Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve (18 page)

was “surprised by how happy the house was” even in the weeks immediately following his return from Kessler. “It still had that same busyness and a lot of laughter.”

Still, being home only reminded Chris that, at least as far as frol- icking outside with the rest of the family was concerned, his role was now strictly that of spectator. While Dana, Will, Matthew, and Alex tossed snowballs at one another, Dad watched from one of the house’s expansive windows.

There were practical reasons for Chris not to venture outdoors; no fewer than nineteen snowstorms slammed into the Northeast that winter, making it treacherous for even able-bodied people to get around. Then there was the sheer magnitude of the under- taking. Every time Chris wanted to leave the house, it required hours of preparation and the efforts of up to a half dozen people. Once he arrived at his destination—a restaurant or a theater, for example—there were usually additional obstacles.

“There is nothing that is easy,” Dana said. “Everything is a strug- gle. And of course we are mourning the loss of Chris’s mobility and moving on from that . . .” To safeguard her husband from po- tential embarrassment, Dana now called ahead before every fam- ily outing to make sure there was wheelchair access. On many occasions, she also carried a small portable ramp with her—just in case someone forgot to mention a step or a curb.

“Every time Chris is reminded of his disability, it’s depressing for him,” Dana said. “I don’t want him to have to say, ‘It’s too much trouble, let’s go home. I hate this.’ ” Regardless of Dana’s efforts, there were such times when Chris felt the pitying eyes of others, and he grew increasingly reluctant to leave the com- fort and security of home.

As wary as he was of being seen in public, Chris was determined to resume his role in Will’s life. Just three weeks after Chris left Kessler, Will was sitting on Dad’s lap at New York’s Big Apple Circus, wearing a red clown nose and watching the animals and acrobats. Dana, said another spectator, “could not take her eyes off Will or her hands off her husband. She was obviously just so de- lighted to be there as a family.”

As it happened, that visit underscored just how fragile Chris still was. A few days after the trip to the circus, Chris woke up with a crippling headache. He knew this feeling all too well; it was a sign of life-threatening dysreflexia caused by a urinary tract or bowel obstruction. When the nurse confirmed that his blood pressure had skyrocketed, Chris turned to Dana. “Get me to the hospital,” he told her, “
now
.”

Dana dialed 911, and within minutes an ambulance was speeding Chris to Northern Westchester Hospital. After he was treated for dysreflexia—this time the blockage was the result of an impacted colon—Chris was released, only to discover that he had now contracted a blood infection.

As far as Chris was concerned, these setbacks validated his fear of the outside world. He had not given up on rejoining society, but, for the time being, he would focus on his own health. Morn- ings were set aside for exercise, physical therapy, and breathing les- sons (he would soon be able to spend up to ninety minutes at a time off the ventilator)—and doing whatever he could to raise awareness and money for spinal cord research. That, and contin- uing to lobby lawmakers on behalf of insurance reform.

The software engineers at AM Technologies in Newtown, Massachusetts, made things a lot easier for Chris when they pre-

sented him with a customized version of the voice-activated computer program Dragon Dictate. With it, Chris could oper- ate the computer, fax, and phone. In addition to sending e-mail, he could talk with Matthew and Alexandra in England and could even play long-distance chess with Matthew.

Chris could also communicate with his accountants and lawyers as he and Dana made tough decisions about their personal finances. One such decision was to sell off a number of assets, including Eastern Express—the horse Chris still affectionately called “Buck.” The asking price for Buck: $25,000.

The decision to sell Eastern Express was strictly a financial one; Chris made it abundantly clear in all his interviews and public statements that he held no animosity whatsoever toward Buck. In fact, both he and Dana felt sorry for the animal that would for- ever be known as the horse that maimed Superman. “He’s a beau- tiful, sweet-natured animal,” Chris said. “None of what happened was his fault. Something spooked him, that’s all. It happens. I’m hoping he’ll have a long and happy life with his new owners. He’s a wonderful horse.”

For nearly ten months following the accident in Culpeper, Chris had Buck boarded at Gathering Farm in Hamilton, Mass- achusetts. He not only phoned the stables regularly to check on Buck’s welfare, but he had videos of the horse’s workout sessions sent to him so he could review Buck’s progress.

Dana understood Chris’s need to keep Buck for a time—the horse was an important link to Chris’s past as an accomplished horseman—and not to succumb to feelings of resentment toward the animal that paralyzed him. “Everyone acts surprised that I don’t hate Buck for doing this to my husband,” Dana confided to a

friend. “Someone told me, ‘I would have just gotten a gun and shot him.’ But if Chris doesn’t feel anger toward Buck, how can I?”

That sentiment so moved influential Orange County horse- woman and philanthropist Joan Irvine Smith that she donated $1 million for the establishment of the Reeve-Irvine Center for spinal cord research at the University of California at Irvine. Then she prodded the State of California to match her dollar for dollar. The East Coast–oriented Chris, who had been unfamil- iar with Smith and had to be persuaded that UC-Irvine was a prestigious university campus, marveled at Smith’s ability to get things done. “Joan is the kind of woman,” he conceded, “you want on your side.”

For all his successes on the home front, Chris was now suf- fering from a kind of agoraphobia—with each passing day, he grew more and more dependent on the safe, insular worlds he had created for himself at Bedford and Williamstown. Dana made repeated overtures to get him out and about—to dinner or to see a movie—but to no avail. “I know the kind of man he is,” Dana told one of Chris’s aides. “He’s a very social, outgoing guy. He hates being cooped up, and I hate to see him giving in to this fear. I wish there was a way to break him of this . . .”

Dana’s prayers were answered when producer Quincy Jones called Chris up in early February and invited him to appear at the sixty-eighth annual Academy Awards ceremonies to be held on March 25. Listening to Jones over the speakerphone, Chris could scarcely believe what he was hearing. The same Holly- wood movers and shakers who he thought had all but written him off now embraced him as one of their own.

Chris suggested that he might use the opportunity to talk about

the power of films not just to entertain, but to have real social im- pact. Yet, when they were finished hashing over ideas, Jones real- ized that he still did not have a definite answer from Chris. “So you want to think about it?” he asked tentatively.

“I’m very honored by the invitation, Quincy,” Chris answered. “So let me think about it . . .” Then, before ending the call, Chris blurted out his answer. “You know what, I’ll do it.”

Sitting in the kitchen, Dana could hear every word of the con- versation. She was thrilled at the idea, but knew it was a deci- sion Chris had to make for himself. When Jones hung up, she could hear Chris say to himself, “What have I done?”

Chris then wheeled himself into the kitchen to tell Dana about the conversation. Before he could finish, she interrupted him. “Do it,” Dana said, looking straight into his eyes. “Do it.”

Over the next few weeks, Jones learned just how focused Chris could be. He wanted to illustrate his “Hollywood Tackles the Issues” speech with clips from such groundbreaking films as
Platoon, Philadelphia,
and
Norma Rae.
“People think of people in wheelchairs as helpless geeks,” Chris told Jones. “I want them to see someone who is still strong in spite of being paralyzed.”

Toward that end, he insisted that the montage of clips shown during his appearance include Jon Voight in his Oscar-winning performance as the wheelchair-bound Vietnam vet who falls in love with Jane Fonda in
Coming Home.
Among other things, the film gave moviegoers an eye-opening lesson in wheelchair sex.

Chris’s Oscar surprise was carried out with all the precision of a secret military campaign. “I’ve worked on a lot of projects, in- cluding a presidential inauguration,” Oscar coproducer David

Saltzman recalled, “but nothing compares with getting Christo- pher to the Oscars.”

Planning began in February, when Neil Stutzer, whose firm co- ordinated travel for people with disabilities, began assembling a team that would make Chris’s three-day visit to Hollywood pos- sible. Stutzer pored over floor plans at the Dorothy Chandler Pavil- ion and discussed everything from the deployment of security guards to on-site emergency medical facilities with top Academy officials. The result: a seventy-five-page manual that even included how to go about repairing Chris’s wheelchair if it broke down.

In the meantime, Chris had other duties to attend to. He went on
Larry King Live
to make a direct appeal for donations to the American Paralysis Association. Then, on March 18, he flew to Green Springs, Ohio, to christen an $18 million wing of the St. Francis Health Care Center. “I’m glad to be here,” he told pa- tients at the center. “Actually, I’m glad to be anywhere!” The ice broken, Chris then went on to credit Dana with saving his life. “She was there, standing off to the side, smiling shyly,” said one patient. “You can see the support that he gets from her. She is his backbone.”

On March 23, the Reeves began their Oscar odyssey. By this time, Chris had come close to backing out three times—only to have Dana talk him back into going through with it. Quincy Jones, meanwhile, had asked Warner Bros. to fly Chris, Dana, and their entourage of doctors, nurses, and aides to Los Angeles aboard a corporate jet. Chris was loaded onto the plane on a stretcher—being prone would limit any physical damage if the plane hit unexpected turbulence—and the assembled medical

team constantly monitored his vital signs as they jetted across the continent.

Once on the ground in L.A., the Reeve party departed the jet in a specially outfitted van with blacked-out windows and were driven directly to the Beverly Hilton, where Chris and Dana were registered under an assumed name. They entered the ho- tel through the garage, boarded an express elevator to their floor, and, with hotel personnel making sure the coast was clear, made their way to their suite undetected.

That Oscar night eve, the Reeves dined with their pals Robin and Marsha Williams in their room, and then hosted friends like Chris’s
Remains of the Day
costar Emma Thompson and Alec Baldwin in the hotel’s presidential suite. The next day,

L.A. radio stations began to leak the news that Chris would make a surprise appearance at the Oscars. Nevertheless, the se- crecy continued. Chris attended closed-set rehearsals, then was spirited back to the hotel for an hour-long nap. He then got dressed in formal wear for the evening—a two-and-a-half- hour-long process.

With Dana at his side, Chris returned to the Dorothy Chan- dler Pavilion around 6
P
.
M
., and watched the show from his dress- ing room. As it unfolded before a global audience of more than two billion, the show would turn out to be even more fraught with emotion than usual. Early on, actor Paul Sorvino openly wept as his daughter Mira accepted her Best Supporting Actress award for
Mighty Aphrodite.
The tears continued to flow as Kirk Douglas, still severely speech-impaired after a devastating stroke, accepted a life achievement award while his four wet-eyed sons looked on. Later the camera focused on the anguished faces of

audience members as Gerda Weissmann Klein, who was profiled in the best documentary short subject, told movingly of her ex- periences during the Holocaust.

As the evening built to the inevitable crescendo he would sup- ply, Chris was all business. He insisted that he be wheeled into po- sition center stage
before
his introduction (“I don’t want people to see me being pushed onstage”) and, with only twenty minutes to spare, told Quincy Jones that he did not want to be introduced to the theme music from
Superman
. Jones and the orchestra, which had already rehearsed the piece, searched frantically for new music.

Still having problems with his voice, Chris called Dr. Steven Kirshblum back at Kessler. “I spoke to him right before he was to go on. We talked about how we could use some techniques to get his voice a little stronger. He was
so
excited.”

Keenly aware that there was no time delay—that whatever happened would be seen live—Chris still worried that his wheel- chair might hit a bump and cause him to spasm uncontrollably. “If you spasm,” his doctor had told him, “it’s only human—it’ll make people aware of what can happen to spinal cord victims.” But Chris did not want to become the object of pity.

As he was wheeled out of his dressing room, Chris did hit a threshold. The bump caused him to flop over at the waist and his arms and legs were left hanging. Dana and the aides scrambled to reposition him.

Unaware of what was going on backstage, the unseen an- nouncer intoned, “Ladies and Gentleman, Christopher Reeve”— and the curtain rose to reveal Chris alone center stage in his wheelchair.

Dana stood in the wings with Chris’s doctor and nurses, anx- ious about the possibility that something might go wrong but, more than anything, thrilled about the reception that awaited her husband. “I am just so proud of him,” she whispered to one of Chris’s aides as the curtain went up. “So proud.”

Instantly, the entire star-packed audience of three thousand rose to its feet. Dana and the rest of Chris’s team, watching from the sidelines, were all crying with joy. “Everybody was bawling,” said one of Chris’s nurses. “Big stars, stagehands, musicians— everybody.”

Chris gazed out at some of the most famous people in the world. “I saw so many warm and accepting faces,” he later said. “It felt like a homecoming.”