Shock, fear follow family’s hard fall

PART ONE OF THREE

Brandi Coulter huddled in the corner of the ambulance and stared down at the two men on stretchers.

One man was strapped into a neck brace, an oxygen mask over his mouth. The other looked as though his teeth had been bashed in; his face was covered in dirt and blood.

Brandi, 17, drew up her knees to ease the pain knifing through her back. She didn't know where they were headed, and she hardly cared; she just wanted to get there and find her family.

Less than an hour before, they had all been together -- she and her parents, Paula and Brad, and her older sister, Brianna -- in a minivan heading north across the Mississippi River. Then the bridge crumbled beneath them. Her family was plucked from the wreckage and scattered, one by one. The last thing she remembered was paramedics loading her into an ambulance crowded with strangers.

The ambulance hit a bump, and one of the men cursed in pain. Brandi leaned in to help and held him steady as the paramedic's needle found a vein. Then she braced herself for the next bump.

As the ambulance screamed its approach to Hennepin County Medical Center, the frightened teenager had no way of knowing how much her world was about to change.

Paula, 43, had taken Aug. 1 off work to spend with Brandi and her sister. It was their last chance to hit the malls together before 18-year-old Brianna left for Winona State University the following week.

The girls and their mom spent a lot of time together -- shopping, going to Starbucks, working out at Life Time Fitness. Paula was their role model -- an accounting supervisor at the Mentor Network, a national chain of homes for the disabled.

Every morning, she greeted them each with a cup of coffee before school. And they'd all fight over the bathroom mirror before rushing out the door of their suburban Savage home.

Last year, Brandi had lived in her sister's shadow: Brianna was the high school senior, a captain of their soccer team; the graduate who had won a soccer scholarship to college.

This year, Brandi would be a senior at Burnsville High and co-captain of the soccer team. She would turn 18 in November -- an adult, at last. And with Brianna going off to college, Brandi was looking forward to having her mom and dad and the bathroom mirror all to herself. This year, she hoped, would be her year to shine.

That night, the family was gathering for a college sendoff for Brianna and a cousin. The Coulters were to meet relatives at 6 o'clock sharp at Joe Senser's Sports Grill & Bar in Roseville, 25 miles away. But by the time Paula and Brad and the girls piled into their gold minivan, it was after 5:30. Paula, fretting about rush-hour traffic, took out her cell phone and called her sister to say they'd be late.

Brianna, riding shotgun, pushed her seat back for a quick nap as her dad drove north on Interstate 35W. Paula was in the back seat. She glanced over. Put your seat belt on, she told her daughter.

Brianna buckled up and closed her eyes. She and her mom both fell asleep as the van hummed up the freeway toward downtown Minneapolis.

Brandi was in a great mood. She could hardly wait for the next day: Her parents were taking her to Muscatine, Iowa, to play in an elite regional soccer tournament. There would be college coaches scouting for players, and possibly dangling scholarship offers, as well.

She was busily text-messaging friends about the trip when traffic slowed to a crawl. Her eyes darted up when she heard rumbling, and the van began to shake. Dad, she said. What's going on?

Brad floored the gas pedal, but it was too late.

Joe Senser's was packed as Paula's sisters, Michele West and Lisa Bovy, waited with their families for the Coulters to arrive. Around the room, 15 giant projection screens flashed TV sports from every wall.

And then, one after another, the images on the screens blinked away from ballgames to live video of the fallen 35W bridge and the words "Breaking News."

For a few minutes, the family watched, aghast. Then they pulled out their cell phones. Paula's brother-in-law, Scott Bovy, left her a voice message at 6:23 p.m. Hey, you guys, avoid 35W. It's a nightmare.

Scott's son, Tyler, sent text messages to his cousins Brandi and Brianna. The minutes ticked by, but there was no response.

Finally, Michele stood up. I've got to get out of here, she said. They could hear sirens screaming toward the bridge, 5 miles away.

Surely, if the Coulters were OK, they would have called. Everyone was worried, but nobody wanted to assume the worst.

Scott knew a shortcut to the bridge. Let's go down there, he said.

• • •

At HCMC, Brandi Coulter sat in a wheelchair, alone and distraught, in her bloody jeans and babydoll blouse. She had been checked over quickly by doctors in the emergency room and then sent to a waiting area; with bridge victims pouring in, they had far worse on their hands.

A man came by with a damp cloth and gently wiped her tear-stained face. Brandi dialed again and again on a borrowed cell phone, desperate to reach her aunts and uncles. But the circuits were jammed; no calls were getting through.

Patricia Jimenez, one of the hospital chaplains, noticed Brandi and asked if there was anything she needed.

I need to find my family, Brandi said. She gave Jimenez their names.

A few minutes later, the chaplain reappeared.

I found Brianna, she said. Jimenez wheeled her into a cubicle in the emergency room, and the sisters melted into tears.

Brianna had arrived at the ER just 11 minutes after her sister, at 7:41 p.m., flat on her back in the bed of a pickup truck. Rescuers had run out of ambulances and were transporting victims any way they could.

Now, covered in cuts and bruises, she lay in a hospital bed with crippling back pain. She watched her little sister sobbing in the wheelchair, and took her hand. We're going to be OK, Brianna said.

• • •

The girls were lying side by side, still covered in sand and debris, when their aunt Michele was ushered into the cubicle. In the chaos and confusion, it had taken nearly three hours to find them.

Michele's husband, Craig West, had gotten within 50 yards of the bridge before police stopped him. When he saw the devastation, his heart sank. We're going to be going to four funerals, he thought.

Relatives started calling the hospitals, asking for anyone named Coulter.

Finally, they got some breaks. Brad was across town at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, and the girls were here at HCMC.

But no one knew where Paula was.

Brandi and Brianna were too upset to tell Michele what had happened in any great detail. They were still in shock. But in fits and starts, their story came out.

Neither one remembered plunging off the bridge. When they woke up, their van was upside-down in a pit of sand and gravel.

Brandi crawled out through a shattered window. She tried to stand, but pain shot through her back. Billowing dust made it hard to see. Her father and sister followed. When they looked in the back seat, they saw a haunting sight: blood everywhere and Paula hanging upside-down in her seat belt, her eyes closed.

The girls screamed.

Overhead, a huge piece of bridge creaked and swayed over the van. Katie Seitz, a University of Minnesota policewoman, insisted that they move -- crawl if they had to -- to get to safer ground.

Brandi watched Seitz and several construction workers pry her mother, like deadweight, out of the van. They carried her on a wooden plank and placed her next to Brandi in a flat dusty area beside the fallen bridge.

Brandi, streaked with tears, leaned over her mother: It's going to be OK.

Paula opened her eyes and squeezed Brandi's hand. I love you, she said.

Now, in their hospital room, Brandi and Brianna waited for a nurse to take them to X-ray. They pleaded with their aunt: Will you go find our mom?

By then, the area hospitals were sharing their lists of bridge victims. Paula Coulter's name wasn't on any of them.

In a hospital lounge, a young woman approached Michele West and asked about her missing sister.

What does she look like?

Michele described her.

Do you think you could identify her rings? The young woman opened a small bag and took out a gold wedding band and a silver ring studded with diamonds.

Tears stung Michele's eyes, and she felt faint.

The rings belonged to Paula.

• • •

Paula Coulter was lucky to be alive. As her doctors explained it to Michele, she had arrived unconscious at HCMC just after 7 p.m. with a violent head injury. She had no ID, and her hair was soaked with blood. Staffers slipped off her rings for safety and sent her down the hall for CT scans and X-rays.

Then she took a dramatic turn. Her iris began to dilate -- which meant she was in imminent danger from a blood clot in her brain. A neurosurgeon, Dr. Praveen Baimeedi, grabbed her gurney and rushed her into emergency surgery.

At one point, her heart stopped on the operating table, and she was revived with CPR.

The doctors were able to halt the bleeding in her brain. But she was extremely fragile -- one of the most critically injured of all the bridge survivors.

There was no way to tell if Paula had suffered brain damage or paralysis, the doctor told her sister. She had broken bones in her back, one dangerously close to the spinal cord. They did not know if she would survive. All they could do now was wait, and pray.

The next 72 hours will be critical, he said.

• • •

For hours that night, Brandi stared at the TV, watching news reports of the bridge collapse. She caught flashes of her family on the TV screen.

For the first time, she began to understand the scale of the disaster: At least a dozen dead or missing, nearly 100 taken to hospitals, with five people listed in critical condition. One of them, she knew, was her mother.

Thursday morning, Aug. 2, dawned bright and clear. Brandi woke up beside her sister in the children's ward. Her aunt Lisa had spent the night in a chair. Nobody had slept well.

This was the morning she was supposed to leave for Iowa. In a few days, Brianna was to leave for college. Soccer tryouts were next week.

Suddenly, none of that mattered.

Brandi learned she had a fractured backbone, and Brianna had two. They were told to stay in bed until they could be fitted with body braces.

Their dad was 9 miles away, with five fractured bones in his back and neck.

And their mother was three floors down, in intensive care, fighting for her life.

At first, Brandi couldn't bring herself to see her mother in that condition. It took her two days to work up the courage. On Friday, she agreed to go down to see her. She kept thinking about what her aunt Lisa had told her: Your mom is a fighter. We have to be positive. We can't keep thinking the worst.

Lisa pushed Brandi's wheelchair towards the ICU, trying to prepare her for what she was about to see.

But the woman on the other side of the curtain was almost unrecognizable. Paula's face was swollen and bruised, and her long blonde hair had been shaved off one side of her head. Her scalp was wrapped in bandages. There were machines and tubes everywhere, and the rhythmic whoosh of a ventilator helping her breathe.

Brandi moved as close as her wheelchair would allow. Tears streamed down her face as she caressed her mother's hand. But her mother didn't stir.

• • •

By Sunday morning, Paula had passed the crucial 72-hour mark. Her family took heart: During a few brief moments, she had opened her eyes, wiggled her toes, squeezed their hands. But mostly, she was kept sedated.

That weekend, Brandi and her father and sister went home from the hospital to a new and unfamiliar routine. Relatives took turns caring for them, as they moved gingerly in their body braces. They couldn't drive, walk the dogs or even lift a gallon of milk. Friends and neighbors took over, filling the house with flowers and food and offers of help. People signed up to bring the Coulters meals every other night.

The girls watched their father trying to hold the family together. Brad, a database administrator at Josten's, wasn't one to show his emotions. He was more likely to crack a joke than cry in front of his daughters. He was also fiercely independent and hated relying on others for help. But now, wearing braces on his back and neck, he had no choice. He took medical leave from his job and began a daily vigil to the hospital, praying that his wife would pull through.

Every day, he and the girls camped out at HCMC.

Brandi and Brianna brought their pillows and blankets to nap on the floor. Brad stood for hours, because his braces made sitting uncomfortable. They were only allowed to see Paula for a few minutes at a time. So they waited with a rotating cast of aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, playing Yahtzee and sudoku between visits to the ICU.

Each time Brandi went in to see her mother, she felt her stomach drop. The nurses said, Talk to her. Tell her about the accident. Tell her you love her.

Most of the time, Paula's eyes were closed. Sometimes, she stared off into space. Brandi would snap her fingers -- Mom, over here -- but there was no reaction. At one point, she noticed her mom's left hand was tied to the bed, to keep her from pulling out her breathing tube. Her right hand didn't move at all.

After only a few minutes, Brandi became so nauseated that she had to leave the room.

Brandi had always thought of herself as an optimist. And everyone was telling her to stay positive now. But when she looked at the helpless woman in the hospital bed, it was almost more than she could bear.

Her mother had always been so full of life. Would she ever see her that way again?

Coming next: Four weeks after the bridge collapse, doctors had hoped Paula Coulter would be showing more signs of recovery.

Maura Lerner • 612-673-7384