Free Stronger by Jeff Bauman Page A

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