Blind now, but focused

A year ago, Bria Bell sat next to her boyfriend in a west Omaha apartment.

It was early on a Friday night, and Bria and seven teenagers were talking about what to do, about whether to go to a high school basketball game.

Then Bria's boyfriend pulled a 9 mm handgun from his pocket and began to show it off.

Bria recoiled.

“Hey,” she told him. “Put that away or leave.”

Others in the apartment, near 120th and Blondo Streets, echoed that.

“Put it away,” they hollered.

But the boyfriend, Calvin D. Jones, son of the former Husker running back by the same name, didn't put the gun away. Instead, he flashed it at Bria, as if to show her the safety was on, according to those gathered.

“Babe,” he said, “look.”

He pressed it to her temple. Bria turned to get up, to get away from him, when Jones and everyone else there found out the safety wasn't on.

A bullet entered Bria's left eye, passed through her brain and exited behind her right temple.

Bria, then 17, crumpled to the floor. Their ears ringing, some of the teenagers ran.

Jones sprinted out and ditched the gun, then returned to Bria's side.

Someone called 911. With Bria choking on blood, Jones, 17, administered CPR. Another teen started chest compressions.

Paramedics arrived and rushed her away.

The teen who had been pounding on Bria's chest called out.

“It was an accident, Bree,” he shouted. “Everything's going to be OK.”

* * *

That day, Bria's mom, Margie Bell, human resources director at PayPal, had arrived with her sister in Washington, D.C., for something she'd never thought she'd see: a presidential inauguration.

That night, husband Bryan, a sales manager at Standard Heating and Air Conditioning, called her with the words she'd never thought she'd hear: “Bria's been shot.”

Margie and her sister returned to Omaha on the first morning flight. Crying and craving any bit of news, she paired constant texts to Bryan with nonstop prayer.

“Please God,” Margie begged over and over, “do not let her die.”

By the time she joined Bryan at Bria's bedside at the Nebraska Medical Center, tubes snaked out of Bria's body. Dr. Arun-Angelo Patil had removed the right side of her skull to allow her brain room to swell.

Her face was swollen and distorted — so much so that Margie said she could recognize her daughter only by the Mickey Mouse decals on her fingernails.

The Bells had raised their daughter, the second-youngest of their five children, in the comfort of the Hillsborough neighborhood of northwest Omaha.

Now they were pressing for her chances of survival. Finally, reluctantly, the doctors gave them the odds: 5 percent.

But, the doctors said, we'll put her in a coma to minimize the stress on her brain. Every 24 hours she makes it is a new day, a new chance for life.

So the Bells and their extended family gathered and prayed. They marked each 24 hours with a mixture of gratitude and grief, worry and relief. She was alive. But what kind of life would it be? How long would it last?

After five long days, Margie and Bryan Bell stood at their daughter's bedside, each cupping one of her hands.

“Bria, if you know who I am, squeeze Mommy's hand.”

She did. They asked her to move her foot. She did.

Nurses said it was probably just an involuntary reflex. Doctors doubted she could respond while in a coma.

Bria did it again and again.

But it wasn't till her brother, Christian, then 12, kept asking her to do it that they realized she might be the same old Bria.

“Squeeze my hand,” Christian said, for the 20th time.

She scratched it instead.

“Mom, Bria's just as mean to me as ever,” Christian said. “Even in a coma.”

* * *

Bria survived. Something else, something precious, did not. Her eyesight.

But Bria didn't realize it. The teen believed her eyes were swollen shut because, well, she'd been shot in the head.

About 10 days after the shooting, her mom broke the news.

Bria's reaction: She called a friend, incredulous.

“I was, like, ‘Did you know I'm blind!?' ” she said. “And she was, like, ‘Ummm, yeah.' ”

The bullet destroyed Bria's left eye but actually missed her right eye and the optical nerve on its way through her head.

Dr. James Gigantelli, Bria's ophthalmologist at the Nebraska Medical Center, eventually told the Bells the good news and bad news. The good: Her right eye remained intact, as did her visual cortex, the part of her brain that processes images.

The bad: Her optic nerve — Gigantelli described it as the USB cable between her eye and the visual cortex — didn't survive the pressure of the bleeding, swelling and vibration caused by the bullet. Normally a yellowish orange, it had withered into a chalky white.

Absent a miracle or a technological advance, Gigantelli said, Bria would not see again.

It wasn't until weeks later that reality hit. Nurses would walk into her room at Immanuel Medical Center — where she was transferred for rehabilitation — without announcing themselves.

Bria realized she had no way of finding out who was in her room.

Bria had never felt so alone, so scared. She called her parents — and the Bells took turns sleeping in her hospital room.

She spent a month in the hospital, but the pain didn't end when she got home.

Until surgery in April to replace the right side of her skull, she strapped on a helmet each time she rose to go to the bathroom. Severely weakened, she felt like she would pass out whenever she stood.

She developed a staph infection that resulted in painful boils on her hip and legs. She suffered from nausea and nightmares from the painkillers — swearing that cats and ducks were invading her room.

And then there was coping with the loss of her sight.

“I was, like, ‘God, how am I going to do this?' ” she said. “ ‘Why did this happen to me?' ”

* * *

A year after the shooting, Bria slides across the wood floors of her family's kitchen.

Like an ice skater, she glides across the room. With each step, her foot slides to the side slightly. She slowly waves an arm in front of her, to make sure nothing's in her way.

“Like vacuum cleaners in the hallway,” she jokes. “Right, Mom?”

A few minutes later, she's spooning Chinese food at the kitchen table when her ninja hearing, as her mom calls it, kicks in. She overhears her dad in the next room recounting being able to recognize her in her hospital bed only by an eyebrow.

Her soft sobs fill the kitchen.

Bryan Bell says his daughter's low moments are few and far between — and they're usually replaced by laughter.

“She laughs, then cries, then laughs,” Bryan says.

A few minutes after her tears dry, she playfully threatens to take out her fake eye and put it in her little brother's cereal box.

Bria's life before and after the shooting is a study in contrasts. She's more decisive, more willing to air her opinion than the girl who used to blend in to crowds. She's outgoing and at times ornery, quick to poke fun at her friends or herself.

She's picky about her clothes and self-conscious about her artificial eye. But she refuses to wear dark glasses, just as she refused to cover up her shaved head after surgery.

“She told me ‘These scars — I've paid for these scars,' ” Margie says. “ ‘When people see me, I want them to know what I've been through.' ”

Patil, her brain surgeon, says some of Bria's new outlook may be psychological, spurred by a new lease on life. Some of it may be neurological.

The bullet passed through Bria's right frontal lobe — the part of the brain that controls emotions. Studies have shown that people with damage in that area can become more outgoing, more social.

In a sense, Patil said, the bullet hit the best part of her brain. The damage hasn't affected her intellectual ability.

Despite missing the spring semester, Bria has battled back to earn an academic letter and a 3.57 GPA.

With the help of her parents and Omaha Public Schools teacher Rachael Moreano, she took a full course load this past summer at her house. That required a bit of creativity — Moreano used pipe cleaners to help Bria learn complex shapes in geometry — and a bunch of commitment. OPS teachers such as Dean Stamp and Mary Pistillo have been working with her to learn Braille, keyboarding and mobility — critical skills for college.

And with the help of audiotapes and her parents, Bria has read the classics: “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” “A Farewell to Arms” and her new favorite, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Something about that book spoke to her, spoke to issues of crime, of injustice and of the untapped courage of everyday people like Boo Radley or Atticus Finch.

Or Bria Bell.

The 18-year-old doesn't dwell on her lost sight.

She says she's blessed that she had sight before, unlike others who are blind from birth. Blue is still blue. Little brothers are still little brothers.

“I can picture everything in my mind,” she says.

“And in your mind, am I thin or fat?” her mom asks.

“Like Halle Berry, Mom,” she quips. “Like Halle Berry.”

Gigantelli, an ophthalmologist for 20 years, and Patil, a brain surgeon for 40 years, said few patients have handled the reality of lost sight with such calm.

“I tell people the lack of sight does not mean a lack of life,” Gigantelli said. “But I don't know that I've had anyone embrace the challenge better than Bria. Every time I have to go into the ICU and give the talk about the lost hope of sight, she gives me inspiration.”

* * *

Funny thing. A girl loses her sight. And gains focus.

Loses her sight. And gains confidence.

Loses her sight. And gains a vision.

Bria doesn't hesitate when asked what she wants to do.

“I am going to become an attorney.”

In November, she followed prosecutor Tressa Alioth, a deputy Douglas County attorney, around the courthouse.

She listened to Alioth prepare cases. She talked to a juvenile court judge. She sat in on the testimony of Sarah Schramm — a young woman who was kidnapped, shot three times and left for dead in north Omaha.

When they left the courtroom, Bria turned to Alioth and said: “Wow, I didn't go through anything compared to her.”

Alioth said that is typical of Bria's humility.

“She doesn't wallow,” Alioth said. “She doesn't foster anger and animosity. It's really a credit to her parents, to how they've raised her, how they've kept her motivated. She's vowed she's not going to let this keep her down.”

The shooting won't keep Bria from dancing at the annual Links Inc. cotillion in April — a dance she's rehearsed for weeks.

Won't keep her from graduating with her Omaha Central High School class this spring. Won't keep her from going to college, then to Creighton Law School.

Won't keep her from talking about the stupidity of guns and gunplay. When she returned to Central last fall, Bria asked her teachers if she could address the students in each class.

Someday, she said, she'll branch outside her school.

Her message is simple, her presence profound. One step in the classroom, one slide of her cane, one mention of a gun pressed to her temple — and her audience is spellbound.

“It's sad that people feel like they have to carry a gun to be cool,” she says. “Guns are nothing to play with. Just because a person doesn't die doesn't mean they don't suffer. And for what? For what?”

There's something else she says the shooting won't do. It won't keep her from seeing again.

On that point, Gigantelli is firm: The optic nerve isn't working. But the doctor also tells her not to discount the medical marvels that may be ahead.

Bryan and Margie won't discount another power.

“We're people of faith,” Margie says. “Certainly this optic nerve isn't something He can't solve.”

Indeed, the girl with the tattoo of angel wings, the date 1.16.09 and the word “miracle” on her upper back isn't ruling anything out.

“I have a huge dream,” Bria says. “I will drive a Range Rover one day.”

This time, she's not joking.

“I'm not going to let this stop me.”

Contact the writer: 444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com