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Outside Magazine February 2002

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End of the Run (Cont.)


	The grimly mundane reality of post-accident life.

It was early October, six months after the crash, and Johnson was sitting at the breakfast table inside his mother's home near Portland, puzzling over a legal form as the soft autumn light washed in through the window. He is five-foot-nine, with reddish blond hair, and he's still handsome in a ruddy, straightforward way. He'd gained 25 pounds and a slight paunch since his accident, though, and his movements were herky-jerky. He smiled, and it was a huge smile, simple and generous. I liked him.

"I have to fill this out," Johnson said, "for the state." I nodded, and then he said it again: "I have to fill this out for the state."

Johnson's fall made his brain swell, putting pressure on his upper brain stem and triggering the coma. By the time medics arrived, his pupils weren't reacting to light. A chunk of his tongue had torn free and blood was filling his lungs. On the Glasgow coma scale, which ranges from three (no brain activity) to 15 (fully cognitive), Johnson was a five.

He was unconscious for more than three weeks, and when he came to it was like his brain, damaged by countless small tissue tears, was a computer whose wiring had frayed. He couldn't remember anything from the previous six years. He had to learn the most basic human activities—walking, speaking, brushing his teeth—all over again. After three months at the Centre for Neuro Skills in Bakersfield, California, Johnson returned to Portland to live with his mother, DB, and her second husband, Jimmy Cooper, a machinist. Johnson continued to visit various therapists four or five times a week, where he spent hours doing balance exercises and memorizing words. He had the emotional outlook of a child, and when he tried to talk, the phrases often floated loose in his mind.

"I forget where I crashed," he said to me. "I think it was 1991, but people tell me I was 40 years old and that's amazing because I didn't want to make a comeback when I was 40 years old. It doesn't make any sense to me. But I want to get prepared for next year's racing. There's no way I can be on the U.S. Ski Team, the way my body is now, but next year..."

Johnson's mother was in the garage, where she runs a small business selling flags and banners for sporting events, but eventually she wandered into the room. DB Johnson is 65, sturdily built, with gray hair. She's brisk and upbeat in the manner of someone used to making the best of tough situations.

"Bill," she said cheerfully, "tell him what you did yesterday."

"Caught a 27-inch steelhead. It was no big deal. Normally I catch all the fish in the river."

"And what else?"

"Went mountain biking. I fell a lot. I fell four or five times and my knees and elbows are scratched, but I made it six miles."

Johnson was also playing golf; recently he'd shot a 38 for nine holes. His body, it seemed, remembered being an athlete. After months of therapy, however, his brain was still faltering. "I'd place his physical recovery in the upper third among brain-injury patients," says his doctor, Molly Hoeflich, a physiatrist at Portland's Providence Medical Center, "but he will be left with permanent cognitive deficits. It's impossible to say how much, but people with brain injuries—they frequently have a hard time returning to work. They need to live in a supervised setting."

Which means that, for the foreseeable future, Johnson will be staying with his mother. His therapy could go on for years, and the cost will be covered only partially by Johnson's insurance, so DB is having him file for bankruptcy to protect himself from mounting medical bills. Meanwhile, she will loyally shuttle him back and forth between therapists.

"We were prepared to walk him to the bathroom when he came home from Bakersfield," DB told me. "This isn't scary. We just hope he comes out of it. It's hard. It's very difficult." From the warmth of her words, it was clear that she loved the youngest of her four children and wanted to shield him from further hurt. If you ask too much, DB's crossed arms and hard glare seemed to tell me, I'll cut you off. She has always protected Bill—from the pain of her 1976 divorce from her first husband, Wally Johnson, and from the trouble that Bill never seemed able to escape both as a child and as a grown man. It was DB who lobbied principals to keep Bill in school despite his playground brawling. Later, in 1985, she quit her job so that she could travel the ski circuit and work as his agent, soliciting endorsements. Their relationship was at times contentious. In fact, they were enmeshed in a dispute over finances before Bill crashed. Even now he can get sour on her.

"I could live in this house forever," he told me as I was leaving one day, "but do I want to? It's not a question." He turned to his mother. "I don't want to live with you right now. It's just not part of my life."

"Well, where do you want to live?" DB said, unfazed.

"Alone," Bill said. He slumped in his chair and glowered.

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