Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice (27 page)

Naturally, the more people who took up running, the stronger running communities became, in Boston and around the world. The spike in interest spawned all manners of running clubs and just about every themed road race imaginable, from Ontario’s sweet-filled Chocolate Race to the James Joyce Ramble outside Boston, in which costumed actors read Joyce’s work throughout the route. Almost four months after the 2013 marathon, McGillivray oversaw the cherished Falmouth Road Race on Cape Cod, a seven-mile competition among 12,800 entrants along a stunning seaside course. Shortly before it started, he watched two acquaintances and running enthusiasts get married on a little patch of land near the starting line. When they were officially man and wife, McGillivray yelled, warmly, “Congratulations, now get out!” With that the wedding party, decked out in wedding-themed running gear, took off down the course. Seven miles later at the finish line, the groom picked up the bride and carried her across to wild applause.

Around the country, that spirit, following the Boston Marathon attack, proved to be stronger than fear. Even with security at unprecedented levels, road races were selling out at record pace. Not only was there no retreat, runners appeared to be flocking to mass public events. Runners even had their own “Boston Strong” uniforms—their marathon jackets. On April 16, the day after the Boston race, marathoner Vicma Lamarche and her husband left the city for Mexico’s Isla Mujeres;
she had promised him the trip for putting up with her five-month-long training regimen. Lamarche, part of a running club called Black Girls RUN!, grabbed her marathon jacket as they left. Her husband was a little unnerved. He worried that she was making herself a target—and they were headed to an airport, no less. Lamarche didn’t care. It was a badge of pride. When they got to Logan Airport, it was full of runners. They all had their jackets on, too, a small but meaningful expression of unity.
Peter Sagal was moved to do the same. That first week after the bombing, he wore his jacket everywhere. “Because I wanted people to see it.”

Standing tall, Heather forges ahead

I
t had been almost one month since the marathon.
Heather Abbott was back at Fenway Park, standing on crutches at the edge of the storied ball field. She wore a Red Sox jersey, her last name emblazoned on the back in red, the middle letters hidden by her long blonde hair. Waiting to be waved forward to the pitcher’s mound, she struggled to calm her nerves. She hadn’t been this anxious since the first moments after the bombing: In another minute, the thirty-eight-year-old would crutch across the grass in front of more than thirty thousand people. Then she would balance on one crutch, raise her right arm, and throw out the ceremonial first pitch. Sox catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia would try to catch it. There was no guarantee she wouldn’t fall. Or that she could throw it far enough. Instinctively, she understood the weight of the moment—not just for her, but for the city. Television cameras would capture her appearance and deliver it to a world craving proof of hope. Everyone in the park was willing her success on this overcast Saturday in May. It was a feeling she would come to know well in the months ahead, a potent blend of expectation and goodwill.

Heather had practiced for this day. At Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, where she had been since leaving Brigham and Women’s on April 29, she had gone outside in the sunshine with her friend Roseann Sdoia—whom she had known before, coincidentally, but who had also lost a leg in the bombing. Together, they practiced hopping across the spring grass on their crutches. Heather tossed a ball to Roseann, coached by their physical therapist. The transition to Spaulding had been hard for Heather—leaving the nurses she knew and enduring three or four hours of painful, strenuous physical therapy each day. The rehabilitation hospital, newly opened on the Charlestown waterfront, was sparkling, but the staff was still smoothing out rough edges. It could be hard to find a pillowcase or a water pitcher. And the attitude was no-nonsense: no relenting, no taking it easy, no cutting corners. You were supposed to work through the pain. When Heather was seized by doubt about her Fenway invitation, and suggested rolling out to throw the first pitch from her wheelchair, therapist Samantha Geary was adamant. “Don’t you dare,” Geary told her. “You take your crutches and you hop out there. Everybody needs to know you’re okay.”

Now another physical therapist, Dara Casparian, was beside her as she started forward across the soggy infield. The Fenway fans were on their feet, cheering and yelling her name. She stopped at the appointed spot, handed one crutch to her therapist, and took the baseball in her hand. She threw it at once, before she had a chance to lose her nerve or her balance: arm up and back, then the forward motion, then the release. For a split second, the stadium held its breath. Then the ball was snug in Saltalamacchia’s glove, and the crowd emitted a roar, a sudden wall of noise that enveloped her. It was the sound of affirmation:
See there, it’s just as we thought—she will, they will, we will all be okay
. It wasn’t that simple, of course, but the leap was hard for people to resist. It felt good. Back on the edge of the field, Heather’s parents were waiting, beaming, along with her friends from Newport who had been with her at the marathon. She let herself be swept up in the collective embrace. The biggest star on the team, David Ortiz, had signed a ball for her. The team’s manager of pregame ceremonies, Dan Lyons, would e-mail her later and call her appearance one of the best moments of his thirty-year career. Heather knew she would always remember this feeling. It felt like a celebration, and it was. She had checked out of Spaulding that morning. When she left Fenway, she was finally going home.

 • • • 

S
he was happy and excited on the drive to Newport, still feeling the warm approval from the Fenway crowd. And there was more to look forward to—she couldn’t wait to be home again. She had not anticipated the mix of feelings it would bring, though, or the memories. Her apartment was like a time capsule. Everything was just where she had left it on the morning of Marathon Monday, rushing out the door to catch the train to Boston. The last minutes of her old life, perfectly preserved. She looked around, taking it all in. Then, in her bedroom, she saw a waiting stack of packages. It took her a minute to figure out what they were, and when she did, it felt like a punch in the gut. Before the marathon, Heather had ordered some new spring clothes. Sometime in the past month, they had been delivered. Someone, her parents or friends, had carried them inside for her. There were several pairs of stylish high-heeled shoes in boxes, and a couple of short dresses for the beach. The sight of them gave her an unexpected jolt. It had been just weeks ago that these things had been so natural and easy: shopping for shoes, looking forward to spring, dreaming of summer. It would never be that way again. She sank onto her bed and wept for everything that had ended.

 • • • 

“
H
eather! You’re Heather, right? You look great!”

Some people rushed right up to her on the streets of Newport. They had seen her on TV; they wanted to wish her well. Others stared at her from across the room, studying her face, her leg. “Yes, it’s me,” she wanted to say. On good days, the attention was strange but nice. On bad days, it could feel intrusive and overwhelming. Some people didn’t think before they greeted her, and then they froze, unsure how to proceed. It was up to her then to end the interactions gracefully. She tried to remember that they all meant well.

Her mother stayed with her at the apartment for six weeks. It was helpful, but also challenging, for someone so accustomed to living on her own. She was still getting used to her prosthetic leg. It was a temporary one—the socket would be recast again and again during the first months, to ensure a good fit as her leg, still healing, continued to shrink and change shape. The first time she tried it on, her disappointment was keen. In the hospital, experienced amputees had given the bombing victims pep talks, telling them how they would one day do everything they had done before. Putting on her first prosthetic leg would be a life-changing moment, Heather had thought, a leap toward normalcy. Then she stood up and felt how hard and painful and uncomfortable it was.
It’s not my leg
, she thought.
My leg is never coming back
. It was obvious, yet somehow the surreal and hectic early weeks had blurred the permanence. For someone in recovery, she was surprisingly busy. She had hired a financial adviser, who was going to project how much her disability would cost over her lifetime. She had interviewed nearly a dozen companies before deciding which one would make her prosthetics. She was weighing whether to accept any speaking engagements. There was lots of mail still coming in, and invitations. There was a homecoming party in the ballroom at Newport’s Rosecliff mansion, organized by friends and attended by both Rhode Island senators. There was physical therapy and doctors’ appointments. It was almost like a full-time job. How she would balance it with her real job, once she went back to work, she wasn’t sure.

She went out again in Newport with her friends, but it wasn’t the same. She was still taking painkillers—the pain and throbbing in her leg still woke her up at 2:00 or 3:00
A.M.
on many nights—and she didn’t want to drink when she was medicated. The places she loved, where she had felt at home, had turned into obstacle courses. One night at SpeakEasy, one of their regular haunts, she tried to get upstairs to the bathroom and couldn’t. Her friend Jason offered to carry her. “Just leave me alone,” she told him, the darkness in her voice surprising everyone. The well-intentioned offer had touched a nerve. Heather’s independence was her most prized possession. She remembered how she used to walk home alone from bars in the wee hours, never worrying that anyone would try to hurt her. Now she couldn’t run away if someone did. When a noise awakened her in the middle of the night, she was struck again by her own helplessness. If someone broke into her apartment, there would be no time for her to put on her other leg and get away. Such thoughts had not come to her in the hospital, when she had been surrounded by people. It was only now, on her own with time to think, that the stark reality of her limitations started to sink in.

And she was truly on her own now: The ex-boyfriend who had come back to her after the bombing, pledging to be there for her—he was gone again. It had been a gamble from the start, Heather had known that. Their history had left her with no illusions, but still, she had wanted to—maybe she had needed to—believe him when he asked her in the hospital for another chance. For a while, it seemed like he had meant it. He drove her home from the hospital; he helped her parents and pitched in at her fund-raisers. By late July, though, she could see he had not changed. He had let her down—again. It was over, and this time, there would be no second chances. Heather was hurt and angry, but grateful at least for the clarity, if not the timing. She had never needed someone more. Of the bombing victims Heather had gotten to know, she was now the only one completely on her own. Soon enough she would drive herself, carry her own bags, change her own lightbulbs. Months later she would wonder if her self-reliance had sped up her progress.

Even with all this pressing down on her, though, it was possible, for a few seconds, to forget about her leg. It happened at home one day when the doorbell rang. She was sitting on her bed, not wearing her prosthetic, and she leapt toward the door at the familiar sound. Her movement was an act of memory and instinct, but it was an outdated memory. She had only one leg now to land on, and she landed badly, falling on the floor. It hurt, and it was humiliating. It was like she was being punished for forgetting. Such rebukes came without warning. At the end of May, three weeks after going home from the hospital, Heather went to Boston for a One Fund concert. The five-hour benefit show brought together a dozen well-known bands and musicians, some with Boston ties, to raise money for the victims. Many of the marathon amputees were there in front-row seats. Jeff Bauman attended, and Carlos Arredondo, the bystander who had helped him. Heather sat next to Mery Daniel, another woman who had lost a leg. Her friend Roseann came, too. It was the first time all of them had had a chance to talk.

For weeks, Heather had been focused on her own ordeal. She had not watched the news; her knowledge of the other victims had been limited. Sitting now with others who had gone through the same thing, she felt herself part of a new community. Together, they welcomed hugs from members of New Kids on the Block and reveled in their proximity to Aerosmith. James Taylor and Carole King serenaded them with “You’ve Got a Friend.” Heather was surprised to find herself crying, for the first time, in public. It felt okay. The other victims were mostly strangers, but in one important way, she knew them better than anyone. When the show was over, Heather and one of her friends stopped in a restroom before leaving the TD Garden. The floor was wet, and her crutch slipped out from under her. She fell hard onto the concrete. Pain ricocheted through her leg; all the joy of the night drained instantly away.
Don’t forget
, the pain seemed to say.
Nothing will be easy for you now
.

She had been with Mery earlier that day, at a photo shoot for
People
magazine. Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a dancer who had suffered an amputation, was there, too. The shoot, at Spaulding, made them laugh. The magazine stylists had dressed them in “Boston Strong”–themed T-shirts; Heather couldn’t believe she was going to be in
People
wearing a T-shirt. The photographer had called for “wind” to blow their hair, so an assistant stood in front them waving a piece of cardboard. The three women, each one missing a leg, stood on a platform with a slightly tilted surface. Adrianne wore her brand-new prosthesis; she had just gotten it that day. Frightened of falling, trying not to lose their balance, they held on to one another as the camera clicked and clicked. It was nerve-racking and ridiculous; how could it possibly produce a decent picture? They could not believe it when the photo landed on the cover, their smiling faces radiating confidence. The contradiction cut through her new life—the public snapshots, with their airbrushed theme of triumph, and the complex private realm where fear and strength and pain were all tangled up together.

 • • • 

O
n a Tuesday morning in mid-August, Heather stood in her bathroom blow-drying her hair. She spritzed herself lightly with perfume, finished a container of yogurt, and turned off the TV, where a weatherman was forecasting fog. She wore small hoop earrings, a mint-green and lemon-yellow sweater, and white Top-Sider loafers with navy trim. She also wore her prosthetic leg. It was her second day back on the job at Raytheon, the defense contractor where she worked in human resources. After the bombing, Heather had known the time wasn’t right for a new job in Boston, or anywhere else. She needed her friends and family nearby—for now—so she had made her peace with staying where she was. There were moments, though, when it was hard. Back in June, a call had come from a company down south, asking her if she was interested in a job. No, she had told them, feeling a pang of loss. Instead, she would immerse herself in what she knew. She had started slowly the previous day, working for only five hours, sorting through the six hundred e-mails in her inbox. There had been a small party, with a cake, to welcome her back. Today would be more like a regular day: seven hours, with conference calls and stacks of files awaiting her review. She needed to be there at 9:00, but she would squeeze in an hour of physical therapy first.

She drove across Newport, past the long gray sweep of Easton’s Beach, to the office building where she did her therapy. The large, open room was already humming with people stretching, exercising, lifting weights, trying to bounce back from all kinds of injuries. Heather stood on a spot where strips of tape made a star pattern on the carpet, and practiced tapping the heel of her prosthetic foot on each point of the star. It was dull, repetitive work, and surprisingly hard. She switched legs, trying it with her good foot. “It’s the calf muscles,” she said, quickly figuring out what was missing. “I don’t have the calf.” She moved through a series of deep knee bends; they seemed to be getting easier. Her therapist placed a block on the floor in front of her, and Heather stepped forward, bending low to pick it up. “We want to give her back her gliding, graceful motion,” said Bert Reid, an owner of Olympic Physical Therapy, who had come over to greet her. “She’s come a million miles, and she’s got a million more to go.” Heather made a face: a
million
more? The previous week at PT, she had loped down the back hallway in a half run. It had been slow and halting and extremely painful, but it had given her a flash of breathless belief: She would run for real again someday. Now she returned to the hallway. Facing the buttermilk-colored wall, she sashayed down one side, taking small, quick sideways steps, then reversed direction and came swiftly back, past exam room doors and a row of framed Little League photos. Her leg was starting to ache.