Free Stronger by Jeff Bauman Page B

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