Williams ready to rebuild life from wheelchair
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"You were all over the field," Villi tells Curtis Williams, looking down into his unshaven face.
The Washington strong safety had nine tackles in less than three quarters against the Cardinal.
"It was a good game," Williams says.
A gust of air escapes from his throat as he falls silent. A ventilator pumps more air into a tube that allows him to breathe. Williams, 22, wheezes and whispers, "Halftime was the last thing I remember."
Villi remembers the play that left Williams paralyzed from the neck down with frame-by-frame detail. With 2:01 left in the third quarter, Stanford running back Kerry Carter barreled through the Washington line to the Huskies' 8-yard line. He met Williams in a helmet-to-helmet collision. Williams ducked slightly. The impact tore a ligament holding the C-1 and C-2 vertebrae together.
"When he hit, his arms went to his side, loose-like," said Villi, who grew up with Williams' oldest brother, David, 37.
Thousands of miles to the north, a child watching the game on television in Anchorage, Alaska, also knew something bad had happened. Kymberly Williams rushed into the kitchen and announced, "My dad fell down and he won't get up."
Williams was already juggling a complicated life when he walked into Stanford Stadium on Oct. 28. But with the bashing of helmets, the complexities have amplified to heart-rending proportions.
He had banked on a strong senior season leading to a lucrative NFL contract that would ease the financial burdens he faced. Now those burdens have been compounded as Williams clings to the love and support of family and friends as he attempts to rebuild his life from a wheelchair. He not only must cope with paralysis, but disputes over child support and insurance money.
It's not what the former football star expected this spring.
Williams figured his April would be consumed by the NFL draft. But on a recent rainy afternoon a nurse spent more than an hour preparing him to meet a visitor. Vilito Israel had to perform the complex and sensitive task of cleaning Williams' bladder and bowels. The nurse then had to strap his motionless limbs onto a wheelchair. Finally, he blew Williams' nose and gently wiped his face.
The methodical cadence of a ventilator pumped air. One. Two. Three and four. Breath. One. Two. Three and four. Breath.
It has been this way since Williams regained consciousness at Stanford Medical Center three days after the collision. He awoke to a couple of his brothers hovering around him.
You were in an accident, he remembers David telling him. You are paralyzed.
Surgeons had to fuse the C-1 and C-2 vertebrae to stabilize the rest of his spinal cord. Williams, who spent three months at Valley Medical Center in San Jose before moving to David Williams' Fresno home in mid-February, cannot use his arms or legs. He has lost 40 pounds from his playing weight of 200.
Carter also has had to reconcile his emotions. He sought counsel from his mother, Cardinal coaches and a spiritual adviser at school. He hasn't talked to Williams yet.
"I don't how I would feel talking to him about it," said Carter, who suffered no injuries on the play. "Eventually I will want to talk to him. I wouldn't know what to say."
Williams focuses on necessities now, such as the arrival of a powered wheelchair he can operate with his mouth. Williams anticipates a mid-May neurosurgery that will make breathing easier.
For now, Williams likes to stay in the back yard watching hard hats pound nails as the adjacent west Fresno farmland becomes tract homes. He sits, or lies, waiting for his life to begin anew.
Williams doesn't talk to his daughter about the accident. "We talk about normal things," he said. "It's been hard."
Williams' estranged wife, Michelle, who lives with her mother and daughter in Anchorage, struggled over how to explain the injury to Kymberly. After a couple months she took out a medical book and pointed to a picture of a spinal cord.
That is where he is hurt, she said.
Can't he just get a new spinal cord? Kymberly asked.
The young girl, who hasn't seen Curtis since Halloween 1999, wants to visit her dad next week for his 23rd birthday. She wants to tell him about her new sport: ice skating. Coming home from the rink recently, Michelle said Kymberly cried in the car: "I just miss my dad."
A dispute on how to repay nearly $13,000 in back child support is being resolved by attaching $783 per month from Williams' $2,000 monthly disability check from an insurance company. But there are other financial worries, the family said. College athletes are covered under a $20 million NCAA catastrophic insurance plan. Insurance covers about $100,000 a year for home health care. But expenses could reach between $200,000 and $300,000 annually, David Williams said.
If the family puts Williams in an approved rehabilitation facility, insurance would cover all expenses - though it would probably exceed $300,000. But they think he thrives at David's spacious home surrounded by family.
David has unsuccessfully lobbied the NCAA to get Mutual of Omaha insurance company to change its policy so his brother can receive 24-hour home care. He might have to send his brother to a facility, as distasteful as it might be.
"I'm kind of at a loss," said David, a Fresno State football player in the early 1980s.
Williams has remained upbeat throughout. Accidents happen, he said in his ghostly voice. He can't wait to become a full-time student. He needs 30 units to graduate, but it might take longer. He plans to change his major from American ethnic studies. He wants to teach and, perhaps, coach football.
"I plan to do something with my life," he said. "Right now, I don't know what it is."
Whatever it is will involve both his daughter and the woman he has lived with for three years.
"I've made a commitment to Curtis and will see him through this," April Heutmaker said.
Heutmaker, 24, found out about the injury when the Williams family called her hours after the game. She considered moving to Fresno, but Williams wants to return to Seattle. So she visits. She tells him his life isn't over. He can make contributions.
"She has been my light through this darkness," Williams said.
So has football. His happiest moment - besides Heutmaker's recent visit - was watching from the press box as teammates defeated Purdue at the Rose Bowl. The connection with the Huskies remains powerful. Several players and Coach Rick Neuheisel have visited him in Fresno.
But the situation has led to connections Williams could never have imagined.
Kees Vander Putten became a quadriplegic while trying to do a back flip off a table at a San Jose State dorm room a week after Williams' collision. While in the trauma room at the Valley Medical Center, the sophomore art student began sending messages to Williams through staff and family. The football player would respond with heartfelt replies.
When they finally faced each other in wheelchairs, neither could speak. "We just smiled at each other," said Vander Putten, now being treated in Seattle, where his family lives.
Doctors assigned them the same room for more than a month so they could encourage each other. So they could share frustration. So they could eventually realize a simple truth.
"We both knew we'd be OK," Vander Putten said.
Sometimes a soothing thought offers a sliver of hope. The kind Curtis Williams needed most.