By Jacquielynn Floyd
The Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — For a couple of minutes during Lt. Carlton Marshall’s last full day in the hospital, we all cried like little girls – me, the Marshalls, possibly even the hospital PR guy sitting over in the corner.
Lt. Marshall, shot in the neck during a SWAT raid 8 ½ grueling months ago, broke down with gratitude for his wife’s unfaltering love and support. Susan Marshall was crying with the sheer relief of having her husband back after so many dark weeks when it seemed he might die, or live permanently in a state not very far from it.
I was crying because I’m soft that way, but also because this is love as constant and profound as gravity: not the sticky, overheated wine-and-flowers passion of easy infatuation, but the bedrock fusion people can share when they have been to hell and back together.
“I’m going to get to be with my wife every night. I’m going to be with my kids every night,” Lt. Marshall said. “I’m going home.”
Home looked pretty iffy for a while. Lt. Marshall, of the Dallas Police Department, was shot Oct. 17 during a “no-knock” raid to serve a warrant on a drug suspect; the man’s 19-year-old girlfriend fired out a window as the police surrounded the house.
The bullet tore a hole through the lieutenant’s neck, shattering several vertebrae and shredding his carotid artery. Two SWAT physicians along on the raid performed a field tracheotomy on the spot. Without them, he would likely have suffocated in his own blood.
The injury was followed by devastating complications: Lt. Marshall suffered pneumonia, meningitis, a stroke. For more than a month, he hovered in a soundless, twilight fog, somewhere beyond the brink of consciousness.
Mrs. Marshall, a detective for the Irving Police Department, put her life on hold. When I first met her in early December, she was tired but determined, clinging to optimism but inexpressibly sad.
But the turning point came in the next few weeks. Carlton Marshall, an inch at a time, started coming back.
“I don’t remember Thanksgiving, but I can remember Christmas,” he said. He remembers the heartfelt cards members of the public sent him; he remembers the presents people sent so his kids would have a holiday.
But with consciousness came reality. Meningitis had left him deaf. After two cochlear implants and countless hours of therapy, he can hear again.
He still must undergo intensive, daily physical therapy. He wants to get out of his wheelchair for good.
He pointed at a fold-up walker propped against the wall: “I can walk about 800 feet. It’s not a very pretty walk, but I’ll pretty it up.”
He has gradually reintroduced himself to his kids, baby Jessica and preschooler Joseph, during weekend “pass” visits from the hospital.
And he wants to make up for the lost months, he said. Thursday was his wife’s birthday, and the lieutenant sweet-talked somebody in the hospital into coming up with a little white-frosted cake.
“I couldn’t go out and shop,” he said. “And I missed our anniversary. I’ll make it up to her.”
Susan shushed him: “I have everything I need,” she said, and for a few quiet seconds we were all a little teary again.
He wants to return to police work eventually, but his expectations are pretty realistic.
He wants to regain all the physical ability he can, but he does not expect to be the athletic, outdoors-loving, action-oriented street cop he was for years working vice, gangs, homicide and SWAT.
Aren’t you angry? I asked.
“I’m not happy about being shot,” he said. “I’m not happy about not being the person I was, but I’ve got to go on. I can never go back on the street, but I hope my experience can still be put to use.”
I understood the point. Yet I would disagree that he’s not the person he used to be. Thursday was the first time we’ve ever really talked, but he seemed very much to be the person his wife and friends described: funny, smart, sincere, proud to be a cop.
“I have my days when I’m a little angry,” he said, returning to the earlier question. “But the truth is, it could be a lot worse.
“This changes the direction of your life. Well, you just have to accept the change and keep going.”
Copyright 2008 The Dallas Morning News