Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice (28 page)

“From the pounding? That’s okay,” the therapist said. “We have to train it to absorb the pounding.”

In the past, Heather had ended her sessions by icing her leg. But it was 8:45, almost time for work. “I don’t think I have time to ice it,” she said. Back in the car, she brushed out her hair and reapplied her lipstick. She headed for the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through, waiting to order a medium hot with skim milk and Splenda. The line was long and slow. It felt, at last, like a typical Tuesday morning. She was finally getting back to her old routine—exactly what she had wanted—but it felt less satisfying than she had expected. There was no way around it: She was different—her perspective on the world, not just her leg—and she wasn’t sure she wanted the same things as before. The vividness and intensity of those days after the bombing had been like nothing she had ever known. Painful, yes, but also urgent and meaningful. It was almost inevitable that her old life would seem less gripping by comparison. Heather was deeply grateful to her employer; she knew she was lucky to have a job to come back to, good health insurance, and the flexibility to work part-time for now. She just didn’t know if she still aspired to be a human resources VP. Even with all she had lost, she felt an expanded sense of possibility. Before the bombing, she had been ready for a change. The change that had come, violent and unexpected, had transformed her in more ways than one. Maybe it had prepared her, too, for some purpose she could not yet see.

Turning into the driveway to the plant, she pulled out her employee ID card and hung it up on her rearview mirror. A blinking red sign beside the security checkpoint proudly announced the number of days without workplace injuries. Heather drove slowly through the gate. It was 9:00
A.M.
Time to get to work.

 • • • 

A
nother day, another stretch of open hallway. Another group of medical professionals watching her walk. It had been four months since Heather’s leg had been amputated. She was back at Spaulding to see her doctor. As always, she had lots of questions: Would she ever stop shifting weight onto her good leg? Would her good ankle ever stop getting so swollen? What about the pain—would it ever go away? Her doctor, David Crandell, knelt in front of her as she removed her prosthetic leg and rolled off the soft protective sleeve she wore underneath. He held the stump of her leg in his hand, palpating it gently. Heather squirmed. It was still tender.

“So I’ll always have some pain?” she asked.

“Well, no,” the doctor said. “Not if you get to a certain level of activity. The tissue is getting used to bearing weight where it hasn’t had to. . . . It’s still only been a short period of time.”

She was almost afraid to ask her next question: “Will the limp go away?”

“Yes. Yes,” the doctor said without hesitation. “In several months, people will not know.”

Heather longed to believe it. Most of what she still endured, no one else could see. But the limp announced to the world that she was different. That type of red flag, marking her as a victim, was what she had been trying to avoid when she had decided not to keep her foot.

Now the doctor had a question: What were her goals going forward?

“To get rid of this limp,” Heather said firmly. “To get running like I used to run.”

 • • • 

T
he morning felt like fall, damp and cold and gray, as Heather drove north from Rhode Island to New Hampshire. She was going to see the people who had made her prosthetic leg, to check on another one they were making now. Waiting for her there, with the new prosthetic, was a pair of four-inch high heels, platform pumps in a pale beige. They were the shoes Heather had ordered online before the bombing, the ones that had made her cry the day she came home from the hospital. Now she was getting ready to wear them for the first time. It had not taken Heather long to decide that she would wear heels again. She was known for her love of beautiful shoes; dressing up was part of who she was. To give that up would be a kind of surrender, and she refused. Plenty of things worried Heather about her situation, but walking on a prosthetic leg in four-inch heels—that didn’t scare her a bit.

A few days before, near her home in Newport, she had stood up on a paddleboard in the ocean. It was the first time she had tried it since before the bombing, and she had been nervous. She had asked her friends to take her to a secluded spot where there would be fewer watching eyes, but somehow they ended up smack in the middle of a busy beach. She was self-conscious about her water leg—a waterproof prosthetic—but with an ACE bandage wrapped around the top, it was a convincing substitute. “Wow, that’s risky!” a stranger had remarked at the beach. Heather had assumed he meant her paddleboarding. Then she realized he was talking about her friend, who had carried an expensive camera into the water. The outing felt like keeping a promise to herself—she had vowed to make it onto the board by summer’s end, but she hadn’t quite believed that it was possible.

In the old brick mill that housed the headquarters of Next Step Bionics & Prosthetics, she rolled her jeans above her knee, removed her everyday prosthetic, and pressed her weight into the high-heel leg, waiting for the click of the pin that would hold it in place. The quick switch was becoming familiar routine. Like other twenty-first-century amputees—at least those blessed with generous insurance coverage—Heather had, in place of her human leg, a tool kit of specialized synthetic options. She had her regular leg and her water leg for showering and swimming, and she hoped to get another high-tech leg designed for running. She had bought a big bag to tote her growing collection of prosthetics, a quilted duffel in a pink-and-green paisley print. She would not be taking home the new high-heel leg today. It had to be sent to England for a final step: the manufacture of a custom-designed cover that would resemble her real leg as closely as possible, right down to the color of her skin and the shape of her toes. First, though, she needed to make sure the shape of it was perfect. She stood before a mirror in her four-inch pumps, her gaze shifting from one leg to the other. The calf, she observed, looked kind of flat. “Let me give you a little more muscle,” offered Dave Newman, a Next Step technician. He would add a little more ankle bone, too, while he was at it. It was easy to do, by heating up strips of lightweight foam and layering them on the prosthetic calf and ankle. Then he would sand it down again, sculpting and smoothing out the surface.

Down the hall in another room, a knot of reporters and six TV cameras were waiting. The company had invited the media to come see the work it was doing; the crews showed up, of course, because of Heather. It was time for her to make a brief appearance. She headed down the hall in her high heels, with the company president, Matt Albuquerque, holding her hand to steady her. Camera flashes lit up her face as she stepped through the door. Emerging from the room a few minutes later after answering every question, Heather turned to walk back down the hall. This time when Albuquerque reached for her hand, she pulled it away. “I can probably do it,” she said. Her eyes were bright and she was grinning.

Living with the memory of April

T
he woman, a stranger, walked in and handed him a Starbucks gift card. “You might need this,” she said. It was a small act of generosity, but it helped. The gift of hand-knit blankets helped, too, and the letters from schoolchildren in Kentucky and West Virginia. So did the wind chimes and painted ceramic hearts from the people of Newtown, Connecticut, still badly bruised from their own tragedy just months earlier.
For Shane O’Hara and his staff at Marathon Sports, these and other gestures of kindness had helped them recover in the weeks after the first bomb exploded outside the front door. Their progress had been halting, but it had come. Focusing on the positive things seemed to hasten the pace.

There had been setbacks, too, including some insensitive comments from less conscientious visitors to the store. One of the first weekends after they reopened, a kid asked if the bombing had left limbs inside. O’Hara found the crassness shocking. At the end of June, he took a much-needed vacation with his family to their friends’ place on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. When he returned to work, he felt recharged and ready to go. Then, his first day back, someone came in and asked: “So, where did the bomb go off?” Just like that, his sense of peace and distance evaporated. It wasn’t that O’Hara and his colleagues refused to talk about what they had gone through that April afternoon. They just wanted people to show the tact and respect the subject deserved.

Every day, the Marathon Sports staff came to work on Boylston Street knowing the memories could be stirred up at any time. If it wasn’t a customer’s remark, it was the TV trucks that gathered outside when the attack was back in the news. It was the curious tourists, visible through the store window, pausing at the site of the blast. O’Hara knew the bombing had changed him. He had become quieter, his appetite for jokes and pranks not what it used to be. Maybe all that would come back, but a few months after one of the hardest days of his life, he couldn’t be sure. “I just want it to be over,” he said. “And it never is going to be over.”

Boston, six months out from the bombing, had begun to move on, too. The passage, though, would be long. The marathon attack of 2013 would not fade easily, promising to linger indefinitely in the city’s consciousness. Later, it would surely take its rightful place in history, on the timeline of local events that had shaped the world beyond: the launching of the 9/11 terror attacks from Logan Airport; the red state–blue state convention speech by Barack Obama in 2004; the racial tensions and school desegregation battles of the 1970s; the gangland killings under the reign of James “Whitey” Bulger; the ascension of the Kennedys to near royalty; the agitation of local abolitionists and revolutionaries; the midnight ride of Paul Revere; and the shot heard around the world that heralded American independence.

Remembering offered some choices. April 15, if you let it, could be defined by a heartless attack. Or it could be defined by the selfless work of Samaritans and first responders. It could mean cowardice, but it could also mean bravery. It could mean unimaginable losses, but it might also mean an unexpected breakthrough—a new perspective on what was important in life, a new kinship forged in a time of fear. Of course, concentrating on the good stuff—the humanity and the strength—came easily for those not badly hurt or in mourning. The most severely wounded remained on their own distinct paths, each with his or her own unique map to recovery. Celeste Corcoran, Jeff Bauman, Roseann Sdoia, Lingzi Lu’s family and friends—they and all the others would have to negotiate many ups and downs, hoping to reclaim, one day, a life that felt like their own again. Some would find peace; some would struggle. Others would dwell somewhere in between. There was no justice in any of it.

An hour before the bombs exploded on Boylston Street, the Red Sox had celebrated their walk-off win against Tampa Bay, courtesy of slugger Mike Napoli’s double off the Green Monster in the bottom of the ninth inning. What the Sox couldn’t have known then, in their twelfth game of 2013, was that this kind of win would define the season, a season of improbable comebacks, good humor, steady management, and unruly beards, ending with the most unlikely feat of all: winning the World Series on a cool Wednesday night in late October. It was the team’s third championship in ten years but its first won on home soil in nearly a century. Few had ever felt so right. Fireworks shot into the night sky, players soaked up the acclaim, champagne was prepared. But first, hearts turned to the April tragedy that had unfolded blocks away from Fenway Park. “This is for you, Boston,” World Series MVP David Ortiz said over the public address system, hoisting the shiny trophy to the sky. “You deserve it.”
The celebration carried into Thursday morning. Hundreds gathered on Boylston. Traffic stopped as fans knelt down in the darkness, touching and kissing the blue-and-yellow finish line.

Two days later, on a brilliant Saturday morning, the Red Sox climbed onto amphibious duck boats and rolled through downtown for their victory parade, hundreds of thousands of fans rejoicing along the route. When the procession reached Copley Square, left fielder Jonny Gomes climbed down onto Boylston with the World Series trophy, set it gently on the finish line, and draped it with a jersey that said
617 BOSTON STRONG
. The crowd joined together in singing “God Bless America.” Shane O’Hara stood with the Sox players, tearfully accepting one of the jerseys. Initially he’d had misgivings about taking part in the brief ceremony. He wasn’t entirely comfortable being a public face of Boston’s healing. He recognized the moment’s importance to the city, though, so he accepted his role. He was glad he did. Gomes pounded him warmly on the chest. Jarrod Saltalamacchia gave him a sincere hug. The support felt good. In his slow recovery from April, another page had turned.

 • • • 

A
fter Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured, after the TV cameras moved on, the crime scene in David Henneberry’s Watertown backyard remained active for nine days and nights. FBI agents stayed there around the clock, working under floodlights after darkness fell. Inside, Henneberry and his wife, Beth, joked that they were sleeping in the safest house in America. When the investigators finally departed, they took the couple’s beloved twenty-four-foot powerboat, the
Slipaway II
, with them. It had been totaled, battered by bullets and stun grenades. There was very little insurance and, remarkably, no government recompense. After that fateful Friday night when he stood on a ladder and spotted Dzhokhar hiding inside, Henneberry never touched his boat again. “I never even patted her good-bye,” he said. He liked to think they might be reunited someday: maybe at the Crime Museum in Washington, DC, where other bullet-riddled exhibits include the car used to film the final death scene in the 1967 movie
Bonnie and Clyde
.

The first week after the capture, the Henneberrys received 575 phone calls. Most were from reporters, but there were a few real estate agents, too, who seemed to think they might want to sell their house. The mail began arriving soon after, piles of cards and letters from all over. A single stuffed envelope from Lincoln, Nebraska, contained 130 notes from Pound Middle School students; they had been studying ancient Greece, and heroism, at the time of the marathon. “Please, sir, know what an impact you made on their lives,” their teacher wrote. A woman named Liz from Trenton, New Jersey, wrote of how the drama in Boston had triggered terrible memories of 9/11. “You reminded our nation that good people can make a difference,” she said. Henneberry was touched and baffled by the gratitude. All he had done was call 911—wouldn’t anybody in his shoes have done the same?

Their neighborhood had become famous, too, and for a time the traffic past the house was constant. Henneberry was recognized—he was “the boat guy”—when he went out. He and Beth vowed to get another boat as soon as they could. “This guy took a lot from us,” Henneberry said. “He won’t steal our passion away.” Sun-drenched summer Sunday mornings came and went with no lazy, meandering journeys down the Charles River. Passing time made that night in April seem less real, the bullet holes in their fence the only proof. “It’s true, but you can’t quite believe it’s true,” he mused. He still wondered why it had to be
his
backyard: “What kind of coincidence? What kind of fate?”

In September, Henneberry traveled north of the city, to Marblehead, to pick up his new boat at last and steer it home. He and Beth had accepted the money appreciative strangers had raised for them online: $50,000 in three days after the capture. The new boat was much like the old one, a twenty-four-foot fixer-upper in need of all the meticulous care he could provide. He had decided to call it
Beth Said Yes
, retiring the
Slipaway
name forever. Cruising up the river into Watertown, Henneberry came around the bend and saw Beth waiting at the dock. He pulled the boat close and she climbed aboard. It had been a long, strange trip, but he was home.

 • • • 

I
nitially,
Danny didn’t tell his parents a thing—not about the carjacking, nor the frightful ride with the Tsarnaev brothers, nor his dramatic escape. Finally, a week or so later, he shared the wild tale with his dad, who promptly relayed it to his mom. His mother didn’t mince words. She asked Danny to come home to China. But he wasn’t going to leave the life he’d found in America, which, outside of one bizarre night in April, he felt pretty good about. He got another Mercedes, a silver one this time. His heroism earned him a break on the lease payments. That girl in New York he liked? Well, they were still, six months later, just friends. But they had met a few times since Marathon Week and had gotten to know each other better. Both were happy he had survived, so they could still talk to each other. And that was something.

In the days after his adventure, Danny had found it almost impossible to believe that it all had really happened. It read like a fictional story, a scene ripped from a novel or a movie script. At first, he stayed home and didn’t venture out much. Then he found solace in exercise. He had just begun running a week or two before the carjacking—he credited the conditioning with helping him flee that night. A couple of weeks after it was all over, he started running again, almost every day, finding that it calmed his nerves. Danny felt, as the drama receded, like his life had more or less returned to normal. There were small ways, though, in which he had changed. He still liked to drive, for example, but he wasn’t sure he would ever again roll down his window or pull over if he saw someone asking for help. When he stopped to reflect on that night, he felt conflicting emotions. He had learned that he could be brave and strong, that he possessed the courage required to confront difficult situations. But he wasn’t sure his nerves could handle going through something like that again. He knew he was alive because of luck and the decisions he’d made. It could easily have gone a different way.

 • • • 

I
t started before they even got out of the city. The second bomb had just exploded a few feet away; Brighid Wall and her husband Brendan had scooped up their two children, ages four and six, and their nephew, five, and fled through the Starbucks next to Forum into the alley. They made it to a church on Newbury Street and sat on the steps. Wall’s son Declan hadn’t spoken since the bomb went off, but now, on the church steps, he piped up with a request: Could his mother please call the babysitter, Marissa? “Tell her I don’t want to go to the Swan Boats anymore,” the six-year-old said. Later, on the drive home to the quiet beach town of Duxbury, Wall’s sister tried to convince the boy that the blast had been fireworks. It didn’t work. He remembered everything. So did his four-year-old sister, Fiona. She called the bombing “the storm” and drew pictures of it, overlapping circles of red and gray and yellow. In the middle she drew her prized pink-and-purple Red Sox hat. It had been knocked off her head in the chaos and lost on the sidewalk. Her father went to Fenway a few days later and got her a new one.

Wall took the children to the doctor and had their hearing checked. She got a referral to a children’s therapist. She did her best to answer their questions, and she reminded them how brave they had been. “What if it happens again and I’m not so brave?” asked her son. “It’s not going to happen again,” she told him. The children heard that a little boy had died. “Did a six-year-old die?” Declan asked. He wanted to know if “that man”—Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—was going to hell. They talked about it less as time went on, but it was there, beneath the surface. “Did that happen from the bomb?” one of the children would ask when they saw someone on crutches or in a wheelchair. One day they went downtown for their swimming lessons. “Let’s park at the playground,” Wall suggested
,
“and walk to the pool.” Her son refused. “We need our car at the pool,” he explained, “so if an emergency happens, we can leave quicker.” She reassured him again that there would be no emergency. Sometimes she worried he might always be afraid. She kept watching him, listening closely, waiting to see.

 • • • 

O
n the night of Sunday, October 13, the seven-year-old girl in a number fifteen Dustin Pedroia jersey walked confidently up to a bank of microphones behind the pitcher’s mound at Fenway Park, laid her right hand across her heart, and led the packed stadium in singing the national anthem. Six months after the marathon bombing took her leg and her eight-year-old brother, Jane Richard stood on her prosthesis and belted out “The Star-Spangled Banner” under the lights alongside a children’s choir from her church, St. Ann Parish in Dorchester. She basked in the resounding applause from the stands, and from the Red Sox players standing nearby. It was game two of the American League Championship Series against the Detroit Tigers. The Sox, having lost the first game at home the night before, badly needed a lift.
More than a few citizens of Red Sox Nation believed, when the hometown team pulled off a dramatic come-from-behind victory later that night, that Jane’s presence had been the catalyst.