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The Choking Game

Continued from page 3

Levi loved the trip to New York, where he stayed in the Millennium Hotel. His pleasure was evident on the Today show, where he wore his MMA jacket and a big, goofy grin. The grin has been the subject of some discussion between mother and son. Levi is a happy kid, and he can't contort his face into a look of solemnity on cue, so whenever he's on camera, one might think his brain could still use some oxygen.

When the grin is brought up during an interview, he laughs and says, “I look blazed...don't I? Don't I?”

Levi does not reflect on the experience. He has no memory of it, so during an interview he'd rather discuss things that exist in the present, like his MySpace page or his favorite scenes from Borat. And as far as he's concerned, the few minutes of clinical death aren't enough to keep him from his dream of joining the Marines.

The Drahers have a long military background, and Levi had wanted to take on that tradition ever since he was five. He had researched military boarding schools in Texas until he found MMA, and he knew in an instant that's what he wanted. The Marines were the toughest. “First to fight,” he liked to say. The tuition is steep — $25,000 a year — but Levi's parents wanted to give him this chance.

Carrie says that MMA's administration was understanding, compassionate and willing to welcome Levi back after the accident. However, she wanted Levi to go to school in San Antonio until she's sure he's fully healed. She says two private schools would not accept Levi once administrators found out about his accident. So now Levi goes to a public school just up the road from his home. He hates it. He misses the military atmosphere.

He hasn't spoken with a recruiter yet, but is confident the Marines will gladly accept him because, he says, “I'm cool.” (The Press checked with the Marines and, according to a gunnery sergeant who runs a Marine recruiting substation in Webster, an accident like the one Levi suffered would not automatically disqualify him. Policy dictates that doctors would have to review his medical files to determine if there was any permanent damage.)

This afternoon, a gray-haired chauffeur in a black suit parks a black Lincoln Town Car outside the Drahers' apartment and knocks on the door. He is taking Carrie and Levi to a television studio downtown, where Geraldo Rivera will interview them via satellite. In the front seat, Levi fidgets. He's been on medication for ADHD since the third grade and, Carrie says, the fidgeting got worse after the accident. Fascinated by the electric seat adjuster, Levi floats forward and back, up and down.

In the studio, mother and son sit in tall chairs and stare into a television camera about five yards away. Geraldo's voice is channeled through their earpieces.

“Do you ever think about the fact that you were already on the other side there, and but for the intervention of your mom and others, you wouldn't have come back?” Geraldo asks.

“I guess I'm pretty special to be alive,” Levi says through The Grin.

Not one to suffer fools, Geraldo says, “Are you being sincere now, or are you being a wiseguy?”

It's as if Levi had the easy part in this whole thing. He had the luxury of passing out. As he waited to live or die, he didn't have to suffer, like Carrie. In the Lincoln on the way home, Carrie says that, for months after the accident, she heard wailing ambulances that weren't there. She lived in a haunted house, where she would walk into a room and see her son's corpse sprawled on the floor. And as she talks of this hell she had to live through, Levi is telling the chauffeur that you can make an explosive by mixing Mentos and Diet Coke.

Gradually, the phantom sirens faded, and Carrie wouldn't see her son's body everywhere. But the one thing that lingers is the panic that takes over outside a door. The hallucinations out in the open were one thing, but she never knows what's behind the door.

Levi's recovery was remarkable. He had been discharged on day six, in time for the Marine Corps Ball. Carrie was still in awe.

“He led me out on the floor for the traditional mother-son dance,” she recalls. “I had no idea what music was playing...I couldn't take my eyes off his face.”

She has that memory of his face, that same old Levi with the goofy grin who was returned to her for reasons she'll never understand. And she has the memory of a cold blue face with blind eyes. It's something that Levi doesn't understand now, and may not for a while, but whenever Carrie Draher stands outside her son's door, she never knows which face she's going to see.

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