Lightning: When forgetting is a blessing

THE last thing A.J. Hibshman remembers about that fateful post-Yom Kippur night on Sept. 28, 2012, is leaving services. The rest is a blessed blank — even now.

A.J., 35, can’t recall attending a break-the-fast, returning to the HEA parking lot or putting his 14-month-old daughter Natania in the car seat.

As for the lightning bolt that knocked him into oblivion, it is a nightmare conveyed through the mouths of others — specifically, his wife.

Rebecca, 33, has internalized each searing detail in frightening bolts of clarity.

“What happened that night?” she repeats to the Intermountain Jewish News. “Oh man.”

About three or four days after the lightning strike, a heavily sedated and ventilated A.J. “woke up.” He knew Rebecca. He knew the rabbis who visited — but not why he was in the hospital.

Rebecca says, “I would explain things, but a little while later he would ask the same question: why am I here?” By Sunday he grasped the whole story from a factual perspective — but not the personal.

This is a tale told by two people: A.J., whose retrograde amnesia has erased the time leading up to and following the lightning strike; and Rebecca, who can’t forget anything.

Read Andrea Jacobs’ initial coverage, “Hit by lightning…after Yom Kippur“

A.J. might never relive the flash that shot millions of electrical volts through his body and burned his legs, chest, abdomen, back and neck.

“It looked like someone threw a can of paint at me,” he laughs.

Treated at the CU Burn Center, A.J. required a small skin graft on his thigh and is regaining the use of his legs.

“But I can get by with a cane,” he says cheerfully. He recently  returned to his job in the hospitality industry.

A hiker who loves watching storms brewing on the horizon, A.J. says he wouldn’t mind remembering parts of the Sept. 28 episode.

“It would be neat to reconnect to the seconds before the strike — what it felt like, and looked like.

“But I’m fine not being able to remember the pain. Burns are extremely painful.”

He initially worried that his near-death encounter would diminish his love of nature and the outdoors. Apart from being more cautious around severe weather in the city, his enthusiasm is unbowed.

“What happened to me is so random that unless you want to cower in a hole every time a threatening cloud appears, there’s nothing you can do except wait it out.”

Rebecca’s attitude takes an empirical detour.

“A.J. was not there,” she says of that night, “at least not consciously. I’m the one who’s a candidate for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!

“I’m so glad that my husband is not afraid of the natural world that’s always fascinated him so much. But I’m not sure I can say I feel the same way.”

WHEN this startling story broke after Yom Kippur, details were sketchy at best. The couple insisted upon anonymity and refused to speak to the press. Now they want to set the record straight.

That burden rests primarily with Rebecca, who is equal to the task.

“We left the break-the-fast and walked to our cars in the rain,” she begins. “My brother saw us and drove us to the overflow parking lot at the HEA.

“A.J. had just stepped out of the rear passenger’s side after putting Natania in her car seat, and I climbed inside to strap  her in.  I always had to bug A.J. about fastening Natania in her seat, so as usual I did it myself. It was habitual.”

Then she heard what she describes as “a loud crack, and I saw this immense explosion of light.

“I knew it was nearby. At first I was concerned about my ears, and Natania’s ears.

“I turned to A.J. to ask what happened. The back seat door was open and I saw his legs on the ground. I rushed around to him. Smoke rose from his belt.”

Rebecca quickly intuited that her husband had been hit.

“My brother turned the car around. I started screaming. My daughter started screaming. A.J.’s eyes were open, and it looked as if he were trying to say something.”

But these were myoclonic jerks — sudden, abrupt, brief, involuntary muscular contractions related to physical trauma.

“I felt for a pulse but couldn’t find one,” Rebecca says. “He was not breathing.”

Rebecca’s mother, who died one month before the lightning strike, had insisted that all her children learn CPR.

In fact, Rebecca says the life-saving technique was almost an obsession with her mother.

“Mom was a nurse and taught CPR in the hospital,” she says. “I took my first CPR course when I was 12 and later became an instructor.

“I always thought I would know what to do. But this was my husband.”

Despite her acute anxiety, Rebecca started administering CPR to A.J.

Another female congregant helped until the fire department arrived, about three to four minutes after Rebecca’s brother called 911.

For Rebecca, these few minutes slowed to an agonizing eternity. She entered the still, emotional center of a hurricane. But beyond the calm, chaos reigned.

“This wasn’t a stranger who collapsed in a supermarket line. This was someone I loved dearly.

“I was confused, especially when A.J.’s body jerked and I thought he was looking at me. I would stop and ask, ‘Are you OK?’ But I realized I had to continue CPR.”

Instead of relying on precise numbers and ratios, Rebecca performed layman’s CPR. She gave the breaths, and the congregant did the compressions.

“I wasn’t so panicked that I couldn’t administer CPR,” she says, “but I was too panicked to think clearly.”

It wasn’t until Rebecca followed the ambulance to Denver Health that she allowed herself succumb to the realm of ifs — “and they were infinite. I thought of Natania, and what would have happened if she had been in A.J.’s arms when the lightning hit. The doctors told me she would have never survived.

“And if A.J. had strapped in Natania instead of me doing it, I would have been the one out there.

“And if everything happened 15 seconds later, no one would have been hurt.

“You can go around and around in circles,” she says. “It doesn’t get you anywhere.”

THIS drama did not lack its comedic moments — like when Rebecca was having a philosophical conversation with the rabbi in A.J.’s room at the burn center.

“My husband had just woken up, and I was telling the rabbi that it was so hard to understand how this could happen to us.

“A.J. suddenly said, ‘I know why — not enough al chets!’”

Rebecca laughs.

“Of course A.J. doesn’t remember saying that.”

They have since learned that  A.J. wasn’t hit directly. “The lightning struck the ground and went up through me,” he explains.

Still, it was close enough — too close.

Rebecca wants to move forward and discover how she and A.J. can use that harrowing night as a catalyst for personal change.

The Hibshmans, who have been married three-and-a-half years, are familiar with the slings and arrows inherent in all loving relationships.

“We always fought over who’s not doing enough or who’s doing too much,” says Rebecca, a special education teacher. “However, during A.J.’s hospitalization, all of a sudden I had to take care of everything. And I realized, ‘He really does a lot!’”

After A.J. was released from the hospital, he stayed home with Natania for long stretches.

One day he thanked Rebecca out of the blue.

“He said he never realized how challenging it is to spend an entire day with a baby,” she smiles.

Now that things have settled down, Rebecca says she needs to mourn her mother.

“It’s time.”

The Hibshmans will undoubtedly return to the night of Sept. 28, 2012, and try to piece together a puzzle that may never be solved to their total satisfaction.

If the answer eludes them for the rest of their lives, so be it.

“Even if the lightning strike was a random act of nature and there’s no reason for it, I don’t believe you can walk away from this learning nothing,” Rebecca says.

“I’ve felt my vulnerability before, and this made me feel very vulnerable. But I don’t think that’s the lesson I want to take away from all this.”

Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News