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Jack Jablonski: After the hit

Pam Louwagie, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) –

The pedals on the stationary bike rotate in smooth circles, methodically pushing and pulling Jack Jablonski’s paralyzed legs.

Wires from 20 electrodes dangle from his legs and trunk, stimulating his muscles, keeping them strong and trying to remind them of how things used to be.

Jack needs no such reminders.

He hates that word: Paralyzed. It’s been 11 months since he damaged his spinal cord in the hockey rink, robbing him of movement from the chest down. It was an accident that has affected friends and strangers in deeply personal ways that even Jack doesn’t fully understand.

Jack still doesn’t see himself as disabled. At 17, he can’t help but believe that technology and medical breakthroughs will fix it all someday. He wants his body to be ready.

As the pedals turn, he stares at a computer screen. It shows a long, isolated road, the skyline of a cartoon metropolis in the distance. He thinks about his teammates gliding across glassy ice, ripping pucks into nets and driving toward their hockey dreams like he once did.

Jack is driving toward a different dream now. With each pump on the bike, the screen shows a center-line stripe in the road flip by, as if he is pedaling closer to the city. But the skyline never moves.

“You try to bike to a town,” he says, frustrated, “but it never gets closer.”

Jack is determined to get closer.

He remembers screaming.

Pain pulsed through his neck as he hit the boards head first, then fell to the ice on his side.

Let’s try to get you up on the count of three, he heard.

One … two ….

You don’t get it, he remembers saying, panic stealing his breath. I can’t move. I can’t feel my body.

***

FOR WEEKS, Jack lay flat on his back in a darkened hospital room, his neck stretched stiff by a halo brace fastened to his forehead with screws.

Pain meds blurred the first days, but somehow he knew the prognosis.

He couldn’t believe what was going on around him. Wayne Gretzky and his favorite NHL player, Pavel Datsyuk, were calling his family. There were so many visitors that they came in shifts: hockey buddies, classmates, coaches, parents, college players, professional sports stars. They filled his room with jerseys and flowers and food.

At first, he wasn’t sure how to react. Suddenly, he had thousands of Twitter followers and kept hearing his story on television, which he strained to see out of the corner of his eye.

He could only try to return the good feelings. As visitors bent over his bed to look him in the face, Jack smiled at each of them. He asked his teammates about practices. He cracked jokes. He thanked people profusely.

“Thanks, Kate. Thank you for everything. I’ll be snacking on the banana bread later, don’t worry about that,” he told a family friend.

Jack’s visitors left his room feeling better. With all their support, he felt optimistic, too.

***

IN MID-JANUARY, a physical therapist stood at Jack’s bedside, slowly lifting his arm, working to increase the strength and movement in his shoulder. It was one of Jack’s first arm therapy sessions.

“We’re going for that shrug,” she told him. Lift them up. Slide them down.

“This is all coming from up at the shoulder, this is not the hands,” she said. “That’s how you learn how to drive your wheelchai…”

“Stop!” Jack cut her off.

“I know I said a bad word,” she answered softly.

***

AT THE END of February, Jack left the hospital for a few hours at a time to watch his team in the playoffs.

Before the games, he parked his wheelchair in the corner of the locker room and prayed with the team. From the stands, he recognized plays that he had practiced with his squad, anticipating passes and shots.

At the section championship game, he cheered from behind the glass at Mariucci Arena. As the clock wound down, with his team about to secure a spot in the state tournament, Jack’s dad, Mike, suggested he go onto the ice to celebrate with his buddies.

Jack said no. He felt self-conscious. He didn’t want to go out there, in front of thousands, in a wheelchair.

At the final buzzer, the players threw their sticks and helmets into the air in joy. A Red Knight coach told Jack he would walk out with him as the Zamboni door opened. The team rushed to surround him.

As the wheels of his chair rolled across the ice, the fans stood and chanted his name. “Jab-by! Jaby-by!” A smile spread across his face.

***

JACK SPENT the first day of the state tournament in a rehab kitchen, helping his mother make Swedish meatballs.

Therapists coaxed him to roll the raw balls around in a plate of flour. The fingers on his hand curled under, all he could do was push the meatballs from side to side. Puffs of flour spilled onto the floor.

“Mom, I don’t think this is gonna be my specialty,” he said. “Do you remember how much of a mess I made without this problem?”

They ate in the break room, a dish towel across Jack’s lap, a specially bent spoon fitted to his hand. A therapist loaded meatball bites onto the spoon.

Jack slowly raised his shaky right arm. As the spoon reached his chin, the pieces fell, streaking the towel with brown gravy and rolling to the floor. He sighed and tried again.

Over and over, just as his arm got high enough, his hand jerked and the meatballs fell.

All he could do was laugh.

***

LAUGHING MADE people relax, Jack noticed.

During rehab exercises at Courage Center, he teased a pregnant therapist about naming her child after him. “Baby Jack. Right there. It’s gonna be a boy,” he grinned.

He and the trainers kept score on how many scuffs each of them put on his new shoes while moving his legs on a treadmill. “Don’t worry, Holly,” he told one. “Jose took a commanding lead: three scuffs.”

When his competitive friends talked about their hockey prowess, Jack fired back with a smile, asking them how many Twitter followers they had (he has more than 50,600), or how many signed NHL jerseys (43, by his brother Max’s count).

When they complained about broken bones or sore muscles, then paused awkwardly realizing what they’d said, Jack broke the tension: Dude, at least you can feel it.

“I joke about my injury a lot,” he said later. “It lightens things. I think it makes them feel that I’m not, like, soft about it.”

***

On the first day of school, Jack rolled into the front door of Benilde-St. Margaret’s along with the rest of the junior class.

He quickly found a new routine, leaving class five minutes before the halls fill with students sprung by the bell.

In each class, a designated buddy sits next to him, fetching books from the backpack attached to his chair, sharing notes, giving him sips of water. Max, who moved to the school this year as an eighth-grader, is a few steps away if Jack needs him in a pinch.

Jack uses an iPad, typing with the pinky finger knuckle on his loosely fisted right hand.

At lunch, he cruised into the noisy cafeteria and pulled up to the head of the long table where his teammates sit every day. One of the guys grabbed an extra lunch tray and lifted forks of food to Jack’s mouth.

It was awkward, at first, asking his buddies to help him eat and drink. But some of his friends just started offering. Students passed Jack without seeming to notice him, though some wear products of last year’s many fundraisers — shirts emblazoned with his name or jersey number, tie-dyed wristbands printed with “Believe,” the theme that surrounds him.

But when Benilde students voted for Jack to be a homecoming attendant this fall, he turned it down.

“I’m not ready for that,” he said later. “Going up in front of everybody like this … I want to be in a better state … I didn’t want to have to face everyone like that.”

***

IT’LL BE HARD for Jack to watch his teammates play this year. He’ll see kids he used to compete with — kids he believed he could beat — and it’ll hurt that they’re on the ice and he’s not.

“It will be tough,” he said. “I have to get over it somehow.”

As hockey tryouts approached in mid-November, coach Ken Pauly arrived at the Jablonskis’ door in a Red Knights sweat shirt, ready to meet with his new student assistant coach.

“We want to establish that you’re part of this. You’re coaching with me,” Pauly said, perched on a kitchen stool.

Jack would concentrate on the power play, and his first suggestion was to show the team videos of great NHL power plays. “Show them exactly what we like about it and how we want ours to look like compared to that,” Jack said as Pauly took notes.

Jack was relieved to hear he won’t decide who plays. It’ll be strange enough for him to point out what his peers are doing well and what they aren’t.

“Looking up to a guy that I wanted to play like … and all of a sudden you’re telling him what to do and he’s older than you … it’s gonna be odd,” he said. “I guess I’m going to have to earn my respect.”

Jack will miss most practices because of his rehab schedule. But he could watch games, watch film, offer observations.

He could be involved as much or as little as he wanted to, Pauly told him. “I’d like to have you around.”

***

AT COURAGE CENTER after school, as his team sweats on the ice during practice, Jack is working to gain strength in his core. He is moving more of his arms than what the family was first led to believe, and he sometimes has flashes of feeling in his legs, though nobody is sure what to make of it.

Jack often begins his sessions with four trainers strapping him into a harness and hoisting him into a standing position atop a treadmill. One holds his hips. Two others hold his ankles and knees.

“Treadmill on in 3, 2, 1” another one says.

When the machine’s belt starts, they move his legs in a walking motion, bending his ankles, lifting his feet up and pushing them down in deliberate steps.

Jack swings his arms like he used to — a gait he once took for granted.

He loves it.

On the machine, Jack feels free, like he’s one step closer to walking.

The kid who hit him

The boy needed to clear his conscience. He hung back in the darkened hospital room and waited until other visitors stepped away. It was the toughest thing this lanky teenager had ever faced, and he wasn’t at all sure what to say.

He took a deep breath and approached the bed. His heart beat in nervous thumps.

Hey, Jack, the boy remembers stammering. I want to tell you that I’m the kid who happened to hit you.

A player on Wayzata High School’s junior varsity hockey team, he was still trying to make sense of it all. He had flown down the ice into the corner of the rink, as he’d done hundreds of times before. He checked Jack, but not particularly hard. He wasn’t trying to hurt him. It all happened so fast.

Jack hit the boards awkwardly and went down. The boy was headed toward the penalty box when he turned around and saw Jack still crumpled on the ice.

Grim bits of news trickled out over the next days, as the boy watched from afar. He didn’t sleep much, reading Internet postings about Jack into the night. After three days of worrying, he decided to see Jack himself.

His parents cautioned against it — too soon, they said — but he needed to make sure Jack knew it was an accident.

I’m really, really sorry about what happened. He remembers the words rushing from his mouth at Jack’s bedside. I didn’t try to, and I just hope you can forgive me.

Jack’s response was immediate: Yeah, dude, don’t worry. It’s hockey and I know it was a fluke and I know you weren’t doing it intentionally. This is hard for you, too.

The boy felt lighter: Oh, my God. Thank goodness, he remembers thinking.

Days later, when doctors formally said that Jack wouldn’t walk or skate again, the boy had to leave his math class. He went to a teacher’s office and sobbed.

Over the next months, school counselors, a sports psychologist and others told the boy to keep reminding himself that he didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Jack’s mother gave him hugs and a chain to wear around his neck. Benilde students sent him a giant foam card scrawled with well wishes, which now sits near his bed. Under his mattress, he tucked copies of supportive e-mails sent to his coach from strangers. It’s comforting to know people understood and prayed for him.

When he sees news about Jack or someone wearing Jack’s name or symbol, he is thankful Jack is still getting support.

He texts Jack every once in a while.

The boy, who didn’t want his name used, had never spoken out about the incident, he said, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself: “This is about Jack. We want to make sure he’s getting all the support he can.”

As long as Jack understands that he didn’t mean it, he said, that’s all he cares about.

This season the boy quit hockey. He said he wants to concentrate on other sports.

The hockey mom

As her husband told her about the injury to Jack, Beth Shogren crouched on her bedroom floor, reeling as if someone had just punched her in the gut.

For years, she had shivered on metal hockey arena bleachers, worrying about her sons as players drove each other into the boards. Now, the worst had happened to her son’s former teammate. She felt awful for his family and she panicked. That could have been her son.

She snapped at her husband: We’re pulling our kids out of hockey right now.

That’s ridiculous, Mike said. We can’t do that.

She paced in front of him, crying. We can’t be sure that they’ll be safe.

Mike was quiet. He grew up playing hockey and had cheered their son Bobby’s toughness, his ability to take hard hits on the ice, even after breaking his collarbone doing it. But Beth grew up in California and didn’t love it like he did.

She looked at him: What are we going to do?

We have to change the game, he said.

He learned from other board members of the Minneapolis Hockey Association, where he was a vice president, that similar conversations were going on in other homes. Within days, the group launched Jack’s Pledge, a vow to coach and play safer hockey. They also lobbied the state’s youth hockey organization to strengthen penalties for hits considered especially dangerous, just as the Minnesota State High School League had done.

But now, a season later, worry is creeping back. Beth implored other parents to help keep the game safer, to complain when bad checks aren’t called and to admonish fans who cheer violence.

“Enough time has passed where people sort of slide into their same old behavior,” she said. “The parents have the power to effect change.”

Beth keeps shuttling her sons to the rink for now.

Outside a Minneapolis ice arena this fall, she wrapped her arms around 14-year-old Nat and squeezed him tight. It was his first year of playing hockey with checking. “Be careful,” she said.

She left the rink before practice started, too nervous to watch.

The star teammate

The last buzzer of the Class 2A state high school hockey tournament sounded. Red Knights forward Grant Besse had just made history, scoring all five of his team’s goals to win the title. He and his teammates piled onto the ice, hugging and screaming.

Besse basked in the happy pandemonium — he was the star of the night — but he was also eager to get back to the locker room. There, his paralyzed teammate was waiting to celebrate, too.

“I had my time throughout the game,” Besse said later. “We were all just looking forward to getting off the ice and spending that time with him.”

Besse was only a high school junior, but he was already living the hockey dream: Shining in the biggest high school game in the state, committed to playing college hockey at a Division I school, getting looks from NHL scouts.

But after Jack’s injury, that dream didn’t look quite the same.

***

BESSE GOT TO KNOW Jack just a few months before tragedy struck. He was an experienced varsity player bringing a sophomore into the Red Knights fold, inviting Jack over to play Tiger Woods golf video games, driving him to Benilde football games.

Hockey was Jack’s life, too, he saw.

***

AFTER THE ACCIDENT, Besse and some of his teammates felt strange continuing to play.

“You kind of think about what he’s going through” Besse said. “Not really focusing on the game.”

But Besse in particular had a lot to shoot for. Just after Jack’s accident, he verbally committed to play for the Wisconsin Badgers. After the tournament, his iPhone rang with calls from New York and Los Angeles: NHL scouts wanted to talk.

For Besse, it was all adding up: the years of predawn and postdusk practices, the summer camps, the leagues that had put him on the ice 12 months a year. The dream was coming into reach.

***

BESSE’S RIGHT SKATE blade hit the ice in mid-November, starting his senior year with the Red Knights. This season, when he’s tired, he will think of how much Jack wants to be out there.

“I can probably guarantee you I wouldn’t be taking it as well as he has,” Besse said. “You can see how much of a fighter he is and how much heart he has. It makes you want to spend more time with him so maybe a little bit of that might rub off on you.”

Besse finds himself grateful for simple things that are now difficult for Jack: taking notes in class, picking up a slice of pizza, changing channels on the TV remote.

He continues to drive Jack and other friends to movies or school events; now he straps Jack’s wheelchair securely to an accessible van. They still play video games. Jack still beats him at Tiger Woods golf.

Besse understands, more than ever, that there is life outside of hockey, even if he makes the NHL someday.

“I wouldn’t say it [hockey] is less important at all. I would say that other things have become more important,” he said. “Hockey is still my life. It’s what I love to do. But I’ve started to take more things more seriously.

“Winning the state tournament, it’s a great memory and everything, but I would give that up any day to see Jack walk,” Besse said. “I’d trade every second for it.”

The referee

Hockey referee Dan Walt braced for the complaints as soon as the whistle blew.

Tweeeet! Blue! Boarding, his partner called, signaling the foul by punching a fist into an open hand.

With a high school conference championship on the line, the player headed to the penalty box for a full five minutes as his coach screamed in protest. Such big penalties are potential game-changers and, like many high school referees, Walt wanted the players — not a penalty — to determine who would win.

Under the old penalties for checking from behind, boarding or head contact, the offending team would have been short a player for up to two minutes or until the opposing team scored, at a minimum. Since Jack’s injury, the team is short a player for a full five minutes.

“It put us in a difficult position,” Walt said, noting some fouls are more egregious than others. “It felt like the punishment didn’t fit the crime.”

Safety needed to be re-examined after Jack’s injury, Walt agreed. But there is still controversy about whether increased penalties are the right way to achieve it.

At first, coaches, players and parents responded well to the new rules, Walt and others said. But once those calls affected playoff games, they weren’t as gracious.

At a State High School League meeting, Walt asked what referees should do in certain cases: What if a player spins right before getting checked, trying to draw a major penalty? Or what if a player ducks and get his head knocked?

Bill Kronschnabel, the state rules coordinator for hockey, cautioned referees against calling head contact when players purposely duck. But players making checks have to skate in control.

“It’s just like what kids learn in drivers’ training,” Kronschnabel said. “Somebody stops right in front of them … they’re responsible and they’re liable for the accident.”

Always err on the side of safety, league officials said. With consistent calls, coaches and players will adjust.

Walt knows that this season, with Jack’s injury fading from people’s minds, he’ll have to brace for more controversy.

“That’s some of the gray area that we’re sorting out right now,” he said. “How do you handle those kinds of calls?”

The coach

Ken Pauly told the story again this fall. This time it was to television cameras for CBS, which was giving Jack an award for Courage in Sports.

Pauly had recounted it dozens of times before: How Jack had been hit just the wrong way, how he got a phone call saying it was serious, how he coaxed the team to stick by their fallen player.

This time, Pauly broke down.

“I felt like I had emotions I couldn’t control,” he said.

He turned the radio off as he drove away from the interview, needing the quiet to think. Last season, Pauly said over and over that he had to figure out a way to move the team forward and bring Jack with them.

This season, he knew, might be harder than the last.

***

A MONTH AFTER Jack was injured, the team took the ice against Moorhead. It was the Red Knights’ ninth game without Jack, but the players saw signs of him everywhere in the stands, on posters and shirts. This night, for a fundraiser, even the players were wearing Jack’s jersey — “Jablonski” stitched on their backs.

Since the hit, Pauly could see his players skating more tentatively, worried about touching another player, as if the bad luck might strike again. He took his place behind the bench, barking commands as his players jumped off and on the ice in waves.

The Red Knights were getting whipped.

Between shifts, Pauly saw players look down at their jerseys. Pauly caught himself yelling: Jablonski, you’re up!

He knew he had to find some help.

Days later, the players sat in Pauly’s social studies classroom, their eyes fixed on worksheets, racing to find numbers in a matrix.

When they finished, a sports therapist asked: Was that fun? Did you like competing? Did you like winning?

Yes, the players nodded.

Did you feel that you were dishonoring Jack by doing that?

It was OK to continue playing hockey, the therapist told them. They could, in good conscience, move forward while still honoring their friend.

***

PAULY HAD NEVER told the boys to play for Jack. To him, that sounded cheap, as if they won then that would somehow make everything OK. Jack was not a lucky rabbit’s foot. Jack would need the team well beyond the season.

Pauly talked to players one-on-one about visiting Jack and helping teammates who were having a tough time.

Before games, he gave his usual pep talks: “It is our time. Embrace it! Get after it! Win it! Let’s frickin’ go,” he told them in the locker room before the sectional championship.

No coach could tell a team that winning doesn’t matter, and Pauly was known for — sometimes criticized for — his fiercely competitive side. But deep inside, for the first time in his life, Pauly didn’t care if they won or lost. It was more important that his team handle the tragedy well and not leave Jack behind.

When the Red Knights season ended with the state championship trophy on Jack’s lap in the locker room, Pauly told the boys how proud he was of them sticking together. He looked directly at Jack, who was smiling.

“I said, ‘Hey, I want you to understand that this is not over and that us being here for you is not over.’ ”

***

OVER THE SUMMER, Pauly stopped by the Jablonskis to drop off some coaching DVDs for Jack to watch. Jack’s mom, Leslie, came to the door.

Jack isn’t home, she told him. He’s out with his hockey buddies.

Pauly left happy.

***

PAULY DONNED his Red Knights sweats, laced up his skates and stood at center ice on the first day of hockey tryouts in mid-November. Ready or not, the new season was here.

“Move! Move! Move!” he growled as prospective players competed in drills, many wearing Jablonski patches on their helmets. “Get there! Get there! Hurry up! Hurry up!”

When one player checked another from behind, Pauly lost it: Are you kidding me? he barked. We, of all teams, should know better.

Days later, he took the team’s four captains to dinner to discuss the challenges that lie ahead: “You may think you’re ready for how hard the season is going to be, but you’re not,” he told them over pizza. “You’re in the limelight for two big reasons: The Jabby thing puts you big time in the limelight, and you’re defending state champions.”

He lectured about being careful of what they post on Facebook and Twitter. He talked of managing different personalities on a team.

And he talked about how they would have to help figure out Jack’s new role with the Red Knights.

The team would be working through the season with Jack the person even though the public might still be cheering Jabby the brand, wearing shirts and pins and wristbands bearing his name.

Pauly told the boys he would navigate it all with them and would bring in a sports therapist to help.

“We’ve been through something as a team that was beautiful and awful all at once,” Pauly said. “The only way the team gets strong is if everyone kind of melds back into the team and gets back to the core of its values.”

Pauly reminded them that, when Jack’s parents announced the prognosis back in January, they said they would have to adjust to a new life that Jack hadn’t planned for.

“This is it, guys,” Pauly said. “I think that’s what is the challenge for us, is to continue to just embrace him as the person he is and the teammate that he is.”

 

Jack’s mom

Leslie Jablonski looked at the empty, gray-blue walls of her son’s newly renovated bedroom, trying to figure out a way to make it feel like home.

The last night Jack had slept there was Dec. 29. His room was strewn with sweaty athletic socks and cluttered with medals and photographs of him on the ice. He had stayed up late again, playing Xbox and texting his friends. Leslie turned out the lights and reminded him of his game the next day. He slept until almost noon before scrambling out the door for the holiday hockey tournament.

Now, in late September, two days before he would move back, the room was bare, the decorations of his old life too painful to see. Wide corridors were clear for his wheelchair. Metal tracks were bolted to the ceiling for equipment to lift and slide him from a hospital bed.

Leslie had read that the move might be a difficult transition. Jack wasn’t eager to move back. After nine months of shuttling from one hospital to another and then moving into a temporary apartment, coming home was permanent.

And Jack would still be paralyzed.

***

JACK’S INJURY had always felt temporary, especially at first. Leslie and Mike felt like they had an infant again. They washed and combed Jack’s hair, fed him, gave him sips of water.

Itch! Itch! Itch! Jack used to plead from his hospital bed, summoning Leslie to scratch his face.

Max updated Twitter for him and texted his friends.

Everyone worked hard to keep the hospital room positive in those early days. Tell him a joke, Mike told Jack’s hockey buddies in the hallway outside his son’s room. Try to keep his spirits up.

With such support and Jack’s determination, Leslie found herself believing Jack would prove the doctors wrong.

“There are miracles and there’s technology … I can’t help but think in his lifetime, things are going to change,” Leslie said a few weeks after the hit. “I’m not going to tell him that he’s never going to walk again.”

***

LESLIE TRADED her public relations work, promoting shampoo and other products, for meetings with doctors in the months that followed the accident. Fueled on skim lattes and Diet Coke, she found tutors, interviewed personal care assistants, and fielded unending requests from reporters and questions from well-wishers trying to help.

A troop of friends who called themselves “Jack’s other moms” sometimes stayed with Jack and ran errands while Leslie faced new tasks.

Nurses taught her to spot subtle signs of illness common in spinal cord patients. She learned how to move Jack from a chair but worried about dropping him.

“What are you doing, Mom?” Jack once squawked when she hoisted him awkwardly. “Trying to break my neck again?”

The family’s tidy house filled with clutter: Cards and letters and posters and donations from strangers poured in. The grateful family wanted to acknowledge it all. Leslie set up bins marked “card only,” “needs a thank-you” and “priority thank-you.” But it was overwhelming.

“For the first time in my life,” she sighed. “I feel like I can’t get my arms around stuff.”

Mike and Leslie swapped nights at home, getting Max to school and to hockey practice. One of them always slept on an extra hospital bed or foldout chair next to Jack.

Leslie sprang to his bedside when she heard his voice one night in February. His eyes were still closed.

Puck, she heard in his sleeping mumbles, then: coach. Jack was playing hockey in his dreams.

Some nights, Jack lay awake, thinking about the future and grieving for his old life.

I’m not going to be able to play again, am I, Leslie remembers him asking in the predawn stillness. My life was perfect. It was so good … Why does it have to be taken away?

All Leslie could do was cry with him.

***

REALITY HIT in February, when Leslie walked through their house with accessibility specialists to discuss what Jack would need to move back.

They needed an elevator so Jack could get between floors. Wider corridors to accommodate his wheelchair. A bathroom with a roll-in shower and a chair. Rugs would need to be rolled up.

It would be easier to move, they told her.

Leslie stood stunned. Somehow, she had envisioned Jack being more capable by the time he got home. Would he really need all of those things? Did they have to bring the hospital home with them?

She had wanted Jack to come home fixed.

***

WHEN THE HOUSE was ready, friends helped Leslie unpack the family’s belongings.

Her voice cracked when she talked about the special fund that builders, architects and friends had set up to make the house accessible.

“When you think about what people did to bring us home,” Leslie said, “there are no words to describe the gratitude.”

She rearranged some of her work boxes in her basement office, unable to imagine promoting shampoos again. That seemed frivolous now.

“It just doesn’t matter anymore,” she said later. “I’d rather be on a mission to make people’s lives better than put volume in your hair.”

A friend vacuumed the new basement man cave, a place for Jack and his buddies to hang out and watch TV.

Leslie was determined to make the room fun. She hung signed NHL jerseys on the walls. Someone hooked up the Xbox. She wanted to make it inviting for Jack’s friends. It would be hard for him to go to their houses now.

***

THE JABLONSKI FAMILY moved back home on a Sunday.

Leslie pulled up to the front of the house, stepped out of the car and paused. Her eyes filled with tears. She was walking into their new life.

That night, Jack was silent as she and Mike helped him get ready for bed. A couple nights later, as Leslie lay awake, Jack called for her.

I’m lying in a hospital bed in my room, looking at this, he told her. He stared at the lift tracks on the ceiling.

***

ON JACK’S 17TH BIRTHDAY a month later, his friends gathered in the man cave to watch football and eat tacos. Around the kitchen table, they sang “Happy Birthday,” the orange glow of birthday candles lighting their faces.

Leslie thought about how much their lives had changed since Jack’s last birthday, happiness to terror to now.

When the song ended, Jack smiled shyly, wheeled himself a little closer to the cake, took one deep breath and blew all the candles out.

Jack

At night, when Jack’s head hits his pillow, he is exhausted. He’s been up since 5:30, put in a full day at school, exercised at Courage Center, done his homework and settled into bed. With his injury, everything takes more effort, it seems.

Sometimes he lies awake, grieving for what he used to have — the way he used to horse around with his teammates or chase flying pucks across the rink.

He wonders what life will be like years from now.

“I know that I could be like this forever,” he says quietly. “I’m … not at all confident. I just hope that it’ll change eventually.”

But those are his private nighttime fears. He can’t afford that kind of thinking in the daytime.

“Where are you going to go if life sucks to you all the time?” he says. “If it does, then what’s the point?”

When an aide wakes him to start a new day, he gives himself a quick pep talk as she gets him out of bed. He can’t improve if he doesn’t try, he tells himself. “What if something amazing happens today?”

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