HIS halo was a cage, and all Johan Otter could do was stare out through the carbon graphite rods that pinned his head in place.
If he slept, he dreamed, and the dreams bordered on nightmares. He lay in a passageway somewhere between a gym and a locker room. People came and went. He didn't mind the traffic, only he was puzzled by a black object in the middle of the room. It looked like the Batmobile, dark and sinister. What was it?
Uncertainty brought a tinge of adrenaline and a flood of panic. Trapped by this metal contraption locking his head to his shoulders, treatment for a broken neck, he couldn't move. The walls of Harborview Medical Center in Seattle closed around him. He tried to find the call button, but it was lost in the bedding. He was alone. He screamed for help.
Morphine for the pain. Valium and Ativan for the anxiety.
Prescriptions were easy. Patience was the hardest part, and though he had been trained as a physical therapist and knew all about the challenge of recovering from trauma, he still found himself spiraling into restless despair. He asked a doctor if he was going to die.
"No way," the doctor said. "You're going to live. You're already over the hump."
Six days before, on Aug. 25, 2005, Johan, 43, and his daughter Jenna, 18, had been hiking in Glacier National Park. She had just graduated from high school in Escondido. It was a father-daughter trip, and they had surprised a grizzly bear and its two cubs on the trail to Grinnell Glacier. Trying to flee, they had fallen about 70 feet down a rocky cliff.
The bear had followed. For 15 minutes, it attacked them savagely, especially Johan, who stood between it and Jenna. Shivering, cold and in shock, they spent nearly six hours on a mountainside as the National Park Service worked to rescue them by helicopter. Johan was the first one lifted off.
At Kalispell Regional Medical Center in Kalispell, Mont., the first place he was treated, the doctors were shocked that he had survived. His mauling was the worst they had ever seen. He had no scalp. From his hairline to the base of his neck, the bear had torn off everything. There were teeth marks in the cranium. A muscle was detached from his right eye, where there was a blowout fracture. He had broken ribs. His body was pockmarked with deep lacerations and puncture wounds.
