“I think I’m ready to chop it off.”

Rebekah Gregory is weary — confident one moment, hesitant the next. Staring down at the stitches in her left leg, she emits a nervous laugh. “I don’t know. I mean, I know we’ve done so much to fix it. But I just —”

She pauses and looks down at the floor.

Her doctor leans against a table, eyebrows knitted. He runs a hand through his salt-and-pepper beard. He exhales and looks out the window.

The sound of cars from the nearby highway fills the silence — horns honk, tires screech. She bites her lip and waits for his response.

After the Boston Marathon attack on April 15, 2013, doctors thought they could save Rebekah's left leg. One of the bombs shattered it from the knee down, destroying tissues, muscles and half her fibula in a matter of seconds. It ripped her right hand open to the bone and burned her right leg almost entirely.

At first, she agreed to the 16 reconstructive leg surgeries, sitting through the skin grafts, the pain meds, the weeks of bed rest and therapy. She did it without much question. They know better than I do, she kept telling herself. This might work.

But a year later, Rebekah, 26, is tired. The medical bills alone are enough to withstand. She's still wheelchair-dependent; walking is nearly impossible. And the pain from her leg is even worse.

Her fiancé, Pete DiMartino, 29, and her son from a previous relationship, Noah, 5, were also injured in the bombings. They’ve both recovered well, with wounds far less serious than Rebekah's. Noah sustained only minor injuries (Rebekah’s body shielded him from the majority of the blast).

Image: Mashable

But Rebekah feels like she’s slowing her family down. It’s been a year, and the greatest piece of baggage from that day — a physical, painful reminder of the moment she and her loved ones almost lost their lives — is still attached to her body.

Doctors are confident one more surgery could help her walk again, but she’s not convinced. Her wedding is in a few weeks, and as she, Pete and Noah plan to start their new life together, it might finally be time to undergo the life-altering amputation.

Maybe.

“I don’t want to disappoint the doctors who have worked on me so far,” she says, “but I just don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

The explosion knocked Pete off his feet. From the ground, he opened his eyes and could barely see a foot in front of him. The bottom half of his pants had completely disintegrated; a black blanket of smoke enveloped him like a casket. Ash choked any senses that were still intact — sight, smell, taste.

Outside the cloud, everyone was screaming.

He stood up, took a few steps forward, sat down. He didn’t feel any pain at first. “Then I looked down and saw that some of my leg was missing.”

Rebekah had been standing about 10 feet to Pete’s left, with Noah at her feet.

“After the shock settled, my first thought was him … my baby," she says. "My ears were ringing, I could barely hear. But I could hear him. Screaming. Crying. Mommy! Mommy! And I couldn’t find him. It was so cloudy, and he was so scared. But I couldn’t find him.”

She tried to stand up, fell, then looked down at her legs. For a second, she thought they were both gone — she couldn’t see or feel anything.

Rivers of blood snaked through the charred asphalt from every direction, merging in a dark red pool beneath the black smoke. Bones lay next to her head on the sidewalk. She didn’t know if they were hers.

She heard Noah scream again. He was behind her. She reached for him with her left hand, but noticed two bones sticking straight out of it, completely exposed and perpendicular to her fingers. Warm blood oozed down her arm, into the nook of her elbow.

“I laid back down. Then the pain hit. It was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she says. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I honestly thought I was going to die: ‘God, if this is my time, then take me. But please let me know my baby is okay.’”

Image: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Seconds later, seemingly out of nowhere, Noah was next to her. He was crying and covered in ash — but he was okay. Pete’s aunt, who’d been standing near them during the explosion, had picked him up and brought him over to Rebekah.

“I thought it was a sign,” she says. ”I thought, ‘He’s here, he’s okay. And now I really am going to die.’”

His aunt embraced her tightly, repeating, “Stay with me, okay? Stay with me. Tell me your favorite memory of Noah. We love you so much. We’re here, we’re not leaving you. Stay with me. Tell me about Noah. We love you.”

What happened next was a blur. Noah was released from the hospital after five days. He’d suffered only minor injuries to his legs and lower back.

She and Pete were in and out of surgery for the next few weeks. They talked via FaceTime about a week after the attack. “We were so out of it, though. I don’t really remember what we talked about,” she remembers.

Pete was released from Massachusetts General Hospital after 17 days. The bomb tore off 90% of his right Achilles tendon. Second-degree burns covered more than 10% of his body. He went to a rehabilitation center in Boston until the end of May, then moved back to Rochester, N.Y., to stay with his parents and continue therapy. Now, despite the black scars that run up and down his legs like burst veins, he’s able to walk without a limp — without much struggle, too.

Rebekah remained at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston for 39 days undergoing various reconstructive surgeries, then transferred to Houston Methodist Hospital for three weeks. There, she developed osteomyelitis, an infection of the bone marrow. She recovered, then moved in with her mother and stepfather in Katy, Texas, where a home health nurse watched over her for the next eight weeks.

“It just dragged on and on,” she says. “All of it, for me and Pete, just felt like this ongoing movie that we couldn’t get out of. It never ended. It still hasn’t.”

Image: Mashable

In the appointment room today, Dr. William McGarvey, Rebekah’s orthopedic surgeon, looks away from the window and asks her to stand. Reluctantly, slowly, she does. Tears spring to the corners of her eyes; her body begins to shake. The skin on her leg, between the scars and stitches, turns purple. She sits back down.

Resting, standing and sleeping — it doesn’t matter, she says. Everything hurts, “like an 11 on a scale of one to 10.”

She’s been taking pain medications regularly — Tylenol 3, Cymbalta and Celebrex — but admits they’ve only been temporary solutions. Minor distractions, at best, from the seemingly endless pain.

The main problem is Rebekah's foot is drifting inward. The bomb destroyed tissues and bones, and because of where they’re missing, the tendons have nowhere to attach. As a result, they're pulling from the inside of her ankle.

There’s still shrapnel from the bomb inside her leg. Sometimes, she says, a small piece of metal or BB will lodge out of her calf while she’s sleeping.

Dr. McGarvey’s hope is that one more surgery will stabilize her foot and help it stay flat on the ground. Still, there’s no guarantee it will mitigate the pain.

“You’re the one living through this difficult situation,” he concedes. “It’s your decision to make.”

He stands. “Let’s talk amputation."

In total, 16 survivors had one or both legs amputated after the bombing. Most were treated in the first day or two following the attacks, and the rest shortly afterward.

Heather Abbott, 39, a human resources executive from Newport, R.I., lost her left heel in the second explosion. Doctors immediately admitted her to surgery, but by the following Friday told her the leg likely wasn’t salvageable. It would be shorter than her right leg, and probably mangled. She'd never be able to walk, much less run. They suggested amputation.

After some thought, she agreed. “It would have just been a burden to keep it."

Another survivor, Adriane Haslet-Davis, 33, a dance instructor from Boston, made good on her vow to dance again after she lost the bottom half of her left leg during the bombing. At a TED Conference in Vancouver in March 2014, she performed on stage with a prosthetic limb. Soon, she hopes to appear on Dancing with the Stars.

Erika Brannock, 30, a preschool teacher from Baltimore, Md., had her left leg amputated the day after the bombing. "If I’d kept my leg the way it was, everything now would be even harder,” she says.

She and Rebekah were the last two survivors to leave Beth Israel. Even back then, she remembers, Rebekah was considering the amputation that still haunts her today.

“At some point, you just need to move on with your life,” Erika tells me over the phone. “If your body’s telling you that you can’t try anymore, that you’re just too tired, then you need to listen to it ... If she feels deep down that it’s the right move, then it probably is.”

Image: Mashable

Most of the survivors meet every few months back in the Boston area, to socialize, to share how they’re coping with their new lifestyles. Rebekah has kept in touch with some via email and Facebook.

Ultimately, Rebekah feels she’s playing catchup to everyone else — people like Erika, Heather and Adriane who have spent the year successfully adjusting to their new prosthetics and moving on.

At her home in Texas, she only feels more alienated. And still, she's not convinced.

Katy, Texas, some 20 minutes outside of Houston, sits in the center of suburban sprawl that seems to reach hundreds of miles. Strip malls, hotels and chain restaurants line the endless stretches of intersecting highways, some stacked four or five high like bunk beds.

Rebekah and Pete’s house is a handsome, two-story brick complex. It’s a newly developed area. Most of the houses in the neighborhood have been built within the past 10 years.

Inside, their home still smells like fresh paint. The living room glows with afternoon sunlight that seeps through the patio door to the backyard. It houses a beige rug and a pair of leather couches over dark-stained, hardwood floors. A sign on the mantel above the fireplace reads "Welcome, Y'all."

Rebekah lies on one of the couches. She’s not feeling well today, but still greets me with a smile.

“I’m just a little exhausted, I guess. I’m always so out of it lately.”

She’s had nightmares for the past year. Every two nights, almost on cue, they creep into her dreams. The theme is always the same: Someone is trying to kill her and her family.

The night before, she dreamed Pete was carrying her through a barren field as bombs exploded on the ground behind them. Noah ran alongside them, grasping for her hand as the fiery eruptions and violent debris traced their every turn, getting closer, louder, with each blast.

“It’s always the three of us,” she says. “And there are always explosions … Sometimes we’re back in Boston, sometimes we’re in a random field or desert. But there are always bombs. Every time, I wake up thinking I’m going to die.”

It’s March 18, just a few weeks before the wedding. Rebekah’s gown arrives in the mail. We’re at her mother’s house, just a few doors down from hers, and the two are eagerly unwrapping the box.

The subtle white floral patterns of the dress flow into a long train at the bottom. She grabs her crutches and walks into the bathroom to try it on. A minute later, she opens the door to show us.

“It’s a little big, but there’s still time to make adjustments,” she says with a shrug.

She pauses in thought: “I still don’t even know how I’ll be getting down the aisle. These crutches, maybe. Or one of those carts. I have no idea.”

As her mother helps her hang the dress back up against the closet door, Rebekah stops to look at it one last time, before it goes upstairs. Her eyes fixate on the patterns as she leans back in her wheelchair. Her shoulders relax; she exhales softly.

For a moment, her leg is the last thing on her mind.

Image: Kimberly Kilgore

Back at the hospital, Rebekah is overwhelmed. “And tired. I’m so tired.”

Dr. McGarvey nods. There’s no rush on making a decision about the amputation. With the wedding approaching, he tells her to put it on the back burner — for now, at least.

“This is your life. Your leg,” he says, smiling for the first time during the appointment. “You know what you want to do. But for now, just take a break from thinking about it and start your new life.”

As she leaves the hospital, a handful of nurses stops her in the hallway and congratulates her on the upcoming wedding. She smiles and thanks them, wiping the remaining tears from the corners of her eyes. Her face brightens up as she tells them about Noah and Pete.

During a phone conversation the next week, she tells me Noah broke down when she mentioned her possible leg amputation.

“I try to explain to him that I’d still be the same person with a prosthetic," she says. "That I’d be able to walk and run, to play with him again. But he’s so scared just thinking about it.”

Noah and Pete may have healed physically, but Rebekah still carries the burden of their full recovery. Especially Noah hinders on her well-being, or so she thinks. Until she’s back on her feet, either with the help of another surgery or a new prosthetic, the family won’t fully be able to move on.

Over the phone, she sighs and repeats Dr. McGarvey’s advice out loud: “Take a break. Focus on starting your new life with Noah and Pete.”

For now, she will. And so will they.

Image: Mashable