COLUMN: A friend on the road to recovery

From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '00 From Andrew Exum's, "Perilous Orthodoxy," Fall '00One year ago, Robert Drake, an American writer living in Ireland, was ambushed in his apartment by two men and beaten within an inch of his life. Drake is gay, and two thugs took that as license to bludgeon him. Until his departure for Ireland, Drake, an alumnus of Marshall University living and writing in Philadelphia, was serving as the advisor for my fraternity here at Penn. So when word reached us of his assault and subsequent hospitalization last winter, we braved sub-zero temperatures to sell buttons bearing his name on Locust Walk and raised a couple thousand dollars in donations. But as it turns out, freezing on the Walk for a week raising money was the easy part. The hard part came when I met face to face with Robert for the first time since his assault. Last Thursday, I made the trip downtown to see Robert. Keep in mind, Robert has been in and out of hospitals for the past year. It took a small miracle and countless volunteers and donors to get him back from Dublin to HUP. From there, he has continued to go through rehabilitation in hospitals and outpatient centers all over Philadelphia. The last time I saw Robert he was in a pleasant mood -- jovial, energetic and about to depart for Ireland. When I walked into his apartment Thursday afternoon, I was greeted by a shell of the man I knew a year ago. Robert is bound to a wheelchair. He can't walk. He can't move as he pleases. He can't do a lot of the things we take for granted. The attack on Robert has left him with severe brain damage. His motor skills are in disrepair. His memory is irreparably harmed. His muscles are atrophied. Because the part of his brain that was most damaged is the part that controls speech patterns, his verbal skills will be one of the last things he gets back. And that's what pains him the most, because -- despite all that has happened -- Robert's mind is still all there. And so as I sat across from Robert and talked to him on Thursday, I could see the frustration in his eyes. He knew what he wanted to say -- he just couldn't bring himself to say it. And so our 30-minute conversation was a laborious one. Half the time I talked, the other half of the time I tried to understand what Robert was trying to say to me. But through all the bad breaks Robert has been handed over the past year, there's much reason for hope. For one, Robert's therapy now allows him to take steps -- albeit with a walker and support -- during his weekly sessions. Little by little, step by step, Robert is training his body and his muscles to walk again. And things that looked impossible eight months ago -- showering, eating, reading -- are now daily habits. Just a week ago, Robert gained access to e-mail and trained his fingers to type again. So now Robert can once more do what he loves most in life -- writing. Imagine my surprise when I sent an e-mail and then received a response from him saying how much he wanted to see me. And of course, I couldn't refuse -- I hopped in a taxi the moment I read the message. Yesterday, in Germantown, there was a gathering of the many people who have helped Robert over the past year. Nurses, doctors and fellow members of Robert's Quaker meeting house were all there. For 10 minutes, we all went around the room introducing ourselves -- most of the people who have committed themselves to Robert over the past year had no idea there were so many other people doing the same. And then, after we had all said who we were and where we were from, it was Robert's time to speak. With much difficulty, he said, "Thank you very much." And then he began to cry. Robert Drake may be many things to many people, but at that moment yesterday afternoon, he was just a man expressing his gratitude. I wish there were a way for us to do the same for him. Because in everything Robert does -- from just getting up in the morning to struggling to learn to walk again -- he is a shining example to us all. I hope that someday I'm as strong as Robert Drake. I hope that someday I have his courage. And I hope that the next time I visit Robert Drake, he walks to the door to greet me.