Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead (15 page)

From my cousin and close friend, Matt Mansfield, on September 1, 2004:

Brian Boyle—he walks, he talks, and even uses his muscles again! You showed everyone what Divine Intervention really is, what a miracle is, what happens when you really mean something in this world, and mean something to other people. You showed your family, your doctors, and your friends, that it can happen to anyone. The way I look at it is that you are just starting your life as a smart, strong, healthy, friendly, and the definition of a happy and dedicated person. You are the symbol of living life stronger than death. You are the strongest person I know and probably will ever know. You are my cousin, my best friend, my big brother. I love you bro, and always will.

From my cousin and close friend, Hayley Mansfield, on September 1, 2004:

Brian . . .

I’m so excited you’re doing better! And, I can’t wait to see you! You are such an incredible and caring person, and this past summer you have taught me so much about life. You taught me that things happen in life that you can’t explain. They just happen and have no reason for it. Nobody knew that when they said goodbye, it was almost forever. No one knows how strong you really are, how much you can fight the pain, but you proved you get through anything. This isn’t the battle, but it is the war. You have to fight stronger than you ever have before. Each day that goes by gets more intense. The question isn’t anymore if you’ll make it; it’s how much longer it will take. You prove that miracles do happen, that the power of prayer is so much. You prove there is a God out there. You taught me not only to never give up on my dreams, but to never give up on myself. This, I believe, keeps you going every day. This keeps you strong. It shows you the most important things in life. This isn’t over; it will never be. But you will stay strong; you will overcome this. I look up to you through all of this. Brian, you are my hero.

I turn off the computer and sit in silent, teary awe. My mom notices that I have been crying. “Everything okay, honey?” she asks.

“Life couldn’t be greater,” I respond. I really mean this.

During my first few days home, I relax when I’m not pushing through exercise routines. I watch a lot of daytime television like the
Ellen DeGeneres Show
,
Andy Griffith Show
, and ESPN’s
SportsCenter
, and favorite movies like
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
,
Patton
,
Easy Rider
,
Stand By Me
,
Goodfellas
, and
Jeremiah Johnson
. I’m also reading and rereading all the letters and get-well cards that I received from family and friends when I was in the hospital.

Most afternoons, my parents guide me to the back porch for fresh air. I sit back in the cushioned lounge chair and enjoy watching the autumn breeze flow through the leafy branches of the cedar, oak, and dogwood trees in our backyard. When I was little, my dad and I used to go for long walks in the same woods that I’m looking at now.

One day, my good friend Rachel from high school visits. In my frail state, I feel embarrassed. She’s extremely attractive. I want to jump off the porch and hide under the bushes. I don’t want anybody to see me like this. But her warmth and caring quickly melt away any anxiety. It turns out that she is well past shock—she visited me at the hospital many times, though I have no memory of this.

Rachel begins stopping by the house several times a week. I enjoy her company. She never makes me self-conscious about my appearance. She even begins thinking about becoming a nurse.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, I’m scheduled to attend physical and occupational outpatient therapy sessions at the Child and Adult Rehabilitation Center, which is located about thirty minutes from home. As soon as my parents wheel me into this place, I know that I am going to like it.

The woman at the desk politely gives us a quick tour of the center, which is slightly larger than a regular doctor’s office. The focus is on individualized treatment. My first therapist is a pleasant sixty-year-old woman named Carroll. She’s tall, nearly six feet, with short dyed-blonde hair, and a constant smile.

We start with improving my balance, since standing unassisted will help me walk on my own. She suggests yoga and tai chi moves. This works well because I practiced yoga while on my high school swim team. Our coach was an Olympic swimmer from Czechoslovakia who wanted me to be more flexible and fluid in the water.

Carroll has me sit on a pillow on a small wooden bench as I try to follow along with the tai chi and yoga routines from a DVD playing on the television. Even as I’m stressing my body, there’s a meditative quality that lessens the pain.

I spend my second hour of physical therapy with a black athletic woman named Tosheeda who used to run track in her home country of Jamaica. I love her Caribbean accent. “Hey, mon, I know you can lif’ da weight with your leg. Push, mon, push!” She is more aggressive than Carroll. It’s like I have a yin and yang team on my side.

Even though the weights that Tosheeda straps to my ankles are only two and a half pounds each, my calves and quads ache after several leg lifts. Then she straps the weights to my arms. Throughout each set of arm raises, she carefully monitors my blood pressure. By the time I finish, I’m drenched in sweat.

On Thursdays, I have occupational therapy with the gentle, calm Cameele, who is pursuing a post-graduate degree and works part-time in the mornings. We do exercises that will help restore the nerves in my left arm and shoulder. These include rolling a rubber ball up a wall and raising and lowering my left arm. She also uses an E-Stem, which is a nerve stimulation device that will help reactivate (I hope) the nonworking nerves in my shoulder that were damaged by the dump truck slamming into the driver’s side of the Camaro. The nerves are stimulated by tiny electrical impulses that travel from the equipment box to conductive patches on my arm and shoulder. I feel a slight tingling sensation as the muscle fibers are zapped from the low voltage. Cameele says that when people have severe nerve damage in their shoulder, they usually don’t have feeling in their fingers. But somehow I’m able to move my fingers, hand, and forearm.

My first week of outpatient therapy goes much better than expected. Despite the prospect of many months, if not several years, of therapy, working with these three wonderful women won’t make it so bad.

My chief concern, however, is with my dad, whose behavior has become odd and erratic. He barely speaks to us. He walks around the house with a blank look, unsmiling and constantly tense. He will stare for hours at the television even when it’s not turned on. Often he has difficulty breathing, and I catch him clutching his chest in discomfort. He won’t tell me or my mom what’s wrong. He becomes defensive and angry whenever we ask.

He’s completely different from the person who would remain in my hospital room, while my mom would run out crying. For some inexplicable reason, their roles have reversed. She’s the strong one now. He has emotionally shut down as if he has post-traumatic stress. The strong family warrior has turned into a shell-shocked returning vet—listless, moody, with an invisible injury draining him of vitality.

I begin to think that he’s angry with me, that he’s having trouble accepting the fact that I’m just a five-eleven big baby who needs constant care. I regularly do my breathing exercises with an inspirometer device, but now I don’t want him to watch me struggle to get the little blue ball to rise in the plastic tube. One late morning, I’m working the inspirometer and achieve my personal best for a single breath: a quarter of the way to the gauge’s top. My dad is in the kitchen with my mom, but I know he’s eyeing me. He then walks over to my bed and wants to know how difficult it is to get the blue ball to rise to the top. I hand him the device so he can find out for himself. He aligns the tube and inhales. The blue ball rises so fast it almost cracks the plastic tube. He gives me back the inspirometer without saying anything. He walks away, his right hand rubbing his chest, but instead of heading to the kitchen, he goes outside so he can be alone on the back porch.

What was that all about? Why is he so troubled? Is there anything I can say to lift his spirits and return him to our family? Does he need to hear the same kind of tough-love speech he gave me in Intensive Care when I was ready to call it quits?

I decide to speak with him, but first I have to get out of bed. I carefully lift my bony legs over the side of the bed, listening to the joints pop, as I rest my feet on the carpet. I have trouble standing up, even as I push off the bed with my arms. I will have to crawl. I go ten feet when I see my dad through the sliding glass door as he sits in a picnic table chair under an umbrella. He’s simply staring at the sky. There is such sadness in his eyes. His hand is over his chest and he looks pale. All of a sudden he turns in my direction and our eyes meet. Right then, my mom appears in the living room and sees me on the floor. She screams and tries to help me up, but I quickly tell my mom to go help my dad instead because he looks like he is having a heart attack. She runs outside, then darts back inside to call 911.

Three paramedics arrive within minutes. They rush over to me because I’m still lying on the floor, but I tell them to go outside because my dad is the one in grave danger. They sprint out to the porch with their duffel bags of medical gear. They strap a blood pressure cuff around his arm, while checking his vitals and asking him questions. Two more paramedics race around the rear of the house pushing a gurney toward my dad. As soon as they get to him, they gently lift him onto it and wheel him back through the house. My dad looks down at me on the carpet and says that he loves me. The room begins spinning. It’s almost like a tornado has just come down from the sky, snatching up my dad in a flash, then whirling away.

Mom comes running down the stairs and quickly helps me get off the floor and into my shoes. She grabs my hand and guides me to the garage to her white Nissan Xterra SUV. She assists me into the passenger seat, then lugs the heavy wheelchair into the trunk and lays it flat on its side. She speeds out of the driveway, kicking up dirt and gravel as we follow the ambulance that is already several minutes down the road.

We get to the local hospital called Civista Medical Center, which is only fifteen minutes from home. My mom jumps out of the car, taking out the wheelchair from the trunk and placing it on the ground. She comes around on the passenger side where I’m sitting and helps me out. I can’t keep up with her frantic actions, so she slows down and gets me situated in the wheelchair. She pushes me across the parking lot and up onto the sidewalk and into the emergency area. We head straight to the front desk to see where my dad is. The young female receptionist says that they are currently running several tests on him and that we should take a seat.

My mom wheels me over to the corner of the room and positions me next to two open seats by a set of red double doors that lead into the inner dwellings of the emergency unit. I lower my head in my hands in disbelief. When are we ever going to get a break? I peek between my fingers to see who else is in the waiting room. A young boy is resting an ice pack on his knee, a middle-aged woman is holding a baby in her arms, and an older man has white gauze covering part of his head. All this waiting, even if it’s only minutes, fills me with anxiety about my dad’s health. And to think: this is what my parents did for months—wait and wait and wait.

A half hour passes and still no news. My mom browses a celebrity gossip magazine but I can tell she’s agitated. A woman comes walking through the double doors and stops right in front of us. She’s wearing a blue EMT uniform. She has short grayish-blonde hair, glasses, and is smiling. She seems to know me, but I have no idea who she is.

“You must be Brian Boyle. I’d recognize that beach blond hair anywhere,” she says. “My name is Dawn-Moree Dugan and I’m the Assistant Chief for the Ironsides Volunteer Rescue Squad. I was at your accident scene. Boy, you were a fighter. You were the second strongest person our crew ever dealt with, the first being a 250-pound Maryland sheriff. So give me a hug, handsome!”

I slowly get up and give Dawn a well-deserved hug, while profusely thanking her for saving my life even though I have no memory of what happened. I ask her what she remembers.

“Well, Brian, a majority of the people who are hit the way you were die in their vehicle right then and there at the accident scene. They may have been struck by a small car or SUV and do not make it. But you were hit by a dump truck and survived! It’s almost unbelievable. You were trapped in your seat and even the Jaws of Life couldn’t extricate you. We had to remove your shorts and swimsuit for your body to slide out. You had to be rushed to Prince George’s Hospital trauma unit within minutes. The medevac guys thought that was all the time that you had left because of the massive blood loss.”

Dawn pauses and stares intensely at me. “I’m looking at you right now and I’m absolutely amazed. I can’t believe it. There were so many things that could have gone wrong that day, but you made it through. It is safe to say that luck was definitely on your side.”

Dawn can’t stay because she has to leave on a 911 call. Someone just fell off a ladder at his house. She gives me another hug and tells me to stop by the Rescue Squad when my dad feels better.

Her words leave me wondering: How or why did I survive the crash? Think of all the odds stacked up against me. The Camaro could have caught on fire with me still in it. The gas tank was on the driver’s side, and that was where the dump truck slammed into me. What if I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt? Which window would I have flown through from the impact? But the seat belt saved my life, despite breaking my clavicle. What if the rescue team hadn’t been able to get me out of the car in time? What if there hadn’t been a helicopter to take me to Prince George’s Hospital? The local hospital where I’m at now could not have saved me because they don’t have the technology.