The Vow: The True Events That Inspired the Movie (8 page)

When we arrived in Mesa, the ambulance driver who met us at the plane asked us why we’d landed there since it was an hour away from the hospital. He explained that his instructions had been to take us to Barrow in Phoenix. We explained that we landed in Mesa because we were going to Rehab Without Walls. After several phone calls we finally discovered that while we were in the air, somebody realized that Rehab Without Walls was not an appropriate place for Krickitt. First of all, it was an outpatient facility and Krickitt still needed inpatient care. Furthermore, it was designed for patients who were either a lot further along in their recovery or not as seriously injured as Krickitt was. Once the issue was discovered, Rehab Without Walls had called Barrow and explained that Krickitt was already on her way to Arizona and needed their higher degree of specialized care. The staff at Barrow understood the situation and admitted her immediately.

We arrived at Barrow Neurological Institute late that afternoon, where we soon met the head neuropsychologist. We had brought all kinds of X-rays, CAT scans, and other reports with us, but the doctor explained that they did all their own tests, which they would begin immediately.

After Krickitt’s battery of tests, we got her settled into her room. It wasn’t long until another doctor came in to introduce himself. He introduced himself as Dr. Singh’s associate. Dr. Singh would be Krickitt’s doctor, the associate explained, and he would meet her for the first time the following Monday morning. Since it was Friday we would have the weekend to get used to the surroundings before Krickitt started her therapy on Monday. While a rehabilitation center was the last place I would have ever imagined I would be mere months after my wedding, I felt good about where we were. It was obvious God had been working behind the scenes to get Krickitt to the place where she would get the best possible care.

Though Barrow was a specialized hospital, the rooms were the typical hospital fare: plain furniture and yellowish-tan walls. Krickitt’s room was directly below the heliport, so we were often disturbed by the sounds of helicopters coming and going. She also had the distinction of being next door to a woman we nicknamed Moaning Lady because she would moan for hours at a time. But despite the noise above and around us, we also had snippets of peace. Krickitt’s room had a window facing a courtyard that was full of flowerbeds and walkways. Nothing was blooming in the first week of December, but I still looked forward to the possibility of someday taking walks out there with Krickitt by my side. She had already come so far, and she was under the best possible care. I imagined it wouldn’t be long before we were out there looking at the flowers and talking about going home to our apartment and life in New Mexico.

During Krickitt’s time at Barrow, I had the opportunity to meet some of the other patients in the rooms around hers. They were all at various stages in their recovery, and it was good to see the progress the others were making. It gave me hope for Krickitt. Some of the other patients had been in car accidents like she had, while others had suffered strokes or aneurysms.

On Krickitt’s first full day, a nurse and I took Krickitt out for her first look at another part of the hospital. We wheeled her into the patient cafeteria for lunch. However, Krickitt wasn’t prepared to see others with debilitating neurological conditions. I could sense her fear as soon as we entered the room. “This scares you,” I said almost involuntarily, not exactly sure if I’d said it out loud or just thought it.

“Yeah,” Krickitt answered, her voice still a little raspy after five days with a breathing tube down her throat. I was amazed the scene had penetrated even her hazy consciousness. I hadn’t expected her to respond to me, and I felt a burst of joy in spite of the stress I knew she was experiencing. We went back to the room, and Krickitt ate her meals there until she could go to the regular cafeteria. Our doctor heartily approved of this plan, as he did not want Krickitt to be constantly reminded of the possible negative, permanent effects for people with head injuries. Instead he—and I—wanted her to regain her strength and focus on getting better every day.

Though she had such a negative reaction to the cafeteria, the taste of food was actually one of the few pleasures Krickitt could appreciate. Mealtime became a treat for both of us. She simply enjoyed eating. And I loved meals because they were the few times in the day when Krickitt was the most animated. It wasn’t long before she was eating on her own. While we spent this time together, she began talking more and seemed a little more connected to me during our conversations.

During that first weekend at Barrow we learned about Krickitt’s daily schedule. She would start the day with occupational therapy, where she would relearn personal skills like getting bathed and dressed. Next, she would spend time with a speech therapist who would identify any speech disability caused by the injury and teach Krickitt how to overcome it. Her third session of the day would be physical therapy. During this time she would work on her hand-eye coordination, balance, and motor skills. Finally, she would get a break for lunch. Then she would spend the afternoons working on basic household chores such as cooking, vacuuming, and making a bed.

It was hard to believe that Krickitt would soon have such a packed schedule. After all, she was still technically in a coma. In fact, she wouldn’t be considered to be out of her “charted coma” until months after the accident. When we first arrived at Barrow, less than two weeks after the accident, she was only awake a few hours a day and she was extremely disoriented. The first night at Barrow she woke up, tried to get to the bathroom by herself, and ended up getting stuck in the bed rail that had been raised for her protection. From then on, someone slept in the room with her every night. This task usually fell to her mother, since I was still not in good physical shape due to my own injuries.

Since Krickitt was still sleeping more than twenty hours a day and couldn’t carry on a conversation for more than a minute or two, I wasn’t sure how her first official day of therapy would go. On that first Monday morning after we arrived, the day she was scheduled to meet Dr. Singh, I got to Krickitt’s room early because I had a plan for getting her ready. My intention was to try and wake her gently and then help her prepare for the big day ahead. I tried talking to her and stroking her face, but I got no response. Then I shook her shoulder, but still she didn’t so much as twitch.

At that moment Dr. Raj Singh entered, dressed like he’d just stepped out of GQ magazine. He was nothing like what I had expected—no white lab coat, no stethoscope, no clinical aloofness. He gave me a reassuring handshake, approached the head of the bed, and leaned over Krickitt. I had been doing my best to bring her to consciousness carefully, but the doctor had a different plan.

“You have to wake up,” Dr. Singh said firmly. Again, Krickitt didn’t respond.

“You have to wake up,” he repeated with exactly the same inflection. Still nothing.

Then Dr. Singh did something I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing. He reached over and gave Krickitt a hard pinch inside the front collar of her hospital gown. Her eyes flew open and she shouted, “Leave me alone!” along with a choice curse word. I was shocked to hear such language coming out of my wife’s mouth.

However, the strategy worked, because Dr. Singh now had Krickitt’s undivided attention. He told her to wiggle her right hand. She did. He told her to wiggle her left foot, and she did. Dr. Singh shot me a huge grin. “She will do well,” he said confidently. Within the hour Krickitt had begun her first occupational therapy lesson.

At times it was hard for me to remember that Krickitt wasn’t the only person who had been injured in the accident—I had been too. While we were in Gallup and Albuquerque, I had been in and out of the hospital as a patient a total of six times, yet I’d never been formally admitted overnight because I couldn’t stand to be away from Krickitt. I thought about her every minute of every day. I was terrified that she would die when I was away, even though she was continuing to improve a little bit at a time. Even when I did manage to catch a few minutes of sleep, I was never truly able to relax because I was so worried about her.

However, my broken bones were on the mend, and the surgeons in Albuquerque had repaired my ear and nose. Amazingly enough, in a few months no one would be able to tell I had ever injured them. But my back was another story. I was in constant pain. Though the cuts from the sunroof glass were healing, I had searing nerve pains shooting up and down my spine. I never knew when they would come or how long they would last. I was taking strong painkillers just to get me through each day.

When I thought about what we had been through, I was still amazed that our lives had been spared. My mom and dad had gone to the wrecking yard in Gallup to see if they could find my wallet in what was left of our car. Our brand new Escort was completely crushed, and the inside was covered with bloodstains and hair. It looked as if no one could have survived the accident, but amazingly all three of us did.

Once Krickitt was on the road to recovery, I was able to turn a little bit of my focus to filing insurance claims and organizing the medical paperwork that was already starting to stack up. During our first days at Barrow, when Krickitt was still in a coma, we had gotten a call from one of the emergency equipment providers. Much to my dismay, they already wanted to know when they might expect their check. I hadn’t realized the financial pressure would begin so soon.

In the midst of all the stress and uncertainty, I was beginning to wonder if I could keep it all together. My wife had an unknown level of brain damage, I was in a state of constant pain and worry, and I was already being pressured to start paying the astronomical medical bills. How was I going to cope?

At times I would momentarily forget about the enormity of the situation while I remembered the few happy moments or funny things that had happened over the past three weeks. But then I would start thinking of Krickitt lying in the dark in her hospital bed. I would imagine her there asleep, taking one slow breath after another. Would one of those breaths be her last? I knew she was getting better, but what if she had a setback? What if the doctors hadn’t discovered some major injury that could kill her in a heartbeat?

Then I would wonder what my wife would be like when her rehabilitation course was finished. We hadn’t even been married three months—less than one season. We’d had a fantastic wedding ceremony and Hawaiian honeymoon. Then we’d moved into our apartment in New Mexico, unpacked, and started our jobs. That was it—the sum total of our married life.
Will Krickitt ever be the same person as the woman I married?
I wondered.
Will she recover enough to have a career? Will she be able to have children?