Stronger (9 page)

I know the FBI had pieces of the backpack that proved it contained the bomb. I know the bomb was remote-detonated by the control panel of a remote control car, so it would have been impossible to see both the bomb and the detonation device. But that small piece bothered me. How could I know for sure this guy was the killer, and not someone lucky enough to walk away at exactly the right time?

Tamerlan had settled that problem for me. When he executed MIT police officer Sean Collier, he revealed himself as a killer. A cold-blooded bastard. A man who was all business. He was willing to die for whatever he thought he was doing, whatever purpose he thought he was serving, and he did.

I slept easier on Friday, but not because Tamerlan Tsarnaev got what he deserved. I don’t believe in retribution. I slept easier because he proved who he was.

I was still sleeping, off and on, when Kevin called around 3:00. The shelter-in-place order had been extended to the whole city, and nobody had been out of the hospital all day. So Kevin smuggled my relatives down an alley to a sushi restaurant that had agreed to open just for them and treated them to a gorgeous meal.

On the way back, the five of them stopped in the middle of Washington Street, one of the busiest roads in Boston, and took a photo. It was 4:00 on a Friday afternoon. There wasn’t a single person around.

Thank you Kevin, I texted him, after Uncle Bob’s kids told me what he had done.

You’re welcome, he replied. And thank you for calling me Kevin.

Erin arrived around 4:30. She had left her apartment before the lifting of the curfew, with the permission of the FBI. It was a five-mile drive, and she hadn’t seen more than four or five people on the roads.

Like me, she seemed energized by the day—not to mention her first good shower in a week. She had pulled herself together and, despite the tension of the manhunt, used the forced break to organize my affairs.

She had asked her friend Kat, who worked in public relations, to handle our media requests. We weren’t paying her, and she had never even met me, but Kat agreed immediately.

Aunt Jenn was designated my liaison to the “Jeff Bauman” Facebook page started by the couple I didn’t know in Colorado. The page had a hundred thousand friends, so it had become the main source for updates and donations. So many people had been following my story, in fact, that other strangers were now posting links and photographs. Aunt Jenn wanted to help me, and she wanted to make sure I wasn’t taken advantage of, so monitoring the page was a perfect task for her.

Uncle Bob talked to his lawyer friends about setting up an official charity and handling the money. When I was well enough, the lawyers would establish a trust in my name. Until then, the money would be held in a monitored bank account.

Now Erin had only one final thing to worry about: me. The second suspect hadn’t been caught yet, but there were rumors on social media of shots fired (later proved untrue). We sat on my bed and watched the coverage together until, just before 10:00, it was announced that the second suspect had been captured alive.

You could hear the cheer, even in my fifth-floor hospital room. As soon as the news broke, people started pouring out of their houses toward public places, overjoyed to have their city back. Erin and I watched it live on television: a quiet vigil on Boylston Street, raucous Northeastern University students waving flags and hugging police officers. Boston Common filled up with people cheering and clapping. In Dorchester, where Martin Richard had lived, they were setting off fireworks.

“It’s over,” Erin said. She paused. “At least this part.”

I put my arm around her. My upper body had healed enough by then, just barely, for us to lean on each other.

“Don’t worry, E,” I told her, as they showed the church bells ringing in Watertown. “Our kids will have legs.”

10.

T
he next day, the Red Sox returned to Boston for the first time since the bombing. It was an afternoon game, on a perfect sunny Saturday. The crowds arrived early for a pregame ceremony in honor of victims and first responders. The phrase Boston Strong, seen throughout the city, had a new variation. You could see it on shirts and signs throughout Fenway: We Are Boston Strong. But it wasn’t until they handed the microphone to David “Big Papi” Ortiz, the Red Sox’s biggest star for the last ten years, that the meaning of that phrase was hammered home. It’s known as The Speech, but it was only a few lines, made up on the spot:

This jersey that we wear today, it doesn’t say “Red Sox.” It says “Boston.” We want to thank you, Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick, the whole police department, for the great job that they did this past week. This is our fucking city! And nobody’s going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong.

Our city. Our freedom. We are Boston, together, and we are strong. It was the perfect end to a terrible week, people said, but I didn’t see The Speech, at least not live. I’ve seen it numerous times on the Internet since, but when David Ortiz actually spoke those words, I was with a physical therapist, learning how to put on my underpants.

Roll to one side, she taught me. Then back to the other. Then back again.

Life skills. That’s what they called it. I was transferring to the secondary ICU, so I needed life skills. As the Red Sox fell behind the Kansas City Royals, I was practicing pulling myself up with the help of my bed rack and sliding my underwear the last few inches up to my waist.

As they rallied with a home run in the eighth, I was working on getting out of bed. This involved a special tool: a wooden board. And not a special board, either, but a sanded and finished plank. I’d place it between the edge of the bed and the arm of a chair, then scoot into position and press down on it with my arms. This created enough force to lift my body and “transfer” it into the chair.

It was tough, trusting my arms like that. If I fell, there was nothing to catch me. I’d go straight to the floor, hips first if I was lucky, face-first if I wasn’t. It happened. Of course, it happened. When you push yourself, sometimes you fall. And the pain was excruciating. Hitting my legs on the ground was like hitting open nerves with a sledgehammer.

“It feels great,” I said, when I transferred into the chair for the first time. “I’m ready for more.”

Ten minutes later, I was flat on my back in bed. The pain was so intense, I didn’t feel like I ever wanted to get up again.

“That’s normal,” the specialist told me. “Your legs are so damaged, it will hurt to sit for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Maybe a month.”

No way. I wasn’t waiting a month. I practiced my transfers, and I practiced, until the board chipped, and I got a splinter in my ass. (Nope, I wasn’t wearing my underpants.) Talk about the difficulties of new technology! Fortunately, the hospital had another board.

By Sunday, I was already thinking of the next step: going to the bathroom. I was tired of crapping in a bedpan and peeing in a tube. So they brought a little portable toilet for beside the bed.

I used it once.

If I can do that, I thought, I can sit on a real toilet.

If I can sit on a toilet, I thought, after my first successful visit, I can get into a wheelchair.

That evening, my dad and stepmom brought me a gift: baggy workout shorts and a workout shirt. Easy clothes to put on for a guy with no legs.

“We thought this might help,” Big Csilla said.

“Oh yeah,” I said, almost snatching them out of her hand. Why hadn’t I thought of this before?

By Monday, I was feeling frisky. “Let’s go for a ride,” I said to Chris and Tim, who had stayed with me the previous night.

We snuck in a wheelchair. I don’t know if it was sneaking, really. We just didn’t check with the nurses. I put my board down between the bed and the chair and hoisted myself in. A clean transfer, no problem.

I wheeled myself out of the room, waving to the nurses at their station. I’m back in the world, I thought.

I had never seen the hallway. It was much quieter than I expected. The fever had broken, I suppose, and the press had moved on. I saw Big D in the visitors’ lounge, but he didn’t see me, so I rolled slowly past him without saying a word. When he noticed me, his mouth hit the floor.

Kevin, who was with him in the visitors’ lounge, started crying.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I feel like I can fly.”

It was exactly two minutes past one week since the bombing, according to Kevin, which sounds like something he would notice. He and Big D had been discussing my future (I imagine Kevin was doing most of the talking), and when they saw me in my wheelchair, and I looked so happy, with this big smile on my face, Kevin lost it. He compared it to seeing your child walk for the first time.

Kevin’s gay, in a long-term relationship, with no plans to adopt. Sometimes, it almost feels like he has adopted me.

We chatted for a while, Big D and I mostly taking the piss out of Kevin for being so emotional. That had always been our way in big moments, to defuse them with humor. But we were both pretty emotional, too.

Fortunately, a man interrupted us. He wanted to shake my hand. “I was there,” he said. “I saw you lying on the ground.” He paused. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you now.”

He had left out a sentence, but I knew what he meant:
I thought you were dead for sure.

The man’s name was Kevin Corcoran. He had been standing next to me, with his wife and daughter, when the first bomb went off. His wife, Celeste, had lost both her legs, the only other double amputee. She was really down about it, he admitted. She hated thinking about what her life would be like now. She had loved to walk on the beach. She had always been in charge. She hated feeling helpless. Their daughter, Sydney, was in the hospital bed next to her, but Celeste couldn’t hold her. She couldn’t tell her own daughter that everything was going to be okay. Sydney had almost bled to death on Boylston Street, but Kevin hadn’t known it at the time. He couldn’t find her in the chaos. He thought Sydney was okay, so he stayed with his wife. He knelt over her, hugging her. He thought she was going to die. She was covered with blood, and her feet were barely attached. Then they told him Sydney almost died, and that she might lose a leg, too. She was only seventeen.

“It helps to see you so happy, Jeff,” he said, fighting back tears.

He shook my hand and walked back to his family’s hospital room. I looked at Big D and Kevin. Then I turned and rolled down the hall, as far as I could, until I came to the window at the far end. Kevin caught up to me there.

“I’m proud of you,” he said, putting his arm on my shoulder, like a father might after a difficult baseball game.

I was bawling. I was crying so hard that tears were streaming down my face. It was embarrassing.

“Look what they did,” I said.

“It’s okay to cry.”

I couldn’t have stopped, even if I’d wanted to. Outside, it was a beautiful day. I could see a garden, and downtown Boston in the distance. I could imagine the Red Sox out there at Fenway, and Ortiz calling Boston our fucking city.

“I’m not worried about me,” I said. “I’m worried about the others. The ones who were hurt.” I don’t know if that’s true. I think I was crying about everything. But I was thinking about Sydney Corcoran.

Kevin didn’t say anything. He just let me cry.

“Why?” I said finally. “Why did they do this to us?”

RECOVERY