The Million Dollar Question

Feb. 16, 2005

John was a handsome, confident young man with eyes of blue steel who seemed older than his 21 years. On the surface at least, he was ready to tear his mark through the world, deep and wide.
But his voice dropped to a low murmer toward the end of our interview when asked if there was anything missing from his new life that he was going to regret.
“Yes,” he said with a twisted smile and a wet flicker of pain in his eyes. “I’ve never made love to a woman, and now I never will.”
A long silence crept over us like a fog and I didn’t know what to say, because as a 28-year-old reporter I had a pretty good understanding of what sex means to a young man. It means everything. No young man wants to be a virgin with no hope of ever making the leap into what we consider manhood. For a young man, it’s the ultimate wound -- the kind of thing Hemingway wrote about as the worst thing that could happen.
But John was paralyzed from the chest down. He had fallen more than 20 feet during a rock climbing trip to Colorado at the age of 19, breaking his back high up the spinal column. He had a little movement in his arms, but not much; no legs, no bowel control, no sex. Our story was about the then-new “puff-and-sip” system that allowed him to get around in an electric wheelchair by blowing or sucking on a plastic tube.
I didn’t put the bit about John’s virginity and his lost dream of a woman in his arms in my story. It wasn’t something he wanted to share with the world because his life was embarassing enough already. People had to dress him, bathe him, take care of his bathroom needs -- that was the hell he lived in, coming down off his youthful dreams of a wildly independent and adventurous lifestyle ripped from the pages of “Outside” magazine.
I thought of John at the end of “Million Dollar Baby,” which ends with the same disturbing shock and fog as our interview many years ago. (And if you haven’t seen the film, feel free to read no further.)
I have no idea if John is still alive, but he’s one of those half-dozen interviews through the years that come back to haunt me occasionally. You always wonder what became of certain people who left a mark. Perhaps, like Christopher Reeve, he succumbed to pneumonia or some other illness that preys on those who are weakened by paralysis. Or perhaps he’s a successful attorney now, or a college professor or an artist. Perhaps he channeled his youthful rage and energy into a powerful expression of a career, despite a life spent in a wheelchair. Perhaps he has a love in his life and a family.
But I suspect that John would have understood the storytelling in “Million Dollar Baby” despite the uproar that’s been made over it by talk show hosts and groups representing disabled persons. And perhaps in some strange way this film about a quadriplegic’s decision to end her life will do the disabled some good -- maybe by spurring stem cell research or new spinal repair studies. After all, as Oscar Wilde said, the only thing worse than people talking about you is no one talking about you -- and that probably goes double for folks with spinal injuries.
We all live within an inch of John’s life and that of Christopher Reeve’s. A specialist in rehab medicine at Munson once noted in another interview that it takes very little trauma to the spinal cord to cause damage that can never be repaired. “If we were to lay the spinal cord out unprotected and dropped a three-or-four-ounce fishing sinker from the height of just a foot, that would probably be enough to cause permanent damage,” he said. “God protects the spine with the vertebral bones, but if you have a fracture or disruption of those bones, you’re at risk.”
Controversy is just a road sign directing us to something we should think about. From there, we make our own judgments about films such as “Million Dollar Baby” and the dilemmas they pose. They’re great films because they make us think, even if the message isn‘t all nice and tied up with a bow. My wife and I are still talking about this one, weeks after seeing it.
We ask ourselves, would I have the will to live if I were in the same shoes? Could I create a life of happiness that depends entirely on the richness of my mind, my friends and family?
Who knows the answers to such things? Certainly not TV pundits or talk show hosts. Only those who’ve been there.