Positivity: Staging a Dramatic Comeback

From Providence, Rhode Island:

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Trooper Brendan Doyle was wheeled out of Rhode Island Hospital yesterday, under the warm summer sun that he hadn’t felt in three weeks and two days, and gave the thumbs up to the applause of family, friends, and hospital staff.

He’d nearly died from severe head injuries after being punched to the pavement, police say, by an alleged reckless driver last month. But his steady recovery since then has surprised his doctors and overjoyed his family and friends, who call him “miracle boy.” He was now on his way to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston.

His mother, Maureen Adams, spoke for him as she tearfully thanked everyone for their support, from the firefighters and doctors who saved his life, to the state police who visited around the clock, and well-wishers who sent hundreds of cards that papered his room in the neuro-intensive-care unit.

But one question could only be answered by Doyle.

Will you come back and be a Rhode Island state trooper?

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, giving the thumbs up again and touching off cheers and laughter.

The 25-year-old trooper, nicknamed “Buzz” by his family for the way he used to buzz around the house as a toddler, had followed in the path of two uncles when he joined the state police in 2005. A marathon runner like his father, six-time Ocean State champion Robert Doyle, the young trooper earned a reputation as a hard-charger. He risked injury several times — when a drunken-driver slammed into his cruiser in 2005, when a motorcyclist he was trying to stop drove at him several months ago, and then, on June 16, when he tried to stop a driver in downtown Providence……

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