16
After the “Guillotine”
A freak accident destroyed opera singer Jason Black’s voice. But then God turned “permanent” into “temporary.”
Like most everyone who has endured the ordeal of “moving day,” Jason Black was tempted to vow he’d never move again. How had he and his wife, Tausha, managed to collect so much stuff in just two years of marriage?
On the bright side, all that remained in the town house they were vacating in Burbank, California, were the heavy appliances and the massive glass tabletop he’d agreed to store for a friend. Fortunately, he’d hired a couple of teenagers from church for the afternoon. The monstrous slab weighed well over a hundred pounds and was awkward to maneuver. It was no wonder he’d left it for last.
The hassle notwithstanding, Jason knew the move was a good thing. His career had just taken a giant leap forward with contracts in hand to perform at the Los Angeles Opera and Orange County Opera. Years of training and hard work were beginning to pay off. After a near-fatal car accident in 1999—and a miraculous recovery against all medical odds—his renewed lease on life had the earmarks of a real Cinderella story. The new house was bigger and had a backyard with plenty of room to accommodate Jaxon, their “dream dog,” a 75-pound black lab the couple had always wanted.
One of the boys he’d hired was his own size—six feet tall, 170 pounds. The other, a big-hearted young man, had the build of a linebacker, weighing in at 240 and standing tall at six feet four. Of all the kids in the youth group, he looked most perfect for the job.
Since the tabletop measured about six feet on all sides, they would need to carry it upright, gripping only the edges, which required a lot of hand and upper-body strength. But he was confident the young men could handle it. They’d do the lifting while he spotted them through the doorway to avoid banging it. Tausha was glad to be a spectator and not a participant.
As they inched through the house, the smaller boy lost his grip and dropped one end. When the corner dug into the hardwood floor with a thud, he apologized and quickly assured Jason he could manage.
They lifted the glass again and headed for the door. Then the “linebacker” dropped his end as well, leaving another floor gash.
“At this point we stopped and had a heart-to-heart,” Jason recalled. “I asked, ‘Are you sure about this?’ The big guy said, ‘My fault. I can handle it.’ But after two drops in a row, I decided I’d better take over on one end. I’d moved it before, so I knew I could do it.”
With Jason on one end and the larger boy on the other—space didn’t allow for two to share the load on an end—they reached the front door. The younger guy went through first, moving backward and stooping as low as possible so the glass could clear the lintel. Jason leaned over as well, his right shoulder, face, and neck pressing hard against the glass.
Then abruptly the big guy dropped his end again, only this time he stood over the hard concrete doorstep instead of the wood floor.
The tabletop broke in two along a crack that ran above Jason’s head. The piece on top was now free to fall. It did, and it sliced across his exposed neck. The razor-sharp edge severed both jugular veins and the nerves leading to his right arm.
He fell to the floor. So did the rest of the glass, though without causing further injury to anyone.
Jason knew the trauma would hit Tausha like a ton of bricks. Only a few years earlier, she and Jason were involved in an accident that pinned him in the vehicle “for what seemed like forever” as the Jaws of Life took twenty minutes to free him from the wreckage. All the while she’d suffered through her own injuries while listening to him cry out in pain.
Still, he yelled, “Call 9-1-1!”
Then Jason told the “linebacker” to hold him upside down to keep what little blood he had left flowing to his brain to keep him conscious. He told the smaller guy to grab a moving blanket to stanch the flow of blood. A neighbor who’d seen the accident rushed over with clean cloth diapers to use instead.
The smaller young man held Jason’s neck closed while Tausha called for help. A fire station was around the corner, and an ambulance arrived within minutes. Although conventional wisdom says Jason should have died within minutes, by the grace of God and the quick actions of those around him, he never even lost consciousness.
“When they loaded me in, I decided I’d better pray,” he said. “I come from a family of ministers. I figured that saying exactly what Jesus taught us to pray was the best approach, so I started to say the Lord’s Prayer. Ordinarily I know it frontward and backward, but that day I couldn’t remember a single word. Under the circumstances, I trusted it was enough just to think of asking for God’s help.”
St. Joseph’s Medical Center was a mile away. But emergency responders recognized that Jason needed a fully staffed and equipped trauma center, and they determined to transport him through LA traffic to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood, at least half an hour away.
In the ambulance, Jason experienced pain “beyond description” as the EMT reached into the wound to hold the severed veins together as best he could. Jason’s blood loss was so rapid and so severe that he and the medical team could “hear” the blood pumping from his body.
“I felt the most tired I can ever remember being in my life,” he recalled. “All I had to do was shut my eyes and I’d fall into the most peaceful, warm, comfortable place ever, and just go to sleep. But I knew if I did, I’d die and not come back. I had to choose: sleep or stay with the pain and fight through it. I spent a lot of energy staying awake.”
He knew the ER staff’s primary concern was to do everything possible to save his life. Nevertheless, upon arrival he tried to impress upon them also to be careful with his voice. He knew from previous experience in emergency surgery that doctors are not always careful about “secondary concerns” when faced with potentially fatal trauma. Still, he’d spent years turning his voice into a finely honed instrument. He was somehow confident he’d survive the operation and wanted to come through it with his career intact as well.
Jason awoke in recovery several hours later, grateful to be alive. No one in the ER could recall someone surviving injuries so severe. But he quickly discovered he was unable to move his right arm, and doctors informed him this was irreversible. The muscles in his right diaphragm were paralyzed as well, restricting his ability to breathe.
What’s more, he couldn’t speak. He could not even whisper, for his right vocal cord also was paralyzed. Normally speech is possible because the vocal cords come together in the windpipe, opening and closing like two Japanese folding fans. The accident had severed the nerve, freezing the right cord in the open position. Before surgery he’d feared waking with a damaged voice. To have no voice at all was a dreadful shock.
“The cords also open and close when you swallow,” he explained. “Not only was I unable to make any sound, I also felt I was constantly in danger of drowning in my own saliva. I was assured by the experts that this was permanent. They said, ‘It’s never coming back. Let it go. Learn to cope.’”
Six months later Jason had learned to cope. He’d learned to communicate with Tausha by whistling his responses to simple questions. He’d undergone another surgery in a long-shot attempt to restore function to his arm. It failed, so he went on enduring electrical sensations “like grabbing hold of a live wire,” which are common as nerve endings in paralyzed limbs slowly die away.
He wasn’t bitter at the thought that his career, and his passion for performing music, was a thing of the past. That’s because he could never quite convince himself it was true.
“I didn’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t mean to sound arrogant or prideful, but I never really went to that place of massive despair or hopelessness. I remember once trying that on like a coat, and it just didn’t fit. I’ve always felt that things just are the way they are with no one to blame, especially not God. The important question is what are you going to do about it?”
One morning, sitting in bed before rising for the day, Jason did something about his predicament that surprised even him. Without giving it much thought, he opened his mouth and said, “Hello.”
And, just like that, his ability to speak “returned.” It wasn’t as if he could sing opera that very day, and at first he approached what had happened with “cautious optimism.” The sounds he made, crude at first, improved daily with exercise. The truth was undeniable: What medical science told him was gone forever, God gave him back. Within two months he was singing again.
Today he’s a professional singer and a motivational speaker. He shares this simple message:
“Yes, it was a healing. But it wasn’t like a light switch turning on. I know some people are healed instantly like that. I think God did it this way for me—slowly and painstakingly—so I could encourage people to keep believing even if they don’t leap up out of a wheelchair or have their cancer disappear overnight. It reinforces the hope that anybody can be well and whole. If God did this for me, then he can do it for you, too. Have faith.”