A solider's new life

[RedEarth]

A solider's new life
By Stacy St. Clair Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted 8/1/2004
First of two parts


Sgt. Joel Gomez awakes.

He is lying on his back in an unfamiliar bed. Through a haze, he sees his parents standing to his left. His girlfriend stands on the right. Why would they be there?

He remembers kissing them goodbye weeks ago when his unit, the 1-18th Infantry, was deployed to northern Iraq.

He wracks his brain for an explanation, but a clouded memory fails him. The last thing he can recall is watching an Adam Sandler movie with some Army buddies. When was that?

He slips back into a drug-induced sleep and doesn't regain consciousness until days later, after he leaves a German hospital and arrives at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

His parents are still with him. He wants to ask where he is, but a breathing tube in his throat makes it impossible to talk. He tries to reach for his parents, but he can't move his arms and legs.

Cruel reality creeps over him.

"I kept trying, but I couldn't move them," he later would say. "After about 10 minutes, I figured out I was paralyzed."

He lies there frozen on his bed as his parents and doctors explain why he has been in the hospital for the past three weeks. The information comes quickly, and parts of it confuse him after a long coma.


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