Authors: Scott Bolzan
She said I was also a jokester, even at age three or four. We were on a family outing one afternoon, waiting at the river for the bridge to come down so we could drive across. Candi and I were sitting in the backseat when she asked my dad why the foghorn was blasting. I replied matter-of-factly, “Candi, are you dumb? They do that to tell the frogs to get out of the way!”
My mom said I used to hide my sisters' books in the morning because I didn't want them to go to school without me, and I'd hide their cookies in my toy box, forcing my sisters to search for them.
“What did I want to be when I grew up?”
“You wanted to be an astronaut,” my father said.
“No,” my mother argued. “He always wanted to play football.”
After five or six hours playing Happy Birthday games with the boys and talking with my parents, it was time to say good-bye. My parents were flying out the next morning, and I could tell they didn't want to leave with me still feeling so bad, but they were coming back in a few months.
“I'm so happy that I came because now I can go home and know what I saw, that this is Scott,” my mother said. “You're everything that you were before.”
I wasn't ready for them to leave either. I still didn't have all the answers I'd been seeking for how to be a good parent, but I realized there were no shortcuts for that. Nor did I feel I had enough information to know who I was as a son, and I'd only gotten a glimpse of what I was like as a child, an adolescent, and a teenager. I'd been hoping that they could tell me who I was as a man too, but sadly, I was slowly realizing that no one was going to be able to define that for me. No one but me.
T
OWARD THE END OF JANUARY
I was growing frustrated. The doctors had said my memory should return in days, weeks, or even a month, and yet not a single glimpse of the past had come back to me. I feared that I would feel like this for the rest of my lifeâalone and trapped in a mind empty of memories. Were they buried somewhere I couldn't retrieve them, or had they simply evaporated?
Every day I'd wake up and hope that they had returned, only to be met with mounting anxiety and nagging reminders that I still didn't know anything I used to know. The sleepless nights were starting to take an emotional toll as well. The time I'd been watching TV, trying to learn while everyone else slept, was now spent crying. I could feel the depression creeping into the Swiss cheese of my brain and the rest of my body. And with the helplessness came hopelessness.
Joan said after all my surgeries I'd prided myself on being ahead of schedule for recovery, taking half the typical amount of time to heal and walk comfortably. That was not the case now. But what didn't compute was that my injury seemed relatively minor. I hadn't had brain surgery or just come out of a coma after fighting for my life; I'd simply fallen, hit my head, and lost consciousness. So what was taking me so long to rebound? I asked myself this question almost every waking hour, and I had quite a few of them these days.
Trying to battle the depression, I went into solutions mode and decided I was ready to visit my office in Tempe. Still, the thought of going to the place where I had built a company, the place that became the site of my downfall, was more than a little stressful. I was edgy, sweating, and my heart was pounding before Joan and IÂ even left the house. On the twenty-minute drive over I had to fight to remain calm.
It's no big deal. I'll get through this.
Joan must have noticed my nervous fidgeting as I jiggled my heel up and down because she grabbed my hand. “It's going to be okay,” she said calmly, looking me in the eye when we came to a stoplight. “I promise.”
“Okay,” I said, agreeable as always, trying not to alarm her. But inside I was still a jumble of nerves, happy to have her at my side.
We drove past Arizona State University and pulled up to my office complex, which was, as Joan described, a beautiful building that overlooked a lake, the ASU campus, and its football stadium.
We got into the elevator, and Joan hit the button for the ninth floor, explaining that we rented two adjacent offices there from Regus, an executive office company that catered to small business owners like us. Each company could rent its own fully furnished office and share several conference rooms, a kitchen, and office equipment.
Joan filled me in on who we would probably see at the reception desk. As she had predicted, the two office managers, Steve and Hollie, were at the front desk when we arrived. Both were aware of my condition, and Hollie had helped Joan get the accident report from the building management company.
After introducing themselves to me, they asked how I was feeling. “If there's anything we can do, all you need to do is ask,” Hollie said.
Joan led me around the corner and unlocked my personal office, the larger of the two.
As I looked around, Joan pointed out what she thought I'd want to know. The first thing I noticed was the amazing view of the Tempe Town Lake and the magnificent rolling mountains in the distance, which I later learned were called the Four Peaks, McDowell, Camelback, and Superstition ranges.
I took my time, memorizing where everything was, and examined each picture and piece of artwork on and around the U-shaped reddish wood desk, which took up most of the room. The wall was hung with a document titled “Vision and Mission Statement,” from my most recent company, Legendary Jets. Joan said she and the kids had gotten it framed for my birthday along with two pictures of me on my boat,
No Plane, No Gain,
which hung alongside it. Next to the giant wall clock and the flattened globe map were several photos: an autographed picture of news anchor Sam Donaldson, with the inscription “Scott, Smooth Flying, Thanks, Sam Donaldson”; a signed photo of astronaut Neil Armstrong standing in front of a World War II aircraft; and a shot of a medical team posing next to our Learjet 25, which had flown a heart in for the Mayo Clinic in Arizona's first transplant surgery on October 19, 2005. They gave our pilot a red heart-shaped pillow to commemorate the occasion.
My desk was stacked with papers and files, a fourteen-inch red and white wooden model of a Learjet 60, two of which I'd managed before the accident, a recent photo of Joan and me sitting on the boat, and a glass frame displaying back-to-back shots of Taylor and Grant. The room looked as though I'd left it moments ago because no one had touched anything in the month since I'd gone down to get my briefcase and muffin.
Looking out the window, I was awestruck by the magnificent view of the mountains. I was surprised at how high above the ground we were; our house was only a single story, and I'd never really stood at the hospital window and looked out.
At that point Anita came in, teary eyed, from the office next door and gave me a hug. Anita, who in her late fifties had short dark hair and a Boston accent, was very feisty and reminded me of Judge Judy. Grateful that she'd been helping Joan with our finances lately, I was happy to see her. I had spoken to her only once or twice, but Joan talked to her on a regular basis.
“It is good to finally meet you again, Anita,” I said, repeating the standard line I had come up with for people I used to know.
With that, Anita left the two of us alone and Joan shut the door. I sat in my gray tweed swivel chair, and Joan took a seat across the desk from me. After I'd captured a mental picture of the office, vowing never to forget it again, I asked Joan a very important question: “Okay, now what do I do here?”
I was expecting an easy answer, even though I really had no idea what was involved in the day-to-day operations of running a business. Judging by the stacks of papers and all the file cabinets here, it looked as if I'd been busy doing a lot of important work, but I still didn't understand what I actually
did
at this desk every day. Tony Soprano didn't do anything but eat or talk on the phone at his desk, and neither did other TV characters. I also didn't notice any customers coming in to any of the other offices on my floor.
Did I sit and wait for the phone to ring? Did I initiate business contacts? Did I use the computer all day? Or was it more complicated than that?
My question must have surprised Joan because her jaw dropped and she looked as if she was about to cry. I could tell she was trying to keep her composure, but I thought she was going to lose it. She managed to answer my questions, though, her voice cracking with emotion as she tried to explain for the first time exactly what our company did.
We still managed corporate jets for clients, she said, after selling our jet charter business company about a year ago. We'd been developing Legendary Jets for the past eight months, designing all new marketing materials, a website, and new contracts. We'd also launched a new product called a Go Jet card, which offered blocks of time in charter aircraft in twenty-five-, fifty- or one-hundred-hour increments. Joan was usually good at simplifying concepts for me, but this was all over my head. I think I heard every fifth word. She seemed to know everything about my business, and I didn't even know where I was without her help.
At that point I needed a bathroom break, so Joan walked me back to the reception area, toward the elevator, and turned left at the corner. I had my hands on the lever to the men's room door when it struck me.
This is where I got hurt. This is where my life changed.
Even though I was on the ninth floor, and I knew I'd actually fallen in the first-floor restroom, it didn't make any difference because the layout was the same. As I walked inside, I examined the tile floor and tried to imagine how many steps I must have taken and where I had hit my head. I'd never really thought much about the incident until that moment, but to be honest, it wasn't anywhere near as stressful as I'd thought. In fact, it felt good to have conquered another fearâthat I would reinjure myself or die if I went into a men's room in that building again.
After I had done my business, Joan was waiting for me in the hallway. I'm not sure if she'd anticipated I would have such an epiphany, but she must have guessed what I'd been thinking in there. “Are you okay?” she asked, assessing my face and body language and realizing, perhaps, that I'd done better than she'd expected.
I told her I was fine, and we returned to the office to order lunch from the café downstairs. Joan, who said I always used to buy lunch for Anita and Robyn, got the usual turkey sandwich for herself and Anita and a crab salad and cup of tomato basil soup for me.
While Joan was picking up the food, a man popped in, sat down in the seat across from me, and started talking. He was a big guy, about my height and age, wore glasses, and was dressed in a shirt and tie. He seemed comfortable in that chair, as if he'd sat there many times.
“Where you been?” he asked. “I haven't seen you in a while.”
“I've been sick,” I said.
“Well, have you been following this market?” he said, immediately delving into the bank bailouts and tanking stock market.
It felt like the temperature had risen to one hundred fifty degrees as the sweat beaded on my forehead. This was another one of my fears, and it was facing me head-on. Even though I'd been watching the news, I didn't get two-thirds of what this guy was saying about his 401(k), which I thought was a room number, and the effect of the economy on his profit sharing. On top of that, I didn't even know this man's name.
I know I must have appeared stupid, but I didn't know enough to respond, so I just listened, feeling immensely unprepared for this situation. Thankfully, Joan appeared in the doorway with our lunch to rescue me.
She must have sensed what was going on because she deftly distracted the man and got him to leave. “Scott hasn't been feeling that well,” she said. “It's probably best if he just rests. We're going to eat our lunch and then head home.”
As soon as Joan shut the door, I broke into tears. I told her that he'd just started talking to me and I didn't know what to do.
“I'm sure you did great,” Joan said, hugging me. “I bet you he didn't even know.”
But I knew better. I had failed miserably, or at least I felt like I had. Joan had left me alone in my office for only ten minutes, and I'd already had to deal with the embarrassment of not knowing someone.
During lunch I realized that I should expect to run into this dilemma countless times, and I needed to find a better way to deal with it because I had no desire for a repeat performance. I couldn't hide my memory loss, but I could avoid getting into a similar position by choosing who to talk to. Next time, I decided, maybe I could say I had to make a phone call or something and head off a disastrous one-way conversation like this one.
After we finished our meal Joan and I headed home. My headache had become unbearable, and I just wanted to hide, never to be seen in public again.
As time went on, I watched Joan get increasingly upset that my accident had robbed us of a lifetime of shared memories. I could hear the anger in her voice and hated to see my strong wife crying more and more.
“What if they don't come back?” she asked. “Someone's got to pay for this. You can't just slip and fall in an office building because of someone's negligence and have nobody do anything about it. We've incurred a lot of medical bills, and no one seems to care.”
In turn, her anger started eating at me and made me feel tremendous guilt, which pulled me even deeper into depression.
How could I have let this happen to my family? I not only can't take care of them, I don't even know how, and the longer this goes on, the further into the red we'll go.
How long can this continue?
Caught in a vicious cycle of self-recrimination, I felt sure that the old Scott would have been able to figure a way out of this; the new Scott didn't have a clue. The only thing I could do was ask how much money we had in the bank and how long it would last.
“Well, if the boat would sell, everything would be fine,” Joan said. But she had another plan in mind as well. Looking for someone to take responsibility for my condition and pay our mounting medical costs, Joan called John Lohr, an attorney who had represented us and our companies for several years. After hearing that I was no longer able to run Legendary Jets as a result of my fall, John suggested that we contact the building owners to see if they carried liability insurance that would at least cover the medical costs. Suing for emotional and other damages could come later.
“If there's anything I can do to help, we do have an attorney here who specializes in personal injury,” he said.
Joan and I discussed whether we should hire John's firm to explore suing the owners for negligence, but, as she tried to explain some of the legal terms involvedâliability, Med-Pay, and litigationâshe totally lost me, so I told her I'd leave it up to her on how to proceed. “I'll support you every step of the way,” I said.
She hired John's firm, which contacted the owners, and after we got no relief there, we filed a lawsuit, which was settled in 2010. In the meantime, the doctors' bills continued to mountâalong with Joan's anger, my depression, and our mutual frustration.