Raising A Soul Surfer (21 page)

We spent five nights in the hospital.

Our emotions continued to be raw and would sometimes burst through the dam of self-control, stunning us. Tom was numb with a sense of disbelief that he couldn’t shake, but I believed that we were completely in God’s hands.

Tom recalls that when he drove home to get us all some fresh clothes and check on Hana, our dog, he melted down in tears, pulling over to the side of the road until he could compose himself. I told Tom about the conversation and prayer Bethany and I had shared when we asked God to use her surfing for His glory. I told him how we had asked God to let her be a light for Him in the world of surfing. The apparent unreasonableness of God to take away his daughter’s dreams needled Tom, and anger quietly simmered inside of him.

Holt, too, was struggling. He blamed himself for what happened, even though we saw him as the hero who saved our daughter’s life. He felt that he should not have encouraged the girls to go surfing that day. The waves had been small, not even worth it. He kept going over why he hadn’t just said never mind and driven them all safely home.

Tom found himself encouraging Holt over and over that he shouldn’t feel responsible in any way for the attack. Every surfer knows there is a risk of sharks, improbable though it is; but the passion for surfing outweighs common sense and they still choose to paddle out. He told Holt how much we all appreciated what he had done to save Bethany—without him she would have died.

The memory of that Halloween morning kept rising up in Holt’s mind like an incoming tide. At the same time, Holt was trying to bolster Tom’s warring emotions with hope-filled words. He knew how much Bethany’s surfing successes meant to her and to all of us. While Bethany was still in the hospital, Holt would describe possible scenarios for her continuing surf career, “She could probably still compete as a long boarder.”

Our internal and emotional struggles were not the only things with which we were wrestling. News of the shark attack spread like wildfire through the coconut wireless alongside the growing media as news outlets picked up on the story and sent their reporters to Kauai. I had stayed in the hospital room with Bethany to manage the flow of visiting friends and well-wishers, but Tom found himself having to juggle a growing crowd and camera crews in the lobby. The reporters’ endless questions were wearing on him. He couldn’t turn them away, but his mind and heart were with Bethany.

One of Tom’s old surf buddies from Oahu, Steve Cranston, jumped in to put a buffer between our family and the press,
helping to make some sense out of the chaos. With his help, we picked one reporter, Guy Hagi, a newscaster and surfer from Oahu, to give an exclusive television interview. Steve and the hospital staff, especially Lani Yukimura, went to great lengths to insulate us from the growing chaos as everyone, it seemed, was trying to get an interview with Bethany.

Sarah Hill, more than anyone else outside the family, was present during those long days at Wilcox Hospital. Sarah took a week off from work, arriving in the morning and staying until late at night. Shortly after Bethany came out of surgery, Sarah was on hand. Thirteen-year-old Bethany’s words struck her: “Sarah, I just prayed and prayed the whole way to the beach. I’m glad this happened to me and not to Alana. I don’t know if her faith is ready to handle this kind of thing.” Sarah marveled at Bethany’s heart and resilience, and it was with Sarah that Bethany first brought up the possibility of a return to surfing.

In a quiet, intimate moment when visitors and family weren’t crowding the room, Bethany said to Sarah in a voice of resignation, “Maybe I could be a professional soccer player or photographer, or something.”

Sarah encouraged her, “If you ask me, God gave you the
gift
of surfing, and I don’t think He has taken it away from you.”

I will admit that none of us were as bold or reckless in our imagination as that. We were confident that Bethany would at least be able to enjoy swimming. Tim even bought her a pair of fins with the suggestion that she could now join him catching waves on a body board; but as for her dream of being a professional surfer, it seemed to be shattered.

But Sarah didn’t give up! She ministered hope to us as well and shared the Jeremiah 29:11 passage that God had brought to her mind as she raced to the hospital with Noah. Hearing those words, hearing her fervent trust in what God could do, we became
aware that God Himself had stepped into the midst of a tragic situation and flooded it with hope and promise.

Meanwhile, in the hospital room overflowing with flowers and stuffed animals, Bethany was quickly healing, getting stronger and starting to become restless. More and more, Bethany’s indomitable spirit led her to find an excuse to get out of bed. One day she grabbed a couple of balloons and took them out to the hallway to bat them around like any rambunctious, slightly bored kid might do. She was smiling and having a grand old time, never mind that her left arm had been mauled off days before. I saw the look on her face; and at that moment, I could see hope.

The visitors continued to stream in. Next came the whole lifeguard crew from the North Shore. On Sunday, the youth pastor brought church to Bethany in the form of the youth group and some guitars, and there were plenty of visitors from the other churches—pastors, elders and kids. Mike Coots, who I mentioned before as having lost his leg in a shark attack in 1998, was particularly helpful, as he understood exactly what Bethany was going through.

By the end of our time in the hospital, we were ready to go home.

We needed some quiet time to heal. Thankfully, some friends managed to find us a secluded beach home outside a little town called Anahola, and we escaped the hospital by the back door. Bethany jumped in Sarah’s car because it had tinted windows and was not as recognizable as our blue beast of a van.

The beach house turned out to be a wonderful gift.

The home had enough bedrooms for each of us, a hot tub and, best of all, the ocean right outside the back door. Only a
few people knew where we were, so we could spend time sorting out our emotions privately. To be honest, Tom and I often took turns crying alone in our room that week.

Near the end of our stay, the late Andy Irons stopped by. Andy was a North Shore boy whose surfing ability had flung him into a battle for the world championship. We’d known him since he was a kid and watched him and his brother Bruce grow up into surf champions. He’d known the girls, too, though they were much younger and somewhat mischievous (because he lived near Alana, the girls would sometimes play doorbell ditch at his house).

Andy was on his way to surf the Pipe Masters on Oahu, but he brought a huge teddy bear with him.

“I wish I could stay longer,” he told Bethany, choking up when he saw her bandaged arm, “but the contest is tomorrow.”

“Win it for me,” she said to him.

And he did.

While we stayed at that beach house, our family attempted to decompress the recent events that had bowled us over. We talked a lot, hung out in the hot tub, read, prayed and walked along the beach. Tim brought down a stack of body boarding videos for us, knowing that Bethany might not want to watch stand-up surfing just yet, the loss of her dream so fresh.

But there were times when we got bored with just hanging around the house. We were active people. We needed adventure, or something!

One day, Bethany, Alana and Sarah decided to go to the local market to rent a video. They thought it would be fun to disguise Bethany in a wig, a hat and sunglasses so she wouldn’t be recognized. Tim even made her an arm out of paper towel rolls and stuffed her into a long-sleeved shirt.

It worked! No one recognized them until they were on their way out of the store and they passed surfing legend Titus Kinimaka.
He looked at her strange getup and just said, “Hey, Bethany.”

Our time at this house was an emotional watershed for our whole family, but we had more things than just our inner hearts to consider. Would Bethany need a prosthetic arm? Rehabilitation? The weight of imagined bills pressed on us.

Prosthetics had come a long way in assisting an amputee to have a semblance of normalcy. But some suggestions were just counterproductive, such as a treatment to extend the bone remnant and then attach rods and electronics to interface with a robotic arm. Water combined with electricity? If Bethany were ever going to get back in the ocean, anything electronic would be useless. The dollar amounts tossed around for even the simplest of prosthetic devices could be staggering.

But the incredible people in our tight-knit community began doing amazing things to bless us.
Amazing
things. Within two weeks, a group of friends, spearheaded by Jill Smith and Amy Marvin, had managed to organize a grassroots nonprofit organization—the Friends of Bethany Hamilton—that exists to this day. Its primary focus is to support shark attack survivors and amputees worldwide and present inspiring life stories through movies, projects and activities.

A massive fund-raiser was held at the Marriot Hotel. Friends donated surfboards, artwork, crafts and more for a silent auction to help Bethany. Tom and the boys attended, but Bethany was not ready for the exposure, so I stayed home with her.

We didn’t quite expect the overflowing generosity, love and support from everyone all over the island. As the second week drew to a close, we realized that awareness of our story had grown much larger than just our island, or even our state.

Suddenly, we were dealing with stacks of mail and gifts that arrived for Bethany. In 24 hours, before the advent of Twitter and Facebook, she got 7,000 emails wishing her a speedy recovery and cheering her on. The kindness and comfort of total strangers was overwhelming to us. But in a way, they weren’t strangers; something in Bethany’s experience had resonated with them and had connected them to her. Something that really touched us was that many of the cards and letters were from kids.

There was no humanly possible way to respond to each and every one of the cards, letters and emails, but Bethany, Alana, Sarah and I would try to read each one, setting aside any that we felt needed an answer.

Eventually, our time at the beach house drew to a close. We were ready to go home after all the dramatic events of the previous two weeks. Once we settled back into the familiar, Bethany was anxious to get back in the water; but because she still had stitches, it was against doctor’s orders.

The movie portrayed me as going with Bethany to the hospital, but it was actually Tom. On the day she was scheduled to have her stitches out, Tom, who had finally had his knee surgery, was also to have his stitches removed. The two of them returned to Dr. Rovinsky together. Tom’s few stitches were quick and painless to remove. Bethany’s were a different matter. Her sutures were deep, and there were lots of them.

As the doctor began removing each stitch, Tom noticed that Bethany’s face was pale. But by the time they were ready to leave the doctor’s office, Bethany had composed herself and even got a little of her buoyant nature back. She turned to Dr. Rovinsky and said, “So, can I go in the ocean now?”

Rovinsky waved a warning finger. “No, no!” he replied, and then, pointing to the little holes left by the stitches, said, “You see these little
pukas
? They have to be closed or bacteria from the
ocean or streams could get in there, and then you would really have trouble.”

It seemed at this moment that the actuality of what had happened to her and what it would mean finally struck her. She began to cry deep, sobbing tears, and Tom wept with her.

As the tears subsided, Dr. Rovinsky, himself a surfer, said with a wink, “It should be healed enough by Thanksgiving Day.”

Bethany looked up at him and smiled, “Thanksgiving Day?”

She had been given a target date for normal life to begin again.