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A fighting chance

Marine Lance Cpl. Mike Jernigan, 26, was brutally injured while on security patrol in Iraq. But with the support of his family, the St. Petersburg man is recovering, his determination not to be defeated.

Read the eye chart on the wall. That's what they wanted Mike Jernigan to do.

He could've blasted back with some cutting remark. Maybe even complained to a supervisor. But when someone at a hospital is trying to help you, and you're a Marine, you give it your best shot.

So if he was supposed to read the eye chart, as the technician had asked without even looking up, that's what he would do.

After an awkward silence, Mike began:

"I-A-M-B-L-I-N-D."

Lance Cpl. Mike Jernigan found himself in that mistakenly ordered exam at the James A. Haley VA Medical Center in Tampa in early October. It was his fourth hospital in a month and a half.

Six weeks earlier, near a playground south of Baghdad, a homemade bomb had torn through his Humvee. His right hand and left knee had been mangled, a femoral artery had been severed, the lower part of his forehead was a shattered mess, and both of his eyes were destroyed.

During World War II, Korea or Vietnam, a soldier with Mike's catastrophic injuries likely would have died on the battlefield.

But this time, in this war, he had a fighting chance. The ratio of wounded solders to killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom is about 7.5 to 1 - higher than in any other major war and a testament to the advances of battlefield medicine, body armor and evacuation efforts.

But with that high survival rate comes a price. It's paid in the increasing number of soldiers living with amputated limbs, damaged brains and disfigurement they never imagined.

Mike, 26, fiddles with the metal pins that hold his knuckles together. He's sitting in a one-bedroom apartment in central Pinellas County. Following the sound of the voices, knocking pictures off the wall as he tries to feel his way down a hall, depending on Bekah, his wife of less than two years, for everything.

Besides managing an Old Navy store in Sarasota several days a week, Bekah helps Mike get dressed in the morning, warns him when they're coming to a curb, and steers him away from other things that can hurt him: self-pity, frustration and anger.

"We both drive each other crazy sometimes," she says with a smile.

There's so much to do. Find a house and arrange to have it remodeled for Mike. Deal with the social workers, the therapists, the mountains of insurance forms. And get ready for Bethesda.

For now, Mike's eye sockets are filled with fat tissue and his eyelids are sewn shut. But at the end of this month, he and Bekah are going to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda so Mike can get prosthetic eyes. They'll be hazel, just like his own were. Later, using recent photos taken before his injury as a guide, doctors will rebuild his forehead.

At least there won't be any more eye exams.

The news comes on. There's video of a truck sliding into a gas station, setting the pumps on fire. Bekah describes people scrambling out of a burning car.

Mike leans back and sighs.

"Yeah," he says. "Life sucks."

Mike Jernigan was one of those few, good men the Marines are looking for. Tall, lean, eager - and adrift. A recruiter's dream.

He had a decent job as a bartender at the Don CeSar Beach Resort and Spa, dozens of friends at home in St. Petersburg, and his own locker in the back room of one of his favorite hangouts, Central Cigars.

But he also had Rebekah Farmer, a childhood sweetheart he was planning to marry. Mixing margaritas, chatting with tourists and shooting pool in the back room at the cigar store began to look less and less attractive as a career path.

So Mike found his way to the Marines.

To most recruits who pass through the Entrance Processing Station on W Waters Avenue in Tampa, the act of being sworn into the military is a five-minute formality. They show up in shorts, polo shirts and flip-flops, and say their goodbyes in the parking lot.

When Mike Jernigan arrived on Oct. 18, 2002, to be inducted, he wore a blue three-piece suit and a paisley tie. He also had his mother, stepfather, girlfriend, brother and about a half-dozen other family members and friends with him.

Mike was allowed to be sworn in by his father, Michael V. Jernigan, a retired Army major who had flown in from England for the occasion. At one point in the ceremony, Mike's dad stopped and spoke about Mike's late grandfather, Marine Col. Theodore J. Willis. About how Grimps was up in heaven, and would be watching out for Mike.

Even a hardened Marine Corps sergeant assigned to observe the proceedings, a veteran of countless swearing-in ceremonies, found a lump forming in his throat.

It was Mike's 24th birthday.

"Looking back now," said Tracey Willis, Mike's mom, "I'm so glad we did that."

After boot camp, advanced training and stops in Okinawa and Camp Lejeune, Mike arrived in Iraq on March 2 of this year.

The situation was not as bad as the news reports, he said during his frequent calls home.

"I think he didn't want us to worry," said his mother.

But there was no way around that. The enemy in Iraq doesn't wear a uniform. Death is crouching behind a building or buried in the road.

"And the insurgents are scaring the local population into not talking to us - not helping us," Mike would say later. "If they do talk, they (insurgents) come and kill them."

Life in Iraq, Mike said, was 90 percent boredom, 7 percent excitement, and 3 percent "being scared out of your mind."

And then Mike showed up in Time magazine. A May 10 article, "Life on the Front Lines," pictured several Marines responding to an ambush in Fallujah. The faces were difficult to identify, but Tracey Willis knew one of the Marines was her son.

His family bought nearly 20 copies.

"Here's a St. Pete boy doing what he's supposed to be doing over there," Tracey told a St. Petersburg Times reporter a few days later.

About 1:50 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 22, a Humvee carrying five Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment was part of a security patrol on the outskirts of Mahmudiyah, a small town along the central supply route from Baghdad to Kuwait. One of the Marines was an observer in an exposed part of the vehicle. He had been there for several hours.

"Why don't you come down," Mike said, "and I'll take your place."

A short time later, an improvised explosive device, or IED, later determined to be two 155mm artillery shells, was detonated as Mike's Humvee passed by.

Flak vests and Kevlar helmets effectively protect a service member's head, chest and abdomen. But IEDs send shrapnel and dirt upward, and drive pieces of metal past the sides of the helmet. Or through the eyes and into the brain.

Of the five Marines in Mike's Humvee, three were wounded. Mike and Cpl. Christopher Belchik, 30, of Illinois were by far the most seriously hurt.

Mike had an obvious head injury, but of immediate concern was his left leg, where his femoral artery had been severed. He was bleeding to death.

When the patrol reached the shattered Humvee, Mike was thought to be dead. But a Navy medic assigned to the group found a pulse and got him on a helicopter to the 31st Combat Support Hospital about 30 miles away in Baghdad.

On a stretcher nearby, Chris Belchik was also clinging to life. In an e-mail to family members a week before the ambush, he wrote that his main concern was what to get his wife for her birthday. Like Mike, he had been married just over a year.

Chris Belchik died that morning.

Meanwhile, Mike Jernigan remained in a coma, his breathing controlled by a respirator.

Mon 8/23/2004

We have still had no word on Mike's condition. Michael (his Dad) is sitting at Landstuhl waiting for him to be evac'd there. We are still not sure if his eyes were removed or if he has them and there is a possibility of a transplant down the way. . . .

It is now 5:09 a.m. in Florida. The house is quiet and Bekah and I are searching flights to Bethesda, eye info, etc. We had hoped to hear something by now from Mike's godfather, but are assuming the phones are not working out of the 31st CSH (where Mike was operated on in Iraq and was in ICU at last word).

I will keep everyone posted. Keep praying!!

- E-mail from Tracey Willis to Camp Lejeune Moms, a support group of mothers of Marine Corps service members.

Sun 8/29/2004

Mike is awake. The tube is out and he can talk, even though at a whisper. But let me tell you, we have one "p-----' off Marine!! He must have realized that he could not see and thought his eyes were bandaged and kept trying to brush them away and the nurse was very concerned.

She asked Bekah to tell him he couldn't see. So his 26 year old new wife (1 year 6 months) had to do probably the hardest thing she will ever do in her life and tell Mike that he has no eyes. . . .

The charge nurse ... says it will be harder for him because he cannot see our faces to know if what he says hurt our feelings. She says we will have to teach him again by telling him each time. I figure that if I could do that when he was very young, I can do it again. After all, he's still my baby.

- Tracey Willis e-mail

As Mike recovered, officials from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to Rep. C.W. Bill Young to Sen. Ted Kennedy came to shake his hand. But besides his family, the one constant at the hospital was Jonathan.

His full name was Lance Cpl. Jonathan E. Gadsden, and he was from Charleston, S.C. Jonathan was not from the same unit as Mike, and was wounded at a different location, but they would travel the same path. From Germany to Maryland to Tampa, the two Marines found themselves in the same hospitals. At Haley, they were assigned the same room.

Jonathan often became Mike's eyes. He directed him around their room and described what was going on. When Jonathan turned 21 in Bethesda, Mike bought him a bottle of Crown Royal.

Sun 8/29/2004

- Tracey Willis e-mail

They started dating at DeRidder (La.) Junior High, the football player and the cheerleader.

But it seemed as if Mike and Bekah would end almost as soon as they began. That winter, Mike moved to St. Petersburg and Rebekah moved to Houston. But before they parted, at a Sadie Hawkins Day dance at school, they got married. Just a pretend, eighth-grade commitment that everyone thought was cute.

"But I still have the ring he gave me," Bekah says. "And the marriage certificate."

There were a hundred reasons why they shouldn't have remained close. But over the next several years, Bekah came to St. Petersburg to visit several times, and Mike flew to Houston. He took Bekah to her senior prom.

And when it seemed as if they might drift apart, their mothers intervened.

"I knew Bekah was the one for Mike when they were 13 years old," Tracey said. "But you can't push kids because they'll do just the opposite."

After Mike got home from boot camp, he took Bekah to the Renaissance Vinoy Resort and slid a ring on her finger.

The first thing Bekah said: "Well, it's about time."

They were two fiercely independent people.

But now, so many things have changed.

And some things haven't.

"The difficult stuff is trying to do everything," Bekah says. "You catch yourself realizing he can't see.

"It's right here."

"Right where?"

"Oh . . . "

She says it helps that Mike grew up in Pinellas County. He knows hundreds of landmarks, and Bekah can describe such things as which building is being torn down and where one is going up.

"I can see why some women would leave," Bekah says. "We hear all these stories about wives leaving husbands after they've been injured. It's so sad. If you don't love the person, and something like this happens -"

Their life together isn't over, she says, but drastically changed.

"And it's not going away. It's not going to be okay in a year.

"But things are going to get easier. Somebody said the other day, "The person hasn't changed, but the dreams and goals have.' We still have our dreams and goals. They just changed."

On Oct. 21, a week after Mike was discharged from Haley and allowed to go home, his hospital buddy Jonathan Gadsden had lapsed into a coma after a massive infection.

Mike, Bekah and Bob Campbell, Mike's stepdad, drove to the hospital and sat with Jonathan and his family most of the night. The next day, Jonathan died.

"Sometimes," Mike says in a low voice, "it doesn't make any sense."

By Thanksgiving, the number of American military personnel wounded in Iraq had topped 9,000. At least 60 percent of the injuries were blast-related.

"It's a new challenge for us," said Dr. Steven Scott, chief of physical medicine and rehabilitation services at Haley. "We're seeing worse problems than we've ever seen."

Scott said it's rare to find a soldier who has survived a blast so severe it destroyed both his eyes.

"But Mike will be a success," Scott said, "and a lot of that has to do with his attitude, his motivation, and the support of his wife and family."

Tracey Willis says she is "amazed how good he looks considering what happened. And it's so good that he's alive. That's really and truly the biggest thing.

"And that he's still Mike."

Indeed, several times, when friends have asked Mike if his hearing has become more sensitive, he leans forward and asks, "What'd you say?"

Invariably, the person starts to repeat the question.

And a grin sneaks across Mike's face.

The task ahead, Dr. Scott says, is teaching him to be independent again.

Independence.

"When you've always been so independent - " Mike says as his voice trails off. When he senses he's feeling sorry for himself, he changes the subject.

"They say I'll eventually have 90 percent use of my hand," he says. And when he gets better, he wants to return to college and get a degree in international relations. Maybe he'll teach. Be a motivational speaker. Or go into politics.

On Nov. 2, with his mother there to enter his choices, Mike voted in the presidential election.

"Voted for W," he says proudly. "Who else?"

Once everything settles down, Mike and Bekah also want to start a family. The question is, do they have one child? Two? Three?

"I don't like a lot of crying kids," Mike says.

"Oh, you'll get used to it," Bekah counters.

"And kids are expensive," Mike adds.

Bekah smiles. "I got it solved, baby."

In the meantime, there's one other thing Mike wants. And like reading the eye chart, it doesn't seem to make sense.

Or maybe it does.

"A Ferarri," he says.

"I'll sit in it every Saturday, turn it on, and rev the engine."

Aug. 22-26: 31st Combat Support Hospital, Baghdad, Iraq. Femoral artery stabilized. Left knee cap and right hand stabilized. Removed what remained of his eyes. Underwent a craniotomy - the removal of a section of bone from the skull to expose the brain. Bone fragments removed.

Aug. 26-28: Regional Medical Center, Landstuhl, Germany. Head, knee and hand wounds stabilized for return to United States.

Aug. 28-Sept. 30: National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md. Removed remainder of bone fragments. Part of Humvee windshield also removed. Titanium plate inserted in left cheek to permanently hold it in place.

Sept. 30-Oct. 15: James A. Haley VA Medical Center, Tampa. Physical and occupational therapy. Began out-patient treatment Oct. 16.

End of November: Will return to National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for prosthetic eyes.

Early 2005: Will return to Bethesda again for forehead reconstruction.