ORIGINALLY PRINTED: 04/04/10
A love story
By Mark Konkol

Aimee Pierog married Marine Cpl. Yuriy Zmysly on a frigid Wednesday
morning on the last day of fall during the worst year of their
lives.

For the courthouse ceremony on Dec. 20, 2006, she wore a white cowl-neck sweater and carried a small bouquet of white roses. He was stylish in a black-and-gray button-up dress shirt.

When the judge asked them to pledge their love and fidelity "in sickness and in health," the bride felt her pulse quicken. She knew just what that meant.

And she didn't hesitate. She lowered herself beside Yuriy's wheelchair, slid the ring he was holding onto her own finger and said, "I do."

Asked whether he'd take Aimee as his wife, Yuriy nodded emphatically.

Then they shared a short, sweet kiss in front of the gathered witnesses -- two of their friends and Aimee's parents.

"It so wasn't the wedding I always imagined . . . " Aimee says, then trails off, lost in thought for a moment.

"I knew this was the man I wanted to be with forever, even though he's in a wheelchair. Even though he can't talk and can't see.

"We didn't know if we would have a chance to get married. He almost died once, twice, no, three times. Jesus . . . people said I could just leave him. But I can't. I love him. And I want to be with him forever."

She knew that almost from the start. They were engaged just three months after a friend fixed them up, and two weeks before Yuriy shipped off to war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The time they spent apart during Yuriy's deployment was supposed to be the greatest test of their love.

As things turned out, it wasn't.

LOVE HAPPENS

They met on a warm autumn afternoon, Oct. 6, 2004. Yuriy was home in Lake Zurich on leave after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was all tall and skinny, in tight jeans and a Doors T-shirt.

"I liked his eyes," says Aimee. "They're green but change colors . . . sometimes, they're blue. He's very handsome."

Aimee -- short, thin and wavy-haired -- was just 18. She'd recently split from her high school boyfriend and wasn't looking for love. It happened anyway. They talked for hours and kissed.

The next day, Yuriy called. "He said, 'I don't know what's going on, but I really like you,' " Aimee says. "He asked if I wanted to hang out."

So she drove the 50 miles from her parents' house in Oak Lawn to Yuriy's mother's place in Lake Zurich, and they spent the next 10 days getting to know each other before Yuriy was due back on base to deploy to Iraq, and a war zone.

Yuriy showed off at the skate park. They went bowling. They cuddled and kissed and talked about . . . everything.

He left Oct. 14.

Then, on Jan. 23, 2005, two days after Aimee turned 19, Yuriy was back home on leave. He told Aimee he wanted to be with her forever and handed her a ring box.

"It was empty," she says. "I was like, 'What are you doing? Are you trying to trick me?' He said, 'No, it doesn't belong in a box. It belongs on your hand.' "

He gave her the ring and she said yes. It was all happening so quickly. But Yuriy was headed back overseas, and it felt right.

"He left for Iraq, and it felt like someone took some part of me away. I was so scared. We had just met. I was like, 'Oh, God, please let him come home safe.' "

'HEY BABY LOVE'

While Yuriy was half a world away, living in abandoned buildings in Al Asad, Iraq, Aimee was taking general-education classes at Moraine Valley Community College and working part time at a day-care center in Hickory Hills. She dreamed of one day being a radiologist.

In Iraq, Yuriy was his unit's go-to guy for fixing busted-up Humvees. Sometimes, he traveled into battle zones to tow blown-up vehicles back to base. The danger was always there. His unit would take small-arms fire at times, and one of his buddies was killed in a roadside explosion.

But all of that melted away in the e-mails and letters through which Yuriy and Aimee made their daily declarations of love. Yuriy would write "the cutest" run-on sentences, substituting periods and commas with "baby" and "honey."

"Hey baby I was just looking at our pictures from when we first met baby I miss those good memories honey This place sucks honey," Yuriy wrote in April 2005. "I always think how nice it would be to be able to sleep right there next to you baby It's going to be wonderful baby It's going to be great honey."

There was never a word of how scared he was, how he worried he wouldn't make it home. He never wrote of the guy who died in the roadside bombing. Instead, he just wrote how much he loved her. How lucky he was to have her.

In turn, Aimee says, "He would get me to talk more about things than I normally would. I was more private than him. I opened up in those letters, and he showed me that he genuinely cared about me. For some people, that distance doesn't work. But I fell even more in love with him."

She has all of Yuriy's letters in a box she marked "memories."

But these days, she says, "I kinda can't look at them anymore. He can't write them anymore. And remembering that . . . it's just hard."

'MY HEART WAS CRUSHED'

On Aug. 7, 2005, Aimee watched the buses filled with Marines -- and her Marine -- roll into the base in Cherry Point, N.C.

"They were all in uniform and freshly shaved, and I'm looking at their faces and saying, 'He's got to be here. He has to.'

"I ran all the way to the last bus. He had to be on the last bus. And there he was. I jumped over some backpacks and jumped on him, practically knocked him over."

They were together this time for a little over a week before she had to return to school.

"Our life together consisted of counting down days," Aimee says.

A few weeks before Aimee was scheduled to visit the base again, Yuriy complained of pain in his abdomen. Then, on Jan. 9, 2006, a friend found Yuriy in the bathroom, in tears, doubled over in pain. At the base hospital, Yuriy was told his appendix had ruptured. He needed emergency surgery.

Yuriy called Aimee to reassure her. The surgery was routine, he told her. And he asked her not to tell his mother, so she wouldn't worry.

"He said, 'I love you,' " Aimee says, "and promised to call me when he woke up."

But she would never hear Yuriy's voice again.

When her cell phone did finally ring -- at 5 the next morning -- Aimee was surprised to hear the voice of Yuriy's pal, Cpl. Matt Housen. The news wasn't good: Yuriy's throat had swollen shut after the surgery. No one knew why. He couldn't breathe for a long time.

Housen told Aimee to call Yuriy's mother and get to the base as soon as possible.

When she did, Yuriy was hooked up to machines in a hospital bed.

"My heart was crushed," she says. "It was like someone punched me in the stomach and everywhere else."

Later, she'd learn of a problem after the surgery, that Yuriy's breathing tube had been removed without a doctor present, his throat had closed, and he suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain.

Aimee quit school so she could be with Yuriy. She'd sit with him every day. The doctors told her: In all likelihood, Yuriy was going to die. It was just a matter of time.

TEARS, AND HOPE

For nearly three months, Yuriy remained in a coma. He developed pneumonia and suffered complications from high blood pressure and a racing heart rate.

One day, Aimee says, "I was sitting next to him. He reached over to touch my shoulder, and then his head went backwards. He had a stroke right there. They had to shock him twice to get a normal heart rate. That did even more damage to his brain."

Aimee and Yuriy's mother decided to bring Yuriy back home to Chicago to make sure he got the best care. But after weeks at RML Specialty Hospital in Hinsdale, the doctors told them it was likely that Yuriy would remain in a vegetative state. His hands -- stuck to his chest -- would remain that way. It was most likely, given his condition, that he'd die. If not, he would remain bedridden in a nursing home for the rest of his life, the doctors told them.

Aimee cried over Yuriy in his hospital bed at the news.

"I was in his ear saying, 'You have to wake up. You promised you would marry me. You can't leave me now.' "

And right then, she says, her love started to cry with her. His tears gave Aimee hope.

Later, a nurse flicked on the lights, and Yuriy's whole body flinched.

"I said, 'Did you see it? Did you see it?' I made her do it again. Yuriy, the poor guy, flinched, like, 50 times," Aimee says. "He wasn't awake, but he was showing signs of awareness."

Days after that, the Eric Clapton song "My Father's Eyes" came on the radio, and tears streamed down Yuriy's cheeks.

In March 2006, he came out of the coma.

Yuriy's mother had him transferred to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, hoping that more-intensive treatment would help.

With therapy, Yuriy soon could breathe on his own and eat pureed food. Doctors injected his arms with Botox and forced his frozen ankles to flex for the first time in months. Soon, Yuriy could move his arms and feet. Braces on his hands and feet help prevent his muscles and joints from locking up again. One of Yuriy's doctors, Dr. Stacy McCarty, called Yuriy's improvement "above and beyond" what's expected from patients with anoxic brain injury.

For each tiny accomplishment, Aimee was at his side. To remember, she keeps her collection of hospital visitor passes -- inside the same box of memories that hold the letters from Yuriy she can no longer bear to read.

'GET HIM OUT OF THERE'

All the progress Yuriy had made took a big hit when word came from Washington that he had been declared "medically retired" from the military. That meant the government wouldn't continue to pick up the tab for his treatment at the Rehabilitation Institute.

Yuriy was transferred to Hines Veterans Hospital in Maywood, where doctors said Yuriy had recovered as much as he ever would and decided there was no longer any need to give him the type of intensive therapy he'd received at the Rehabilitation Institute.

Aimee says she "wasn't going to let him rot in a hospital bed. We had to get him out of there."

So, by then 20 years old, she moved her severely brain-injured, medically retired Marine fiance into her parents' living room and set about taking care of him. With her mother's help, Aimee made sure Yuriy took his medication and moved him enough to prevent bedsores. She showered him in a lawn chair, emptied his bed pans and tried to mimic the type of physical therapy that the nurses at the Rehabilitation Institute had provided.

Every time Yuriy had a medical appointment, Aimee would muscle his wheelchair out the side door of her parents' house to take him.

Meanwhile, she dodged calls from bill collectors who were trying to repossess Yuriy's special wheelchair and scoured the Internet for therapies that might help him -- and for charities that might help pay for them.

All of her focus was on Yuriy.

"I didn't do my hair," she says. "I didn't get dressed. I didn't eat right. I was so consumed with getting him better . . . that was the only thing that mattered."

'THE WORST YEAR EVER'

Then, in late 2006, Yuriy's family began to disintegrate.

In August, his father, Vasil Zmysly, died in a car wreck in Russia where he was living.

Weeks later, Yuriy's dog, Mickey, escaped from the yard, got hit by a car and died.

And in October that year, Yuriy's mother, Tamara, took her own life. She'd suffered from severe depression. She didn't leave a note.

Her death had a profound effect on Yuriy. He wouldn't eat or drink. He refused to get out of bed or go to therapy.

"He wanted to die, too," Aimee says. "It was like a country song: How can you lose everything in one year? Your independence is gone. Your brain is severely injured. You can't talk. You can't see. And all this. Unbelievable. The worst year ever."

Aimee sank into depression, as well.

"I was grieving our old life. I'd see flashbacks of what could have been and what was. Our life was good. We were happy with each other . . . and all this happened. I was angry. I was angry at the hospital. I was angry at the doctors. He survived two war zones and comes home and gets hurt. I was grieving all these losses at once, and it was hard to get out of bed."

After several months, though, she willed herself out of her funk. They couldn't afford another setback. She wouldn't let Yuriy give up.

"I told him, 'You are still alive. You are still here. You have to start doing something. You have to try to recover the best you can because I know you can do it.' "

She talked with him about getting married. That seemed to make Yuriy happy.

"He knew I would not leave him," she says, "and getting married set that in stone."

For the first time in five months, Yuriy got out of bed. He went to therapy. He started to eat solid food. Finally, he, too, had something to look forward to.

'Should have a fair shake'

Over the next two years, Yuriy was sick a lot. Money was tight.

Aimee reached out to veterans charities, but many groups could provide only limited support because Yuriy wasn't disabled in combat.

At home, their life in that converted living room -- crowded with two beds, a padded table and exercise equipment -- became suffocating.

Aimee's biggest fear: that she would die first.

She says that's why they filed a medical malpractice lawsuit over the care Yuriy had received at the Marine base hospital. But the case was soon dismissed. The judge cited a doctrine that prohibits military personnel from suing the government for medical malpractice that occurs while they were on active duty.

An appeals court refused to reconsider. On March 15, their lawyer filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes the high court might hear the case and change the law. Aimee knows it's a long shot.

U.S. Rep. Dan Lipinski says he's monitoring the progress of a bill before Congress that calls for allowing military personnel to make medical malpractice claims against the government, especially in cases like Yuriy's. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin cited Yuriy's situation while making his case last year for a bill that calls for providing additional training and pay for family caregivers of wounded soldiers. A spokesman says he's keeping tabs on whether the Supreme Court takes up the case.

"People like Yuriy Zmysly, who put their lives on the line for their country, should have their day in court and a fair shake against the government that they risk their lives for," Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker says. "The government shouldn't be liable for every hangnail someone gets on a base, but that is not the case here. . . . If they hit a dead end with the Supreme Court, we'll go back to the drawing board to try another way with legislation."

All of that is beyond Aimee and Yuriy's control. So Aimee says she focuses on Yuriy and how she can help further his recovery. So far, Yuriy has grown strong enough to squat against a wall, ride an exercise bike and walk -- practically running in a herky-jerky motion -- with the help of a therapist. Speech therapy helped him learn how to smile again and to communicate in a very basic way, grunting, "Uh-huh," and saying his wife's name -- "Ah-mee."

His sight has returned a bit -- enough to see lights and color and to make out movement.

"If I'm really close to him, I'll close my eyes, and he'll close his eyes," Aimee says. "I get him to mimic me, so I know he sees me. Walking is a definite goal."

They communicate through an all-day game of "20 questions." Yuriy responds to Aimee's queries with blinks, grunts and nods. Sometimes, she says, it's like she can read his mind.

Through it all, she says, they still love each other, even when they get on each other's nerves.

"He doesn't have any patience," Aimee says. "I get mad at him sometimes, like when I'm exhausted and my head finally hits the pillow and right then he wants pudding. We fight about little things like that. Really dumb stuff, like everybody else."

More than anything, not being able to talk to each other puts the greatest strain on their relationship.

"I would give anything to hear him talk," Aimee says. "If he could just say, 'Hey, you're pissing me off.' Or: 'I love you.' Or something."

'Don't feel bad for us'

People who hear about Aimee and Yuriy often tell her how badly they feel for them.

"I want to tell them not to feel bad for us," Aimee says. "We're not a charity case."

Still, even though they didn't ask for it, the charity they really did need ended up finding them when they least expected it -- at a fund-raiser for another disabled soldier.

That wounded Marine's father pointed them out in the crowd to Mary Beth Beiersdorf, president of Salute Inc., a Palatine-based charity that helps disabled veterans.

"Yuriy was all slumped over. Aimee was behind him, slumped over, too," Beiersdorf says. "The father said, 'That couple over there is under the radar. They don't ask for help, but they need it. Go help them.' So we did."

At first, that came in the form of exercise equipment that Salute bought for Yuriy, and help with paying bills and getting Yuriy additional therapy.

About a year ago, Beiersdorf asked Aimee: What would make your life better?

Aimee, who has always lived with her parents, answered right away: to live with her husband independently.

Salute launched a fund-raising campaign to help them buy a house -- and make it handicap-accessible.

In January, Aimee and Yuriy picked out a brick ranch on a corner lot a few miles from her parents' place in Oak Lawn.

Salute lined up a group of contractors who volunteered to give the place a makeover, complete with a wheelchair-accessible shower, ramps and an elevator. Beiersdorf's group got Ashley Furniture to donate a decorating consultant and furniture for every room in the house.

It's as close to a happy ending as Aimee and Yuriy dreamed of.

Salute also contacted other charities, including the Semper Fi Fund, which donated money to pay for the elevator and even bought the Zmyslys a handicap-accessible van.

Aimee and Yuriy's new house should be move-in ready this summer. One day, they hope to raise a family there.

"Yuriy always wanted to have a house and a wife and kids. This is like a dream is coming true," Aimee says, "even though he's not in the position he thought he would be. It makes us happy that these people care enough to help us. Yuriy can feel like the hero that he is."