LOMA LINDA, Calif. — “This is your life,” the doctor said. “You’re a quadriplegic.”
When she heard the news, Kim Gervais broke down. The tears rolled out, and her daughter clasped her mother’s head, overcome by her own inability to help.
Then came Ms. Gervais’s trip home to Southern California. And here she was, three weeks after the shooting, strapped into a wheelchair at a rehabilitation clinic, toughing it out with a physical therapist and straining to drink from a sippy cup as her toddler grandchildren looked on.
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So much of the attention in the aftermath of mass shootings has been focused on the gunman and the number left dead in his wake. But the injured who survive carry a special burden. “We all kind of forget that these people have to live with it for the rest of their lives,” said Dr. Bryan Tsao, chair of the neurology department at Loma Linda University Health.
Dr. Tsao is still treating three patients from the 2015 San Bernardino attack. Battered physically and emotionally, none have been able to return to work, he said.
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On Day 19 of her recovery, she [Ms. Gervais] was in her hospital room, in the wheelchair, wearing a neck brace and thick compression socks. A humidifier puffed mist above her head. Her daughter Amber Manka, 30, stood by with her own two children.
Ms. Gervais, 56, runs a business servicing trash compactors. She spends — or spent — her weekends riding ATVs in the desert, wearing leather gloves and a full-face helmet. When her husband, a sprint car racer, died after a crash, she raised her two girls on her own.
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At the hospital, a man entered with a clipboard and said he was there to discuss the equipment Ms. Gervais will need when she goes home, which could be weeks or months from now. Among her needs are an expensive wheelchair, a remodeled bathroom, a new car, a nurse, and a way to run her business and pay her mortgage.
“You know,” he said, looking at the women, “your insurance will probably not cover any of this.”
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