The Boy Who Could Fly
On January 12, 2020, my 5 year old son was hit by a car. I was running 20 feet behind him when it happened. This is our story.
A canvas of clear blue sky awaited a day of outdoor adventure. By 9:30am on that mid-January Sunday the thermometer on my watch read nearly sixty degrees. After spending so many weeks cooped up in the house during what would turn out to be winter’s coldest months, I was ready for a temperate outdoor run. I put on shorts and a short-sleeved technical shirt, put the dog on a leash, pulled my son away from the television, and headed out into the beautiful Sunday morning.
My son was born with a cleft lip and palate. At about three days old — we aren’t completely certain — he was found by an orphanage nurse at a bus station in Xinzhou City, Shanxi, China, wearing a polka dotted onesie. We met him when he was just shy of 20 months old, a squirmy bug with a loud cry and a big heart. He was full of energy and high spirits. He threw his first tantrum outside our hotel room, his wail like a fire alarm, on our second night with him. He was scared and confused. We were as new to him as he was to us.
Early on we figured out one thing about our Bug: he never stops moving. He is a whirling dervish of energy and movement that could power whole cities if we could figure out a way to harness it. He dances at the table as he eats his dinner. He paces back and forth on the couch as he watches cartoons. He even kicks his legs as he sits on the toilet. The longest he goes without moving is at night when he falls hard into sleep like a rock off a cliff and lays more or less stock still all night long.
Bug had gotten a new bike for his birthday in October. Black with red flames, its 18-inch wheels were an upgrade from the 10-inch wheels on which he’d learned to ride. Though he could pedal it fine, the frame was two inches too tall to allow him to straddle the bike with both feet on the ground. That meant he had to start and stop on only one foot, and he wasn’t ready for that.
In the driveway that Sunday he put on his little red Cars helmet with mohawked foam flames. He had buttoned his red flannel shirt to the collar and tucked it into his favorite pair of faded skinny jeans. If you saw him walking down the street you might have thought he was a GQ cover model. I held the seat while he got started, and promised that I would be there to help him stop, and then he was off. I leashed up the dog, started my watch, and ran to catch up with him.
What a morning it was. Here on the peninsula, those warm winter days are like a blessing, a respite from winter’s biting cold. Without the usual humidity, the sun felt even warmer as I surprisingly worked up a sweat. Bug was out in front, about twenty feet away, and the dog was pulling on the leash to catch up with him, as we came down a narrow stretch of road near the edge of town.
The road was about a car-and-a-half wide with deep stormwater ditches on both sides of the macadam. On the right neat rows of tall loblollies created long alleys through a shaded wood. On the left, soccer and lacrosse fields seemed eager for the sporting season to begin. Half a mile ahead was the turn to the park where Bug could swing and slide while I ran sprints up and down the soccer fields. Beyond that the road curved to the left behind some bushy cedars. A gold minivan was moving towards us, and I called for Bug to move over.
The next moments happened quickly, probably in less than 30 seconds, but at the time, and in my mind, it took forever for the driver to notice my son in the road on his bike. She hit the brakes and swerved left. He saw her and did what any five-year-old on two wheels would do: he stopped pedaling. Unfortunately for my son, when he stopped pedaling he started wobbling, and he wobbled in the direction the car was swerving.
At first it seemed unreal, like he was a cartoon boy giving that Honda a hug. In the animated version, his arms splayed to the sides and he stuck to the grill like Wile E. Coyote. When the van stopped my cartoon Bug would peel himself away and stand for a moment in the middle of the narrow lane, flattened but otherwise unhurt. After a beat for laughter he’d shake and his body would magically pop back to normal.
Reality did not break for laughter, and I watched the car, the swerve, the wobble, and the crash in stop motion. Bug rolled up the windshield of the car, tumbled across the roof, and popped in the air. He spun around and hung there, suspended, pushed up by physics and the hands of a guardian angel. His arms still spread like wings, he looked like he was flying. Then he came down hard, landed on his feet, and collapsed onto the pavement.
Instinct took over. I let go of the dog and rushed to my son, scooped him in my arms. This is a moment that I’ll never forget: his eyes looking up at me. There was no pain in them, no agony. He seemed confused, and almost sleepy. “Daddy, my leg hurts,” he said. And I could see why. In my arms I saw the thigh bending unnaturally as the leg swelled behind his favorite skinny jeans.
The dog, a few paces ahead, stared back, his head cocked to one side. Behind us, the gold minivan had stopped, and beyond, from where we’d just come, a black car idled. I ignored the woman who got out of the minivan and walked up to the young, red-bearded man and cried, “Take us to the hospital.”
I held Bug in my arms in that back seat for the longest three miles of my life. At the hospital, a nurse who knew me from our kids’ school lifted him out of my arms. A local fireman — the father of one of Bug’s classmates — brought a neck stabilizing collar. I hugged him and called him Chris, which was not his name. A doctor who’s computer I have repaired asked me about the accident. Hands shaking, barely holding back tears, I explained what happened, emphasizing that he never lost consciousness, and that he never went under the wheels. The man who had driven me to the hospital, tears in his eyes, gave me a hug.
Mommy and Bug took a helicopter ride to Johns Hopkins where I met them three hours later after a solo drive across the bay. (Our daughter stayed with a friend.) The orthopedist told us that his only injury, aside from a barely-there scrape on his chest and some bruising on his right knee, was a broken left femur. Surgery was not required and the cast covered his whole leg from ankle to thigh, and then wrapped around his waist to lock the hip in place. He was immobilized and stuck lying on his back at a bent angle.
Fourteen hours after Bug flew, I carried him into my bedroom and set his sleeping body on a bed on the floor. The next morning, he woke with bright eyes and said, “Mommy! Daddy! I have a cast!”
Over the next few days, as Bug lay in bed soaking up super hero TV shows, my mind silently replayed the same episode of the same show, over and over. It was the one where the van swerved, the bike wobbled, the arms splayed, the body rolled, the boy flew, the leg broke. Sometimes, the video froze while he was suspended in the air, soaring like a bird.
Five days later sound was restored. In a rush I heard the bumper crunch the front fork of the bike, the whomp of his body against the grill, the snap of bone in his leg, his voice crying out, “Daddy! No!” at the moment of impact.
I began to tell myself I could have prevented it. I could have left him at home watching TV or happily helping mommy with breakfast. I could have gone to a different park, or taken a different route. I could have run beside him instead of behind him. I could have caught up with him. I could have pulled him aside. I could have lifted him out of harms way.
Anger came then, and though I had plenty to share (an incoherent rant at the Chief of Police was a particularly dark moment), I knew my anger was ultimately directed at me. This was my fault. I made him get on that bike. I made him go down that road. And I didn’t run fast enough to reach him.
After anger came fear. Fear that he would not heal correctly. Fear that Bug would never want to ride his bike again. Fear that he’d stop playing and running like he used to. Fear that somehow he’d be different, not the same little boy he was before.
I cried. A lot. Suddenly and without warning. I cried at the dinner table with my wife and father. I cried relating the story to someone new and watching their faces twist in shock and sympathy. I cried alone in the closet. I cried in my wife’s arms late at night when I woke from a nightmare.
I don’t know much about the DSM. I know that each of us, at some point in our lives, struggles with some form of mental illness. A quick Google search gives me this startling statistic: approximately 30% of those who witness a traumatic event develop post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. I can imagine that the number who experience PTS symptoms — without a diagnosis — is much higher.
I saw a therapist and I talked with my family and my friends. I gave myself space and time to heal. With every tear I shed and every angry outburst, I was healing. And with every day that passed, Bug was healing too.
My in-laws, and then my father, came to help in the first weeks. Parents from the school organized a meal train for most of the six weeks he’d be laid up. Classmates sent toys and games to occupy Bug during his recuperation. Teachers came to visit and work with him. Friends and neighbors came to sit with him so I could get out of the house for an hour or two every week.
He slept in our bedroom and spent most of his days watching Power Rangers, Transformers, and PJ Masks. We played video games together, and read his favorite Batman stories. His mother put a pillow in a wagon and took him for a walk, and he covered his head when a car came towards him. He told us he never wanted to ride his bike again. Later, he added that he didn’t want the cast to come off because he’d have to go back to school.
Five weeks after the accident we took him back to Johns Hopkins Hospital. With a whirring electric saw a technician cut away the cast. Bug’s leg was shorter, and thinner, but it was in one piece. Soon enough, he would be walking, running, and jumping up and down at the dinner table again, albeit with one leg slightly shorter than the other. The orthopedist told us most kids his age don’t bother even coming back for follow-ups. “He’s perfectly normal,” he said.
But to me, Bug isn’t normal. Bug is a miracle. Bug is the boy who could fly.
