Then Vedder removed the clamps. Blood from Johan's carotid artery pulsed through the array of vessels, then infused the muscle. A Doppler probe beside the vein picked up the whooshing sound, like gusts of wind. For the next week it would serve as an audio-warning system. Silence would mean a clot had formed and the transplant was in jeopardy.
Vedder and his team covered the muscle with skin from Johan's right thigh and stapled it in place. Johan Otter had a new scalp.
Ten hours had passed. He awoke in recovery and was soon wheeled into what the hospital called the Tropicana Room, heated to 80 degrees. Anything colder might make the blood vessels constrict and the blood clot.
Johan lay sweating under a single sheet. He painted pictures in his mind of Glacier National Park and the Grand Tetons. How he loved that stretch of highway from Jackson Hole, Wyo., to Yellowstone National Park where the Rocky Mountains rose from the open plain in jagged grandeur.
Would he ever see it again?
"DAD, I need to thank you for saving my life."
He looked up into Jenna's face. He remembered thinking how healthy she looked, and she was smiling. He had expected worse.
Jenna had flown in from Kalispell the day before. Marilyn had met her at the airport gate, where they held each other for the first time since the attack. Jenna made a joke about how good she looked, what with her swollen face, her arm in a sling, her back in a brace, holding a cane and walking with a limp. Her mother smiled.
You don't need to thank me, Johan said, but her words made him proud. They told him that she understood what he had tried to do, that there was no recrimination or blame, no "why did you take me hiking there?"
Johan was transferred to a private room. He had grown accustomed to it all -- the intrusions, the tests, the constant interruptions -- and he was making progress. He walked on his own. He watched music videos on television and tried to exercise his legs.
His only setback occurred during another surgery, when the ophthalmologist couldn't find the torn muscle behind his right eye. It had contracted too deeply into his skull. But Johan refused to be discouraged.
Not that life as a patient was simple. Being dependent on others never was, but Johan managed. Perhaps his stoical nature helped. Perhaps his inherent optimism. Perhaps it was his experience as a physical therapist or his training as a marathon runner.
