JUNE 2015
PA R K E R C O U N T Y T O D AY
Jayden Rhodes, Gary Grote,
Nikki Grote Rhodes
knew help was on the way because the driver was on the
phone with 911, but I kept wondering ‘Where are they?’
We were only about five minutes out from the dock. We
could still see the bridge near the dock and the cars on the
highway. We were so close yet so far away.” Two Aransas
Pass police officers finally arrived to evacuate Gary and
Cheryl, after borrowing a boat from a Good Samaritan at
the dock.
After the wreck, life would never be the same for Gary
and Cheryl, in both good ways and bad. It turned out that
the 9-inch laceration that was so deep it exposed the skull
was the least of Gary’s problems. He suffered a broken
back, broken neck, broken ribs, and broken bones in his
face. The broken bones in his back caused damage to his
spinal cord. The neurosurgeon that performed the five-hour
emergency surgery in Corpus Christi said he was lucky to
be alive. He also said there was only a 3-percent chance
10
Gary would ever walk again.
With fractures in her neck, Cheryl
was also admitted to the hospital in
Corpus, and she was put in ICU, just
two rooms down from Gary. Again
so close, yet so far away, the medical
staff refused to provide Cheryl with
information about Gary’s condition,
due to HIPPA laws, since she was
not technically part of his family. She
had to wait until his family members
arrived to get updates on Gary’s condition. When she was finally allowed
to get out of bed, in a hard neck
brace and hospital gown, Cheryl
limped into Gary’s room. She found
him in the same gown and neck
brace, only he was not awake. There
were still tubes in his throat helping
him breathe. She took his hand and
leaned over as best she could in the
brace and kissed him. “Gary George,
can you hear me? I love you.” Then
she repeated something he always
says in hard times or during a crisis. “It is all going to be OK.” She
wrapped her hands around just one
of his large hands and kept talking
to him, even though there was no
response, reminding him of her love
and praying for his recovery.
Four days after the wreck, and still
one day shy of their one-year anniversary, Cheryl had to say goodbye
to Gary as the medics prepared to
load him onto the jet that would
bring him home to North Texas. Letting go of his hand was the hardest
thing she had to do. “They wouldn’t
let me ride in the jet with him. Even
though he was still sedated I felt like
I needed to go with him. When they
told me they were close to the maximum weight limit, I left
him in God’s hands; but I knew He would give him back
to me.”
Cheryl was right. When she arrived at John Peter Smith
Hospital in Fort Worth, Gary was in ICU. The same tubes
and wires were there, but he looked better than he did
when he left Corpus. The doctors eventually decided to
perform a tracheotomy and put a tube in his throat to help
him breathe, but that procedure required the insertion of
a feeding tube and prevented him from talking for some
time. During the days he could not talk, Gary still communicated with Cheryl and his family. It was difficult with
hand gestures, an alphabet board, and trying to guess what
he wanted, but Cheryl seemed to understand him more
than anyone. She could figure out what he needed, soothe
him when he was anxious, and provide the kisses he often