 |
 |
|
By Ronnie Polaneczky
They've got to get the light back.
His friends say it used to glow in Robert Drake's eyes. You can see it in photos of him, taken before the cold January night he was viciously beaten and left for dead. He was handsome, yes, and he had a wonderful smile. But those eyes – huge, brown and seemingly lit from within – were like heart-beams. When you first saw them, they told you he was smart and gregarious, self-effacing and funny. They made you say, "Yes, well, of course," when you later learned he was an award-winning editor and author.
He sits in a wheelchair at Moss Rehab, wearing a rugby shirt and chinos, a baseball cap on his soft brown hair. His motions are slow, underwater ones. Some of them are in obvious response to commands. Others, it's hard to tell. He can't swallow or speak yet. But his partner, Scott Pretorius, is heartened that Robert sometimes seems to be trying to form words. It was his love of words that brought him to Western Ireland. It was there, while researching a new book, that two men assaulted him, allegedly because he was gay. Overnight, Robert became a cause celebre in the international gay community, a poster child for the disease of gay-bashing. A continent away from his Philadelphia home, he was nevertheless among friends as he fought for life those first weeks. When he was out of the woods, he was flown here to HUP, where Scott's a radiologist. Robert's Irish friend, Ciaran Slevin, came with him. He put his own career in medicine on hold, found a place to stay in Queen Village and rides a borrowed bike to the hospital each day. He admits it's kind of a strange life for a medical school graduate.
"Without this rehab, we'll keep Robert alive, but we won't get him back," says Scott. Scott, Ciaran and Robert's ever-widening circle of supporters believe Robert can and will return from wherever he went that January night in Ireland. So last week's news was met with cautious joy: The insurance company decided, after all, that Robert was an appropriate candidate for intense therapy, and he was transferred from HUP to Moss Rehab. The company will monitor Robert's progress and adjust his therapy accordingly. What "accordingly" means, well, everyone will cross that bridge when they come to it. Already, Scott says, the people at Moss have gotten Robert's arms to move more deliberately, instead of in the flailing way they had been. "And when I remind him of something we once did, he moves his head, like he remembers. I know he's in there." Robert was a world traveler, a seeker, say his friends. He loved how traveling changed your perspective of self and home. His journey back to awareness is a trip of a lifetime. As with all journeys, this one will leave him a changed man. His loved ones are desperate to hear where he's been and how he fared there. They'll know when he's back. They'll see it in his eyes. Ronnie Polaneczky is a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, where this article first appeared. Her Real Life column appears Monday, Wednesday and Thursday |
Author Robert Drake (r), with partner Scott Pretorius 
© 1997-99 BEI