Cash Landing

Phil had suffered severe head and internal injuries: a spinal fracture; collapsed lungs; damage to his intestines, spleen, and kidneys; broken clavicles; a cracked hip socket. He almost bled to death, but he underwent surgery and was listed in critical condition for several weeks. He spent two months in intensive care at Liberty.

"There were a lot of people who cared about Phil," Gaela says, "but I was in shock. I remember one lady said Phil was going to be brain-dead and a vegetable."

News of the accident was widespread, conveying the horror of the wreckage. At a press conference, members of the Life Flight medical staff answered questions about possible causes of the accident. They were certain it wasn't pilot error; Barnett had an impeccable record. The ambulance service had a good reputation, and the 11-year-old, French-made helicopter, registered to Rocky Mountain Helicopters Inc. in Provo, Utah, had a perfect mechanical history. Life Flight pilots, however, had been warned to "listen for a grinding noise and take her down" to avoid any problems with that particular make of helicopter.

"It was a pretty intense situation," says Wofford. Having to listen for unusual noises, he says, "was pretty outrageous."

Since 1978, Life Flight had flown 1.25 million miles and made more than 13,000 flights without a serious accident. A spokesman for St. Joseph Health Center said the sudden loss of Life Flight crew members was a "double whammy" for the operation.

It hit Gaela Hedrick doubly hard as well. She was working as a head-injury rehabilitation nurse at an Independence facility called Rebound, and she prided herself on being better qualified than anyone to ensure Phil's recovery. She vowed to stand by Phil's hospital bed until he recovered.

"They wanted to take him from intensive care to a nursing home," says Gaela, a defiant one by nature. "I wanted to start his therapy day one after the accident. The way I was going to deal with it was by doing as much of his care as I could, except injecting I.V. fluids. I never left the hospital. I exercised him, I bathed him, I brushed his teeth, and they (hospital personnel) worked with me. It was like family treating family." Gaela cried in the beginning but vowed not to let Phil die.

"I used to say to him, 'Don't you dare leave me. You promised never to leave me.' I was scared to death because I knew what this stuff meant. I thought if I prayed enough for him and cried enough tears and worked with him every night and every day, he would be well. I believed that. I loved Phil. He was my world. There has not been a day, not a night, that I haven't dreamed about him."

In the shadows of the night
I see your face,
And I reach out to you.
I call your name
but the voice that answers back
is not yours.
Yet, somewhere in the distance
it sounds the same.

I look into the eyes that stare
back at me from your photograph,
And in your face I search
for that same glimmer,
but the shine is somehow vacant,
somehow faded.

I've traced the familiar shape
of your body with my fingertips,
I close my eyes
and only for a moment this thing fades,
and our life comes rushing back at me.

The hands that so gently loved me
are now twisted.
The words that once intrigued me,
are silenced forever.

In the whisper of a moment
you were taken from me,
and left me fighting for our lives
with my tears.

To Phil from Gaela

May 27, 1994

Gaela Hedrick kept a detailed journal -- medical history intertwined with poems and letters to her husband -- throughout his recovery and therapy. She penned a special poem to him on the one-year anniversary of the crash that left Phil with brain damage, partial paralysis, and total disability. For the better part of a year after the accident, Phil was in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation facilities, including St. Luke's, Baylor Institute for Rehabilitation in Dallas, and a transitional living facility in Carbondale, Illinois. Gaela made frequent extended trips to see Phil at the various facilities, but at home, the financial burdens were multiplied.

"In the early days, it was just survival," Gaela says. "We had some money coming in from social security, workmen's comp, and long-term disability once a month, and my family helped with the bills. But it was a fight just to find a way to get him up the stairs. It was a fight to get him a wheelchair. It was a fight to get him approved for treatment at Baylor."

Phil had been making relatively good progress regaining his mental capacity in the first year or so of rehabilitation, Gaela says. He was able to call Gaela from Carbondale and talk about how he needed more therapy and to go to the gym. But in the latter part of 1994, Phil suffered a stroke.