Car-Accident Victim Regains Memory Of Family's Sad Day

ELMHURST, Ill. - No one ever said life for Sheila Forsner would be without heartaches and tears.

But, in this, the 68th week since the freakish car crash that killed her baby, Alex; scarred and bruised her stepson, Brian; traumatized her husband, Edward; and left a nagging paralysis on her mind and body, Forsner has a hard time accepting Daniel Carpenter.

Carpenter is the 23-year-old Midlothian, Ill., gas-station attendant who police said had been drinking and was driving on a suspended license May 27, 1989, when his car rammed at about 70 mph into the Forsners' auto as it sat parked on the shoulder of the Stevenson Expressway.

It was the third time he had been caught driving on a suspended license, and after numerous court continuances and other delays, Carpenter, who was not injured in the crash, is scheduled to appear next month in municipal court in Bridgeview, Ill. He will face charges of reckless homicide, driving under the influence and driving on a suspended license on that day the Forsners' lives changed. Repeated attempts to contact Carpenter for an interview were unsuccessful.

Now that Forsner, 27, is home after being hospitalized for nearly nine months, five of which she spent in a coma, she is paralyzed from the waist down, motionless on her entire left side and unable to speak plainly. Her memory is sketchy; she recalls her college graduation, her marriage to Ed Forsner and Alex's birth, but she can't remember the routine tasks she did before the crash.

Forsner's Elmhurst home has been transformed. A full-time nurse and her older sister Eileen, both of whom have moved in, feed and bathe her and keep her busy watching books on film (she was once an avid reader).

Step inside this modest Tudor home on a tranquil tree-lined street and that large-lettered poem over Forsner's bed jars you into her reality. ``To Alex,'' it says. ``Feb. 2, 1989-May 27, 1989.''

Earlier this month, the family held graveside services for the baby. Actually, the services were scheduled for Forsner's benefit; at the time of his funeral two months after his death, Forsner was in a coma. The family tried to wait, but it became clear that she wouldn't be able to attend.

It wasn't until eight months after the crash, while at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, that she remembered Alex. There, in a therapy session, she scribbled the grim truth across a hand-held blackboard: ``My baby is dead,'' it said. Then as bits and pieces of her memory began to fall into place, Forsner shed her first tears since the accident.

Since then, she has grown accustomed to the teary-eyed bouts brought on by thoughts of ``before,'' as the family tends to call it. Still, when she tries really hard, she can talk for a while about the accident without crying.

``That's Alex. . . . That's my baby,'' she said recently as she sat propped up on a mound of pillows in her hospital bed at home. Alert and quick to motion to her husband for help in completing her thoughts, Forsner pointed toward the poster-sized picture of Alex near her bed, where there are several other snapshots from ``before.''

There is one of Forsner with her husband, soon after they met at Commonwealth Edison, where she was a computer operator and where he is still an engineer. There are photos of Forsner, the fourth of six girls; with Alex; with her two dogs; and with her parents and sisters on her wedding day.

Ed and Sheila Forsner were headed to her mother's house on the southwest side of Chicago when the accident happened. Eastbound on the Stevenson Expressway, near the Central Avenue exit, Ed Forsner spotted what he thought was his stolen car, so he pulled his rental car over to the shoulder and got out to check.

Finding that he was mistaken, he returned to the rental car, where Sheila sat on the front passenger side; Brian (Ed Forsner's son from a previous marriage) sat in back behind the driver; and Alex was strapped in his baby seat behind his mom.

``All of sudden, it happened,'' said Ed Forsner, 46, who suffered only minor injuries. ``They had to pry them all out of the car.''

Sheila Forsner and Brian were flown separately to Loyola University Medical Center, where she stayed for a month before moving for a four-month stay in a Kankakee, Ill., facility that specializes in brain damage - most of her brain cells that control limb movement were damaged in the accident.

After leaving Kankakee, Forsner went to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where she went through five months of rigorous speech and physical therapy before coming home. She spends most of her time now with speech and physical therapists.

Brian, who is fully recovered physically, suffered collapsed lungs and was kept in a medically induced coma for three days as doctors checked for possible brain damage.

His father stayed behind and watched as highway workers pried Alex's body from the wreckage. ``I knew he was dead,'' he said.

Ed Forsner said he is learning to live with the tragedy. He, too, can talk about it for hours without crying, but ask him about his guilt feelings or the nearly $300,000 the accident has cost the family or if he could ever forgive Daniel Carpenter, and there is the silence of held-back tears.

He prefers to tell of his twice-weekly walks through the park with Sheila in her wheelchair and their occasional trips to her mother's house, to her favorite pancake house and to the mall. She loves to shop.

``I can't say that there aren't days when she says, `I wish I was dead,' '' he said. ``But she works real hard to progress. The determination is there.''

High on her long list of goals, Forsner said, is ``to talk better and be with Ed again.'' The red valentine hearts she draws for him attests to that.

Slowly, she is making progress, the family said. When they celebrated her birthday last week, she opened her gifts.

And Sheila Forsner has no problem making plain her feelings about Carpenter.

Mention that name to her and she'll fix her fingers like a handgun and jab it at you like a knife. Speak of the judiciary system that allowed him his freedom to drive again after having his license suspended twice before, and she'll do the same thing.

``He killed my baby. He hurt my family,'' she said with great effort. ``Please, put that in the paper.''

With the trial approaching, the family has frequent talks about how they'll handle seeing Carpenter every day.

Sheila usually just gives an understanding nod, a half-smile, he said, but then, misty-eyed, she makes a fist.