MIAMI -- The worst feeling?
It wasn't 13,000 volts shooting through his body.
It wasn't falling almost two stories.
It wasn't his body catching fire.
It wasn't burning 40 percent of himself.
It wasn't being in a coma for a nightmare month, trapped in his own burned skin and a hallucinatory haze, unable to speak but wanting to scream because doctors and nurses kept poking and cutting, but he had no idea they were doctors or nurses or why they were poking and cutting.
And it wasn't even losing both his arms.
No, the worst feeling was walking into the bathroom after he finally emerged from the hospital bed . . . and realizing that now he was going to need help with even this.
Hector Picard, so very proud, so very self-sufficient, could live without arms.
Dignity, that was another matter.
Life gives you choices. You can curse God for taking two limbs. Or you can thank Him for leaving you legs.
Seventeen years later, Picard laughs and lifts a bottle of beer in his left prosthetic hand as he toasts to possibilities and inspiration and hope.
He plays basketball and racquetball and runs and swims and bikes now (you can see how on YouTube). He has completed four triathlons, which isn't something he had the will or spirit to do before the accident, and he has shaved minutes off his time each race. He ran the three miles and biked the 10 miles and swam the quarter mile in a little more than over an hour. Turns out you don't need arms to embrace living, and you don't need hands to hold on to the things that matter.
"I'm in the best shape of my life," he says.
How?
The answer isn't physical. Well, part of it is, but not the most important part. Picard's father was a mechanic in Cuba, so "resourceful" was a hand-me-down. He attaches a plumbing fixture to the bike for steering with what remains of his left arm, necessity forever the mother of invention, and wires the bike so he can brake with his knees. He shapes and sculpts a bucket to hold a basketball, and can dribble and shoot turnaround jumpers and play pickup games like just about anyone else, though he acknowledges through a smile that his ball-handling can be shaky.
It's not all rainbows and roses, obviously, no matter how rainbow-rosy his attitude. He is always dropping things with his myoelectric hand, a stronger and more flexible alternative to a hook, and it can take him 20 minutes to put a nut on a bolt when it would take you 10 seconds. Something as simple as getting dressed can cause frustration and take too much time. You try putting on socks with your feet.
But some people look at life and see only horse manure. And some people look at horse manure and see only fertilizer. And some people, like Picard, accidentally step in life's horse manure and figure this fertilizer was left by a magical unicorn that would be fun to spend a lifetime chasing.
Finishing 505th out of 629 in his last triathlon?
"I'm just 20 minutes behind the leaders," he says.
No way to cushion a fall going downhill on a bike at 30 mph?
"I don't see fear; I just see the two guys ahead of me I'm going to pass," he says.
Suffering through a divorce now and being alone without a wife's help for the first time?
He shrugs and nods his chin toward where his arms should be.
"This is a great icebreaker to start new conversations with the ladies," he says.
Picard, a 43-year-old real estate agent from Pompano Beach, Fla., does everything from open the car door to work a computer mouse with his feet. And he attacks obstacles as if he has a thousand fists. He isn't content merely skating. He wants to skate fast and jump and go backward. That's how he got one concussion, skating too fast backward.
He pressure cleans and paints and wires his own house, which has no modifications for his disability. That's how he tore a knee ligament, wiring in the attic.
If you think crutches are annoying, try getting around on crutches when you don't have arms. Didn't stop him, though. Once he was healed, he went back up into the attic to move stuff, tore his knee ligament again and started laughing at himself.
He conquered that damn bathroom a long time ago, too, and you can rest assured that one learns to live each breath differently when one can find the value, joy and appreciation in making the smallest victories big.
Oh, there was wallowing and weeping and "Why me?" at the beginning. But then a man with one arm was brought in to the hospital to help him cope, by showing him that he could button a shirt if he really tried, and Picard immediately thought, "I want to do a hell of a lot more than that."
That pride rises up in him sometimes, like it did during a pickup basketball game recently when an opponent complained that Picard's plastic prosthetics were dangerous on fouls. Picard threw them aside angrily, told his teammates not to pass him the basketball and somehow played smothering defense with just his torso.
And then there were his daughters. The oldest was a year old when he accidentally touched that transformer as an apprentice electrician. He might not be able to lift her anymore but, by God, he was going to be the one to raise her.
He got into sports when he saw the look on her face after she struck out three times in a softball game as a child. He decided to become her coach and invented things that allowed him to hit her ground balls and pitch to her. And he rarely has been as moved as he was when he watched her go from a timid hitter to the most aggressive one on the team.
And that's Jazy and Francys, teenagers now, jumping and screaming on the side of the road as Dad finishes his races.
"This has made me a better person," he says. "It made me appreciate life. It made me live to the fullest. I used to be shy. Now I speak in front of groups. I used to be self-conscious. Now I take off my shirt at the beach."
He is shaking his shoulders, passionate as can be, and then nods his chin toward where his arms should be.
"You can tell I'm Cuban," he says. "I still talk with my hands."
He is putting together a website (dontstopliving.org). He wants to talk to returning soldiers from Iraq to help them concentrate on what can be done instead of what can't. And he doesn't plan on merely being an inspiration in these triathlons. He plans to win one.
Swimming is still the hardest part. He has to do it on his back, kicking like a frog, and it is when he always falls behind. And then there's this: "If I get tired or stop, I drown."
But there's a metaphor in there somewhere. You can live life face down, fearing the bottomless, gasping at the unknown ocean of darkness that surrounds you, forever focused on the struggle. Or you can adjust, flip over on your back, let the sun wash over your face and appreciate every last gasping breath that you get.
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