Thursday, August 28, 2008

By ROGER W. HOSKINS
rhoskins@modbee.com

last updated: May 21, 2008 08:12:01 AM

A newborn cried in the night. Before mom could stir, Derek McGinnis swung out of bed. When his only leg touched the floor, he let it bend until he lowered himself to the floor in a sitting position.

Using his arms and rear end, he scooted to his son Sean's crib, pulled himself up and balanced on his leg. He gently picked up his child and then carefully bent his leg until he sat again. Dad cradled and comforted his son while mom rested.

In that moment three years ago, McGinnis triumphed over near death and a traumatic injury because he did what dads do.

In November 2004, McGinnis was serving as a Navy corpsman working with a Marine combat unit near Fallujah, Iraq. A suicide driver in a car laden with explosives hit McGinnis' ambulance as it rushed to the aid of two wounded Marines.

His life would hang by a thread. He had a severe brain injury. Shrapnel pierced him all over, including one eye. His left leg was doomed. He was in danger of losing both hands.

Six weeks after the bombing, McGinnis awoke at the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital. The issue wasn't his missing limb. "It never was," said the 30-year-old veteran from Waterford.

"I couldn't speak or feed myself," he said.

McGinnis didn't know who or where he was. His wife, Andrea, and parents David and Barbara stayed by his side.

"My wife was (seven months) pregnant," McGinnis said. "I just wanted to be conscious."

That was all his wife and parents had hoped for, too. They joined McGinnis earlier, in Bethesda, Md., four days after he was wounded, when the future was uncertain.

When Andrea McGinnis learned her husband had been hit, she called on a friend in Army intelligence to get a full accounting of his injuries. She wrote that first information down in a scrapbook:

"Breathing machine, homemade bomb, hit in head, eye surgery, monitoring pressure in brain, lower arms, lower leg amputation, one hand severely fractured, good foot severely fractured, burns."

She soon learned what her husband's first words had been while he was in a German hospital. "The doctor said he kept asking, 'Will they spit on me?' "

The doctor reported that she tearfully reassured the medic, "No, son, you're a hero."

Because McGinnis had one bad eye from birth, his parents' first concern after his survival was his good eye, the one with the shrapnel wound. And Pop, as Derek calls his dad, was equally anxious about his son's hands.

"I knew he could overcome his leg," said Pop. "But both hands ... that would have been it."

The family arrived in the Washington, D.C., area about midnight. David McGinnis accompanied his daughter-in-law into the hospital room because Andrea McGinnis didn't want to be alone.

About 80 gurneys were stacked in the lobby. Helicopters seemed to arrive around the clock, each with a fresh group of wounded Marines from the battle for Fallujah.

"I was relieved," Andrea McGinnis said of her first peek behind her husband's curtain. "He didn't look as bad as I thought. I was expecting his face to be burned. His leg freaked me out. It was a foot wide. It was weird. It was still cut and stitched but it wasn't shut. He was not bathed, but he was clean.

"It was a rough first couple months. I'm glad he can't remember it."

There were moments of poignant patriotism with a dash of humor in Maryland.

When President Bush came to award McGinnis' Purple Heart, it triggered panic in the young medic.

"Derek was a nervous wreck," his wife said. "A nurse called me at 5 that morning and told me to 'get over here now.' He wouldn't let anyone else touch him and he was driving them crazy. He was so anxious. He was so worried that he smelled. He had me buy this aftershave. He smelled so strong the other patients wanted him out of there."

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