Stronger (5 page)

Then she visited Remy, who was being treated for a large shrapnel wound at Faulkner Hospital. By the time Erin arrived at Boston Medical Center, she couldn’t walk. She had run a marathon, walked an extra five miles, and gone a day and a half without eating or sleeping. She was stressed out, traumatized, and racked with guilt. Her body gave out. Her sister Gail and her mom had to carry her up the stairs in the parking garage.

“Who are you?” the reporters shouted when they saw her limping toward the doors. “Who are you here to see? Can you give us a statement?”

The intensive care area wasn’t much better. Dozens of victims had been transported to BMC, many in critical condition, and relatives were still arriving from cities outside New England. The ICU was like an airport where all the flights have been canceled, and people are angry and on edge, checking their cell phones, sleeping in corners, or sitting up in chairs. There was kindness and sympathy among the families, a feeling of love brought on by being in this together, but it was edged with suspicion. Although they were not allowed, reporters had infiltrated the lounge in the ICU, so the hospital had started using false names to stop media leaks. I was “X North.” I have no idea why. Most of the other victims were named after cars. Michele, who was at another hospital, was “Porsche.” Porsche!

Now
that’s
a secret identity.

But the leaks kept coming. By then, I had been identified as the “man in the wheelchair with no legs,” and everyone in my family was receiving calls. Even my friends and Erin’s family had been tracked down and asked for a statement.

My family wasn’t sure what to do. Should they talk about me with the press? Should they talk with the press about themselves? The world had seen the photograph. Did that mean they were entitled to information? Would it be easier to make an official statement? Or had my family already shared enough? Everyone from the
Lowell Sun
, our local newspaper, to Matt Lauer and Anderson Cooper were calling. Everyone wanted to know how the legless man in the photograph was doing.

And how
was
I doing, anyway?

That was the most troubling question. I hadn’t been conscious since they anesthetized me on the operating table. I had called out for Erin once, in delirium, but otherwise I hadn’t said or done anything. The doctors didn’t know what to expect when I woke up, but they were pretty sure of one thing: I wouldn’t remember what had happened. The blast had been so concussive, and the trauma to my body so devastating, that even if my memories survived, it would be weeks before my conscious mind could confront them and piece them back together.

I wouldn’t know I had been in a bombing.

Which meant I wouldn’t know I had lost my legs.

Somebody would have to tell me, and neither Mom nor Dad were up for it. Mom was almost catatonic with grief. Whenever she went in my room, her whole body shook with crying. Erin told me she hardly spoke, except to occasionally ask, “How? How could this happen to us?”

“I don’t know,” Erin would tell her. “But it did. So we have to face it.”

My dad had swung the other way. He was almost manic: yelling at the nurses, angry at the doctors for not saving my legs. It wasn’t long before he was arguing with Aunt Jenn, who had taken on the role of Mom’s protector and voice, and both of them were expecting Erin to side with them.

They argued about the media. My dad had granted a few interviews, not so much out of desire to be published, I think, but from an inability to stop talking. Mom wasn’t happy. “Who is he to talk about Jeff?” she said.

Only my dad, Mom.

“I think we should keep the drama to a minimum,” Erin said.

They argued about the donations. Two strangers in Colorado had set up a Facebook page in my honor, and donations were rolling in. Two friends at Costco, Jon and Aubrie Park, had created “Bauman Strong” bracelets and were selling them for $1. They had expected to sell a few hundred, but thousands had already been sold.

“It’s Jeff’s money,” Erin said, “so it’s his decision what to do with it.”

They argued about where I would live after I got out of the hospital.

“He’s not even conscious yet,” Erin said in exasperation. “We need to focus on what Jeff needs now, when he wakes up, not what he needs a month from now.”

In the end, it was decided that Erin should tell me what had happened. She was the one person I had called out for. Everyone knew how much I cared for and trusted her. And besides, she was the only neutral party.

I know it was a burden, but knowing Erin, she shouldered it without complaint. At least my family hadn’t rejected or blamed her, like she had feared. She stayed with me for several hours that day, although it couldn’t have been easy, either in her condition or mine. Erin was exhausted and overwhelmed. I was so bruised and burned I didn’t look like myself, and my body was… short. Everyone was worried about my mental state.

“If Jeff can do this with me,” Erin had told her sister Jill the previous night, when they were down in the hospital lobby taking a break, “then I can handle anything. But he has to want it. I can’t do it for him.”

How would I react when I woke up and discovered what had happened? Would I fall into despair? Would I be angry? Would I even be myself anymore?

Around five that evening, Erin decided to leave. Michele was awake and recovering from another surgery, so Erin and Gail drove across town to spend a few hours with her.

And of course, that was exactly when I decided to wake up.

5.

T
he first thing I remember is my best friend Sully’s face. He was standing beside the bed, looking down at me. I turned and saw his ex-girlfriend Jill standing on the other side. Honestly, they didn’t look so good.

It was late afternoon on Tuesday, almost thirty hours after the bombing. According to the doctors, I wasn’t expected to be awake until Wednesday. So of course Sully takes credit.

“I shouted, ‘BAU-MAN, wake up,’ ” he tells people proudly, especially after he’s had a few. “I barked it, just like that: ‘BO-MAN! BO-MAN! Wake up!’ And he woke up.”

What actually woke me up was Jill stroking my hair. I was lying somewhere, and I felt something lightly touching my head, and I opened my eyes.

My whole body hurt. They had me on morphine for the worst of the pain, but it still felt like I’d taken one of those movie beatings, where the bad guys kick you a few extra times in the stomach for good measure, even after you’re down. When I turned my head, it hurt. I couldn’t even gather my thoughts, I was in so much pain.

I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. My throat was dry, but I couldn’t move my tongue. I panicked. I thought I was choking. Then I noticed the tube jammed down my throat.

I stared at Sully and Jill. They were staring at me. Waiting. What could I say? Nothing, not with that tube in my mouth. I lifted my arm and made a motion like writing. I think it was Jill who gave me the pencil and pad of paper.

I wrote:
Lt. Dan
.

Sully laughed out loud. “Only Bauman,” he said. Lt. Dan was Forrest Gump’s commanding officer. He lost his legs in Vietnam.

I motioned toward the lower part of my body.

“Yeah,” Sully said sadly. “You lost your legs.”

I motioned for the paper again. I had one more thing to say. I wrote…

Oh man, I wish I knew what I had written, because everybody remembers something different. It’s been reported many times, first by Bloomberg News, then by the
Boston Globe
and others, that I wrote
Bag. Saw the guy. Looked right at me.
That’s what Chris—my half brother on Dad’s side—remembers, and he’s the one who talked to the press. The family members on Mom’s side disagree. They say I drew pictures, although they can’t agree on what I drew.

Sully remembers me pointing to my eyes. Then drawing a backpack. A bomb. Then a face. I gave the
saw it
sign again with my fingers.

And he understood.

He walked out into the hallway with my note, his hands shaking. That’s the one detail everyone agrees on: that when Sully came out of my room, he was white and shaking. He didn’t say a word. He just handed my note to Uncle Bob (or, in some versions, to my dad). My family had just come out of a meeting with the FBI liaison for victim relations, an ass-kicking older woman named Renee Morell, who had been explaining how the FBI would help relatives with hotel rooms and meal credits.

Uncle Bob (or maybe my dad) passed the note to Ms. Morell, who called the local FBI office. Or maybe Uncle Bob called the FBI, whose number was posted in the hallway.

Until recently, I had assumed the agents were simply waiting for me. I told the EMT in the ambulance that I had seen the bomber, and for me, that seemed like only seconds ago. Surely, I thought, someone would be waiting to take my testimony. That was why it took them only a minute to arrive.

I found out later it took almost an hour, I just don’t remember it. In fact, I don’t even remember writing the note. I remember writing “Lt. Dan,” and watching Sully’s face turn from fear to laughter, and feeling… good. Like myself. Then my breathing tube was out, and two FBI agents and the commissioner of the Massachusetts State Police were standing beside my bed. They pulled the curtain behind them,
Law & Order
style, pulled up some chairs, and started asking questions.

They asked me what I had seen.

“I saw the guy.”

They asked me for a description.

Dark baseball cap. Dark jacket, maybe leather. Dark sunglasses.

“What kind?”

Um… aviators.

His jacket was open. He was wearing a gray shirt. And a backpack. It was a JanSport.

“A JanSport? You remember that?”

Clearly.

They asked me for a physical description.

Taller than me. Stubble. Light skin.

“He was white?”

Yes, white.

Why did you notice him?

“He was all business.”

That was the first time I said that, but it sticks with me now. It’s the phrase that jumps into my mind whenever I picture Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He was a bad dude. Not bad like cool, but bad like angry. Troubled. One look, and you knew he was not someone to mess with. He’d punch your teeth out just for bumping him. He was all business.

“He wasn’t there to enjoy himself,” I told the FBI. “He was there for a reason.”

I told them how we eyeballed each other, and then how he was gone, but his backpack was still there, on the ground. The JanSport.

“Just look for me,” I said. “If you have video, look for me. He was beside me. Right beside me.”

At the end, I wrote down a description. That’s all I know for sure. I think the conversation happened the way I described it. I remember all those things. I can picture them right now. But is that exactly what I told the FBI? How can I know for sure? I don’t think they recorded the conversation, and I don’t know what happened to my written description or my original note. I assume it’s all in their case files somewhere.

“Thank you,” one of the agents said at the end. “Do you mind if we come back later?”

I nodded, and they left. At that point, I was wiped out. But I was happy. I’d done as much as I could do, and it felt good, like I was part of the team. I turned to my dad, who had been sitting quietly in the corner. “Do you think I helped?”

“You helped,” he said. “Before they talked to you, I don’t think they had any idea who they were looking for.”

That didn’t make any sense to me. This guy had been standing in a crowd. There were cameras everywhere. How could they not know who he was? How could I have been the only one to notice him?

My brother Tim said later that he overheard the FBI agents talking by the elevator on their way out.

“What do you think?” one of them said. “The kid’s on a lot of painkillers.”

“It’s the best information we’ve got,” the other replied.

The agents came back a few hours later. This time, they brought a stack of photographs. It was late at night, and the hospital was quiet. I sat in bed with a flashlight for twenty minutes, studying each face. I handed them back. None of them were the guy I had seen. If the agents were disappointed, they didn’t show it.

“I want to see Erin,” I said after they left.

Erin had just arrived at Michele’s room when she got the call that I was alert. By the time she’d made it back, the FBI was interviewing me. Then my family had wanted to see me. Then the FBI had come back again.

It was around midnight before we finally got time to ourselves. Erin’s sister Gail remembers looking in the doorway window and seeing us sitting on the bed, whispering, our heads close together. There were two security guards stationed outside my door, but otherwise the hospital was still, until a nurse came by to check on me.

“Can you give them a minute?” Gail asked.

She did. The nurse left us sitting together, under a single small light, with my cords and tubes dangling around us. I don’t know what I said. I had been blown up; Erin had been without basic comforts for two days. I hope that I said, “I love you.”