By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

WALES – Stephen Black remembers waking to a woman’s screams and the chime of an open car door.

A panicked woman stood above him, wearing a trench coat and yelling into her cell phone. Behind her was the road.

“I think that was real,” Black said Wednesday, recalling the events of his devastating April 2 accident. “The memory lasts about 10 seconds. After that, I guess I passed out.”

Black, 36, broke his neck in the crash.

On Wednesday, he sat up in the living room of his Wales home, his head immobilized by screws in his skull.

The screws connected to a metal ring around Black’s head. The ring was attached to a framework of four steel rods held into place by an intricate harness.

The contraption is called a “halo.”

“They tell me that I’ll be an inch taller,” Black said.

Most importantly, however, he can stand. He can walk. He can feel his hands and feet. And he can breathe.

“I could be paralyzed,” he said. “I could be dead.”

Black suffered a spinal fracture when the car he was riding in slid off the road around 5 a.m. that Saturday morning, crashing its rear end into a telephone pole before slamming against a pine tree about 30 feet from the road.

Doctors tell Black most people with this kind of break never walk again.

“If I’d moved my neck an eighth of an inch, I’d be a quadriplegic,” he said. His rescuers, however, never let him make that mistake.

Don’t move’

When emergency workers arrived at the site – on West Road in Bowdoin – they urged him to stay still. And patiently, they took him to safety.

“I can’t thank them enough,” Black said. “I want to tell the whole world about them.”

Ian Anderson, a deputy with the Sagadahoc County sheriff’s office, was among the first to arrive. He found Black sitting in the passenger seat of the demolished car.

Formerly a licensed first responder, Alexander knew Black needed to be still and tried to keep him calm.

“Don’t move,” Alexander told him. “Don’t move your head.”

Black seemed calm, the deputy said. He was obviously busted up, though.

“I guess the training paid off,” said Alexander, who has often given first aid at crashes. He even delivered a baby once.

He didn’t have to handle this one alone, though.

A few minutes after he arrived at the scene, an ambulance from Lisbon Emergency Services arrived.

As with Alexander, Black gives a lot of credit to paramedic Mike Blakemore and the other emergency workers who arrived at the scene.

Black remembers hearing Blakemore tell his fellow rescuers to take their time. Slowly, they moved him onto a backboard and then a stretcher.

Finally, they got him into the ambulance, which drove slowly to minimize the bumps as they headed toward Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.

Meanwhile, another ambulance tended to the driver, James Mockler.

Hugs

Details of what happened that night are still sketchy and police are still investigating.

Mockler and Black had run into each other at a party that night. They’d played cards together and Mockler was giving Black a ride home when the crash happened, Black said.

However, Alexander said Wednesday, when he arrived, Mockler was gone. He had apparently crawled over Black to get out of the car, then managed to find his way home a mile or so away.

All the while, he had a broken neck, too, Alexander said.

As police and rescuers were at the crash site, Mockler’s family called for help and he, too, was taken to the hospital.

Mockler is still at Central Maine Medical Center, where he was listed Wednesday in serious condition.

Black said he’s just grateful to be home. He returned a week ago.

He’ll wear the halo until at least October. He won’t be able to work – he has worked for a pool installation company, Clearwater Pools, for 16 years – and he worries he may face delicate surgery.

“One slip and I’m driving around with a straw hanging from my mouth,” he said.

However, he gets to be home with his wife, Mary Lou, and their children, Elizabeth, 7, Christopher, 4, and Jonathan, who is almost 2. Another daughter, Alyssa, 15, lives with her mom.

He gets to see them all.

“I get to hug my wife and my four kids,” Black said.