A Family’s Love Thwarts Hatred’s Own Outcome

This is a column I can’t write without crying, but that’s OK. The tears now are mostly of happiness--

and relief. Besides, the same eyes that sprang the tears have also seen the most joyous thing they’re ever likely to see.

A week ago Friday, I got the worst phone call of my life. Yes, worse than the one telling me my father had died--he had been ailing for a long time and his death spared him further pain.

The call nine days ago told me that Bridget, the 24-year-old daughter of longtime friends, had been abducted from her apartment in Killeen, Texas, sometime around 2 a.m.

The assailant had literally crashed through her bolted door and, at gunpoint, forced her to drive to a nearby ATM, where he made her withdraw $200. He then drove her a few miles to a dead-end road and walked her down a trail of rocks, gravel and weeds.

After forcing her to strip, he raped her. Bridget remembers him then telling her to walk farther down the path. Then he shot her three times--hitting her twice in the back and once in the right elbow.

Bridget, a month shy of her 25th birthday, was supposed to die on that desolate, hard ground, a thousand miles from family.

But she didn’t.

She lay still, waiting until the assailant drove off in her car. Remembering they had passed a subdivision before pulling off the road, she began to crawl the 200 yards or so to the nearest house. Fearing she’d bleed to death at that pace, she got up and began running.

She would say later that God lifted her to her feet.

At the first house, a single woman with two children was afraid to let her in but called 911. Frantic, Bridget went to the next house, where a 43-year-old retired Army man named Frank James opened the door and probably saved her life.

After six hours of surgery, mostly to repair abdominal damage, Bridget was considered out of mortal danger.

I’ve known her parents, Mike and Barb, since 1970.

Mike and I were cub reporters in Omaha, and he’s been a best friend all those years since. We’ve talked about everything under the sun and quit counting the times we’d laughed together.

He’d been in Orange County just a couple of weekends earlier to see his lifelong favorite team, the Reds, play the Angels in Anaheim.

Until last week, we’d never cried together.

Please, God, not Bridget.

When you don’t have your own children, you take pleasure in those of friends and relatives--

some more than others.

Although I didn’t see her often, Bridget was one of those who occupied a special shelf in the recesses of my brain--Bridget the thinker, the philosopher, the writer, the Beatles lover, the first-grade teacher who volunteered in poor neighborhoods and who loved nothing as much as helping children learn to read. A few years ago, I interviewed her for a column about our both being Beatles fans. In the wake of her father’s recent visit, I had e-mailed her the night she was attacked.

I got to her bedside in the critical-care unit late Saturday afternoon. I’d hoped to be stoic, but the moment she smiled and squeezed my hand, the 30 hours of pent-up relief over her survival spilled out.

I think I said, through tears, “Do you have any idea how joyful we all are that you had the courage not to give up?”

She smiled and tears trickled from the corner of her eyes. It’s a sight I’ll cherish the rest of my life.

Trying to lighten the mood, I said, with wonderment:

“How did you do it?”

“I don’t know how I did it,” she said. “I was so scared.”

Mike and Barb and her two older siblings--Laura, 29, and Kevin, 28--have been magnificently brave and full of grace during the past week. The fourth child, 14-year-old Nick, arrived Saturday from summer camp.

Most of the news from the hospital has been good, but everyone knows there is a long road ahead.

I know I’ve seen something profound the past week, and there’s a burning desire to articulate it.

But it’s tied up in roiling emotions, the product of having seen the extremes of humanity--

the assailant’s utter contempt for life and Bridget’s incredible will to preserve it.

In broad strokes, the story is about good triumphing over evil, of courage over cowardice.

Bridget should have died out there. Instead, we’ve seen her smile at her year-old nephew, David, and 3-month-old niece, Jenna. One night last week, I watched as she laughed, probably till it hurt, with brother Kevin while they played cards.

We’ve also seen her cry and be depressed. That signals what challenges lie ahead for her.

But it has not been a sad week.

We had more cause for joy beyond her survival: The suspected assailant was caught not long after the attack when he returned to the scene to show two friends what he had allegedly done. Police were in the area and made an arrest. The anger at what he has done to Bridget and her family won’t soon go away. It can’t be washed away or wished away.

If we promise to listen to Bridget--to really listen to what she had to say after she survived--we can perhaps make sense of things and remember what can help sustain us in our greatest hour of need.

For me it is the note Bridget scribbled to Mike when they were reunited in the hospital, where at first a respirator prevented her from talking:

“Dad,” she wrote, “I was thinking about you and Mom and my whole family when it was happening. I just wanted to see you again.”

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Dana Parsons is a columnist for the Orange County edition. Readers may reach him by calling (714) 966-7821, writing to him at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana

[email protected].