my family wanted to be there.
Shortly after they left, the FBI announced a news conference for 5:00 p.m. At the news conference, they released six surveillance photographs taken on Boylston Street and asked for help identifying the men shown. Like the rest of Boston, I didn’t know that was going to happen. The FBI never came back and asked me to comment on the footage. I didn’t know, until that moment, that there were two suspects.
But when I saw the footage of suspect 1, even though it didn’t clearly show his face, I knew they had the right guy. That backpack, that jacket. My stomach dropped. It was him.
The police commissioner, Ed Davis, later called the release of the footage “a turning point in the investigation.” The city had been waiting for a way to help, and the FBI had finally given it one. The tips poured in by the thousands. A friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan’s little brother, texted him, joking that he looked like one of the suspects. Dzhokhar, who had been working out in the gym and going to his college classes like any other student all week, responded, essentially, Ha. Ha. That’s funny. By the way, I’m leaving town and never coming back.
Meanwhile, the media set to work analyzing the photos as all of Boston watched. Were the suspects Middle Eastern? If so, were they Muslim? Was this a planned attack, like those in London, Madrid, and Mumbai? Were these the bag men for a larger organization? Or were they lone wolves?
And how sure was the FBI that these were the guys?
By evening, the mainstream and social media firestorm had pointed to numerous false suspects, including a student who had committed suicide weeks before (his body was later found) and, famously, on the front page of the
New York Post
, a local track coach and a high school runner. It was a natural reaction. After five days of nothing, the world was energized. Finally, there was something to talk about.
I didn’t want any part of it.
“What time is the Sox game?” I asked Derek, who was staying with me for the night. I hated being alone, especially at night, when I couldn’t sleep. It scared me. So two people, at least, always stayed with me.
Usually it was the younger generation: Sully, Big D, and Chris. Sometimes Erin and Gail. That night, it was Big D and my older brother, Tim. I say “brother,” but Tim is technically my half brother. He came from a previous relationship, before Mom met my dad, and I didn’t know him until I was twenty-one years old, when he called Mom out of the blue. Say what you will about Mom, but she’s bighearted. When she knew Tim needed her, she took him in. And from that moment on, Tim and I have been close. We’ve been watching baseball and drinking beer together ever since.
Normal life—that’s what it felt like with those guys. Put beers in our hands, and it would have been just like a hundred other nights we’d spent together. The Sox had gone into the crapper the last two years, collapsing in 2011 and missing the playoffs on the last day of the season, then firing their manager, dumping salary, and proceeding to finish dead last in 2012, with the worst record for a Boston baseball team since 1965.
They had a new manager, again, and a few new players, but nobody high profile. They’d gotten off to a hot start, sure, but nobody was expecting much. Baseball is a slow, spread-out, and rambling game, played almost every night for six months, 162 games in 182 days. Early-season baseball is full of promise and false hope. It’s the perfect way to kill off a couple hours.
And that was what I wanted, especially with the bombers plastered all over the news. I just wanted to forget the nurses, who were always poking and prodding me; the sudden throbbing in my legs that made me want to scream; the unsettling sound of walking in the hallway; and the odor of the bomb, a mixture of fireworks and burning flesh, that never seemed to go away. I went to sleep that night the only way possible: to the sound of Jenny Dell working the sideline, and Tim and Big D arguing about something that happened in 2009. The Sox were leading… “Salty” Saltalamacchia homered… Uehara was out… Bailey was coming in…
I woke up like I often did, jerking upright with my heart pounding. It was dark, but a light was flickering. Big D and Tim were crowded around the television with the volume low, watching the news. There had been a shooting, a carjacking, an attempted robbery.
“It’s them,” I said.
“No,” Big D said. “They’re saying it’s not related.”
“It’s just punks,” Tim added.
But I knew it was the bombers. I knew it. I had never considered how they would be caught, but as soon as I heard that people were shooting at cops, I knew there was no other way for them to go.
Later that night, I had my first nightmare. I can’t remember what it was about, but I woke up shouting for Big D.
“I’m here, Jeff. I’m here,” Tim said. He was slumped in a chair by the door. “Nothing to worry about, buddy. We’re here.”
I
texted Kevin at 6:00 the next morning: U up?
He was up. Everybody was up. Social media had exploded when word of the shootout in Watertown, a suburb only a few miles from downtown, started to trickle out after midnight. Kevin had been up since 4:00 a.m., glued to his television and his e-mail account, as had most of Boston. A police officer was dead. Another was in critical condition. One suspect had died in a gun battle with police, but the second had escaped. It was believed he was hiding somewhere in Watertown, although Cambridge was also on lockdown. The suspect had driven to Watertown from Cambridge in a stolen car.
“We believe this to be a terrorist,” Police Commissioner Ed Davis told reporters about 4:30 a.m. Friday. “We believe this to be a man who came here to kill people.”
Pop-Tart? I texted Kevin.
Kevin showed up within half an hour with several boxes of treats for everyone. Flour wasn’t opening that day, given the situation in the city, but the bakery had already finished the morning pastries. The assistant manager had given Kevin as much as he could carry.
Kevin stayed that morning and chatted, while we kept one eye on the news. I think he was trying to keep my mind off the manhunt. We talked about music, I remember, something we’d often discussed at the store. I told him I loved Bob Dylan and Radiohead. He knew I played guitar, so he asked about James Taylor. James Taylor lived in Massachusetts.
“Erin loves James Taylor,” I said. “The original JT.”
When Uncle Bob and his kids arrived, Kevin went home.
Thank you, sir, I texted him.
Not long after, the FBI released a photograph of the second suspect: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Suddenly, after five days of waiting, Boston was looking at the face of evil, the person who had stuffed ball bearings into pressure cookers with the intention of ripping people apart. I don’t know what the rest of Boston thought. After five days, it was stunning to see him so clearly, right in front of us. For a while, nobody spoke.
“Shit,” Big D said finally. “He’s a kid.”
It wasn’t too long before the media got hold of a photo of the other suspect: his older brother, Tamerlan.
“That’s him,” I said as soon as I saw it.
There wasn’t much more to say. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had blown my legs off. He was the one. Now he was dead, and his brother was cornered. I thought I’d feel happy, but I just felt numb.
“Turn the channel,” I said. “Let’s watch something else.”
Then Erin called Tim. She was with Gail and her friend Ashley in her apartment in Brighton, just across the Charles River from Watertown.
“They’re saying Jeff identified the bombers,” she said. “That he was the only one who saw them. What if the brother comes after Jeff? He’s desperate. He knows I’m Jeff’s girlfriend. It’s been on the news. What if he comes after me?”
Erin admits now that she was paranoid. That it didn’t make sense for Dzhokhar to come after her. But in those first hours, with one police officer dead and another critically wounded, anything seemed possible. It didn’t seem crazy for Erin to feel like a target, because as much as I tried to deny my fear, I felt like a target, too, and I was in a secure hospital with two security guards outside my door.
Nobody was supposed to know I had helped the FBI. My family had all agreed that was information we would never reveal. Without legs, I felt vulnerable. And who knew how deep this plot went? The press was reporting two suspects, but what if they were part of a larger group? What if they had friends?
They were stupid kids. Who put them up to this? Tamerlan was a psychopath, sure, but who taught him how to kill?
I’m still not convinced, even today, that they acted alone. Betty Crocker Bomb Making, that’s what they call this kind of attack. Get a recipe off the Internet, make a bomb. It happened that way in London and Madrid. It happens that way in Iraq and Afghanistan all the time.
But it wasn’t quite that simple. The bomb that blew off my legs was detonated by the control panel of a remote control car. The part from the car was in the bomb; Dzhokhar had the control. It was the only piece, the FBI told me, that the bombers couldn’t have manufactured themselves. They found the person who modified the controller. He was somewhere on the West Coast. He said he didn’t know what the remote would be used for, and I guess that’s possible.
But it still makes me uncomfortable, like maybe this was bigger than we know.
And if it wasn’t, if any idiot can make a bomb, is that any better? That only means it’s easier for imitators.
So I wish, I really wish, that Chris hadn’t leaked the news of my involvement.
I don’t blame Chris. I love the kid. He says he didn’t know the two women he was talking with were reporters, that he just met them outside the hospital and started talking. Chris is my younger brother; he looked up to me. He was strong. He was one of my boys.
He had never experienced tragedy before. I knew he was exhausted and upset. I remember trying to make him laugh. I’d pull on my oxygen mask, breathe deeply, and say in my best Darth Vader voice: “Chris, I am your father. Now get your daddy a cheeseburger and fries.” Chris was supposed to be with me at the marathon, but I had invited him too late. He couldn’t get the day off from his job at McDonald’s. He had this idea that he could have changed things if he’d been there. That’s how you think when you’re twenty-two.
So he slipped up, and an article claiming I had identified the suspects (really only partly accurate) appeared on Bloomberg News that morning. This was the middle of the manhunt, and everyone—everyone—picked up and repeated the news. We turned to a news channel after Erin called, and my face was in continuous rotation. Bauman. No legs. Jeff Bauman. Identified the bombers. Tsarnaev. Bauman. Tsarnaev. They kept showing the photo of Erin and me that had been pulled off Facebook. Bauman the hero. Bauman and his girlfriend. Did we mention he lost his legs?
Erin called back half an hour later, while Tim was on hold with the Brighton police. She had talked with an FBI agent who told her not to worry—the bomber was on the run, and she was in no danger. She called her father, who told her to stay put, he was on his way. She sounded better, although she later admitted that she was hiding under the covers of her bed.
Stay strong, I texted her.
And then, slowly, the tension eased, and everything settled down. The hours passed, and nothing happened. Thursday had been a shit-storm at BMC. Reporters, family members, and celebrities were everywhere. Word went around that Oprah was going to be in the building the next day, that she wanted to meet with survivors. Mom came out of her shell at that one. Mom loves Oprah.
But even Oprah couldn’t defy the lockdown, and on Friday the hospital was quiet. Without Mom, my aunts, and my dad, the atmosphere was peaceful, and I found myself drifting in and out of sleep. I still hated being alone, but maybe the nurses had been right all along; maybe I did need more time to rest.
Or maybe the way Tamerlan Tsarnaev died eased my mind.
My biggest fear had never been that we wouldn’t catch the bombers. I had complete faith in the police. That’s why I don’t think my information was that important. Those guys were never going to get away with this. You don’t bomb a marathon and walk away. Not in this city. The best I can say is that my information may have sped up the process.
My biggest fear was that the bombers would deny it. If Tamerlan Tsarnaev surrendered peacefully and proclaimed his innocence, it would have been a circus. I’d be in the news. I’d have to spend a year, at least, meeting with the FBI and being grilled by defense attorneys. I’d have to testify at his trial. Did I see this man at the site of the bombing? Yes. Did I see him with the backpack? Yes. Did I see the backpack explode? No, I didn’t.