brand new
Posted on 22. Feb, 2009 by Nick in culture
words > STEPH BARNARD
photos > JOSH DUTCHER
Jared Estes. At first glance you might not notice anything unusual. He’s your average easygoing, muscular 29-year-old with shaggy brown hair tucked under a hat.
You might spot the white sleeve running down one arm and the black glove covering the accompanying hand. (Just don’t call him Michael Jackson. He’s heard it. You’re not so clever.)
You probably wouldn’t give his right ear a second glance. Unless, of course, he detaches it from his head and shows you how it’s made of silicone.
And then the pieces of the story will start to fall into place: Long white patches on his legs from skin grafts. Thin, easily damaged flesh on his right arm and hand. A few bald patches on his head under that hat and that long hair.
Jared is a different man now than he was four years ago.
He and Paige had been married for six months. They met in high school in Bucklin, Kansas; he was on the homecoming court, and she was in charge of announcing the king and queen. He was supposed to win, but she read the wrong name. He asked her to the dance, figuring he had some leverage.
They stayed together through the end of high school, and both attended Wichita State. They got married and bought a house in west Wichita. Jared said his wife was “organized, funny and smart.”
Then, the night of March 6, 2005, they went out to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday. Paige was the designated driver. Merging onto Kellogg with two passengers in the backseat, their car was slammed from behind by a drunken driver going over 100 mph. The impact split the car in two, sent it flying across multiple lanes of traffic, and set it on fire.
After being pulled from the burning vehicle, Jared asked a paramedic if it was bad. “It’s not good,” the paramedic replied: there were burns on about 35 percent of his body. After cutting off Jared’s clothes, he said it was more like 50 percent.
Meanwhile, Jared wouldn’t cooperate with paramedics trying to wheel him away. “Did everyone get out?” he kept asking. Finally, someone told him yes, everyone got out.
They lied.
Jared was in a medically induced coma for a week. He dreamt vividly and in real time. Someone in my family is in trouble, his subconscious told him.
After coming to, he kept asking where Paige was. No one would answer him.
Finally, his dad told him the awful truth: that she was gone, the only one who didn’t make it.
“It felt like a fake nightmare,” he said. “The only voice that will make you feel better is the one you’ll never hear again.”
He missed her funeral because of the coma. Not that he could have gone anyway. He was immobile, lying in a pool of his own blood. With nurses coming in and out of his room constantly, there was no time to grieve.
“I remember praying that God would let me die,” he said. “I wasn’t scared, I was just done.”
But then a new resolve took over: he wanted to see her grave. It would take him a long time to get there.
Getting out of bed and walking was a challenge. When he finally did, his bed “looked like a murder scene.” He would run fevers of 105 or 106 degrees and sweat profusely. Gaining even an additional inch of movent in his right arm took months.
“When they asked me to do something, I did twice as much of it,” he said. Meanwhile, supportive friends and family spent shifts in the hospital with him. “It’s the only way you make it through something like this.”
Altogether, he was at St. Francis for two and a half months, followed by several weeks at the Our Lady of Lourdes burn center. Finally, after months of physical therapy, he was able to travel to Bucklin to see Paige’s grave.
Day after day he had rehearsed the scene in his mind. He had planned to grab at the dirt and pound the ground. He wanted to sob, yell at God and “have a fit worthy of Paige.”
But his right eye was sewn shut. He couldn’t cry. With his hands so damaged, he couldn’t grab much of anything. So he sat in a lawn chair and quietly wallowed in his situation.
“I was just thinking about myself and how awful I had it,” he said. Again, he felt like he was “done.” Done with surgeries. Done with working so hard to accomplish the smallest tasks. Done with feeling like a burden on his family.
Then a pickup rolled quietly into the cemetery. Jared had told no one in his home town that he would be returning to visit Paige’s grave, so he was surprised to see Paige’s mother get out of the truck. She embraced Jared, and then shared with him that Paige’s two elementary school aged siblings were in the truck, and that they wanted to come say hello.
He swallowed hard and denied her request. Then as he sat there, he realized this was a defining moment in his life. He could continue living life as he had or he could make a decision to turn a corner and move forward.
“I started to realize how selfish I was thinking earlier,” he said. “The one thing I would want – not just for myself, but for them and for the whole world – was to get better.”
He knew inside what Paige would want. And he knew what Paige would do. And he listened. “I had to let the person I was before the accident die and become someone else,” he said. He had to allow a new Jared to emerge from this nightmare that had taken over his life. He allowed her two little brothers to come over and say hello, and he did not regret it. Their love and encouragement helped bring the new Jared to life.
Jared put the same dedication, effort and resolve into his self transformation as he put into his physical rehabilitation. At the trial of the drunk driver who hit them, he said he didn’t want to be seen as a victim. He refused to take “no” for an answer from doctors who said they couldn’t help him. He put up with people looking at him strangely. He endured dozens of surgeries, an extra bone growing from calcifications in his elbow, and scalp infections that left him soaking in blood.
But through it all he persevered. He’s got a few names for the new Jared. Rehab Jared, whose best friends are his nurses and physical therapists. Weird Uncle Jared, for when he takes off his silicone ear and sneaks it into his niece’s juice. Booby-Head Man, because the scalp extenders under his hair are made of the same material as breast implants.
Jared welcomes the silly names, and that’s indicative of the person he is today. Jared is the most upbeat, happy, silly, sincere, genuine, helpful, lovable guy you will ever meet.
He still goes back to visit the people who helped him rebuild his body in the St. Francis burn center. The people he met in rehab helped him move forward. “I can’t imagine having never known them,” he said.
In his living room now, there are no wedding pictures. But above the mantle this holiday season hung a giant Christmas stocking belonging to his girlfriend, Ashley, and filled to the brim with gifts. His own stocking was
even bigger.
“I take no credit for anything I am or anything I’ve done,” he said. “Without the people I have, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be anything.”
Paige lives on through the Paige Estes Memorial Foundation, which raises money for DUI and burn victims. Jared speaks to high schoolers about the consequences of driving drunk and volunteers at the burn center.
