Scott Bolzan - My Life, Deleted: A Memoir

My Life Deleted

a memoir

Scott Bolzan, Joan Bolzan
and Caitlin Rother

To my loving family,
who gave me the will to move forward.

Contents

T HEY TELL ME that the morning of December 17, 2008, started out just like any other.

I routinely arrived at my ninth-floor office in the Hayden Ferry Lakeside building at 5:00 A.M. to beat the traffic and get a head start on the day. There, fueled by several cups of coffee from the break room, I would spend a couple hours of quiet time, going through emails as I watched the morning sunlight catch the water on Tempe Town Lake and brighten the Camelback and Superstition Mountains in the distance. With the economy in free fall and corporate executives realizing it was politically incorrect to fly around in private jets like they used to, I was also working to refocus my airplane management company, Legendary Jets, in new directions.

This was not the first time Id been forced to make an adjustment in my business lifeeverything from a simple but different marketing tact to a major career shiftand I was sure it wouldnt be the last. After playing professional football for several years in my twenties, Id become a financial planner and a pilot then went on to form an aviation charter company that flew corporate executives, entertainers, and organ transplant teams around the country. In less than a year my company had risen from obscurity to being chosen to fly the heart in for the first heart transplant surgery at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Arizona in October 2005.

I soon realized, however, that I wanted to return to my original plan to build relationships with repeat clients rather than always looking for the next new customer. So I sold the charter company in February 2008 and reorganized, retaining the jet management aspect of the business. In September, after the economy took the worst nosedive since the Great Depression, I adjusted once more by modifying my marketing approach to sell airplane trips by the hourusing jet cards, which worked like debit cardsfiguring the market would rebound and jet management would become viable once again.

The new strategy seemed to be working, and things were looking up. One client was ready to buy a block of one hundred hours, possibly later that day. Wed already verbally agreed on many of the terms, and I was putting the finishing touches on my pitch to fit his particular needs. After working away for a couple of hours that morning, I was ready to head downstairs for some designer brew and a fresh blueberry muffin from the caf in the building next door, which opened at 7:00 A.M .

Joan, my wife and college sweetheart, was involved in marketing and sales for our company, but she worked mostly from home, which kept our twenty-four-year-old marriage healthy. Id had to let my assistant, Robyn, go a couple of weeks earlier because of the recession, so our only remaining employee was our bookkeeper, Anita, who came in to the office twice a week and was due in at 9:00. That morning, with my hands full of boxes of paperwork and a bag of lemons from our tree to give her, Id accidentally left my briefcase in the car. So as I was heading out for breakfast, I took the elevator down to the basement parking garage to retrieve my case. The quiet details of daily life.

With the long strap of my briefcase slung over my shoulder, I came back up to the first floor and was walking past the backlit neon blue glass wall when I decided to make a quick pit stop in the mens room. Most of the other people who worked in the twelve-story building didnt arrive until 8:00 or 9:00 A.M. , so the entire floor was empty except for the lone security guard sitting at the opposite end of the building, near the entrance.

I pushed open the mens room door and almost immediately slipped on something greasy on the rectangular beige and gray floor tiles. Everything happened in slow motion as I felt my black leather shoes skid out from under me. As I was falling backward, my eyes ran up the beige wallpaper and cherrywood paneling to the big shiny mirror, and I saw my feet fly above my head.

I did my best to try and brace my fall behind me, but there wasnt much I could do. I dont remember hitting the floor, but my head and left shoulder took the brunt of the impact, splitting my scalp open like a ripe melon. Spanning two and a half inches across, the cut went down to the bone. Because the scalp is rich with blood vessels, the gash began to bleed profusely.

I have no idea how long I was unconscious or how many times I might have fallen again as I struggled to get up. There was nothing close for me to grab onto except the built-in metal trash receptacle, so Im not sure how I actually managed to get to my feet, but I apparently hit my face on something in the process because I ended up with a red scrape across the bridge of my nose.

Somehow I finally managed to pull myself up from the slippery tiles and made it out the door around 7:30, where I ran into a woman heading into the ladies room next door.

I need help, I told her groggily, promptly retreating into the mens room.

Startled by my bloody head wound as I walked away, the woman ran around the corner and into the lobby to fetch the security guard. Appearing a few moments later, he saw me trying to stop the bleeding with a wad of paper towels, my blood mixed in with the oily substance on the floor at my feet where Id fallen.

What is that on the floor? I asked him. What did I slip on?

Later that morning I didnt remember if or how he responded, but I did remember that he brought more paper towels to slow the bleeding until the paramedics could take over. I also remembered him talking to the janitor, who came in after him.

You had better clean that up, he said, sending the custodian into the utility closet to get a mop.

I stumbled into the nearest stall and plunked down on one of the toilets, holding the towels against my head, until the paramedics showed up at 7:50. They laid me on a board, lifted me onto a gurney, hooked me up to an IV, and stabilized me before whisking me away, with the siren blaring. They categorized me as a Level I trauma patient, meaning I needed the most urgent level of care, and rushed me to Scottsdale HealthcareOsborn, a hospital about eight miles and fifteen minutes away in commuter traffic.

I didnt know it yet, but Id lost my life as Id known itmy knowledge, my experiences, and even my identitywhen my skull hit that tile floor. As I reeled with pain on the way to the hospital, I could almost feel the information draining away, leaving me in a foggy, disoriented haze. From that point on, my life was forever changed.

I was pulled out of the haze by the excruciating pain of someone feeling around with his fingers in the open wound in the back of my head. My shoulder hurt too but nowhere near as much. I was lying on a thin, stiff pad on a metal cart in the middle of a wide open room, with people milling around me, all wearing the same thing. I had no idea where I was or what was going on, only that I was sick and these people were trying to help me get better. For a big, tall man like me, it was difficult to get comfortable, especially with my feet hanging off the end of the cart. In fact, it hurt to move at all.

Youre in the emergency room, a woman said to me. Do you remember what happened?

I fell, I said, stating one of the few things I could remember.

Whats your name?

I knew what some words meant but not others, and what little I still knew was continuing to leave me. No matter how hard I tried to hold on to the information, it kept trickling away. I didnt recognize the word name, for example, let alone what my name was.

I dont know, I said. Later I would learn that she listed my name in the chart as Peanut Butter 77, the ERs own version of John Doe.