It was Hardison’s face now, though it seemed to have a will of its own. The face started to swell. It was expected, but still striking. In a few minutes, the face was 50 percent larger than it had been. “It looked like a boxer’s face at the end of 15 rounds,” said Rodriguez.
Twenty-six hours after it started, the operation was over. Technically, the surgery was a triumph. Still, Rodriguez didn’t yet know if the transplant would take. “I’m 100 percent convinced it will work. It has to work. But you never know if it’s going to work.” Three days later, the swelling had diminished a bit. “I can see some movement of his eyelids,” Rodriguez recalled. It was the sign he was waiting for.
Hardison
When i visited Hardison in the hospital two months after the operation, what was most startling about his appearance was his youth. His burned face had been scarred and hairless, his nose a stub; he looked 70. With his new face, he appeared to be in his mid-20s, Rodebaugh’s age, and, coincidentally, Hardison’s age at the time of his injury. The face was still swollen and round, and without expression since he couldn’t yet move his mouth or cheeks. It was impossible to read his mood. To me, he looked vaguely unhappy. He drummed his fingers and tapped his ear, which wasn’t quite working yet. His tongue still wasn’t moving much—the dissection of blood vessels in his neck had impaired its function—and his voice was garbled, seeming to come from deep inside him, as if he were performing an act of ventriloquism. Hardison was impatient. Would he be able to talk again? Rodriguez assured him his progress was ahead of schedule. “Smile,” he said, and Hardison mustered the hint of a smile. Rodriguez hoped for more. “Smile,” he repeated. “I did,” said Hardison.
Hardison will be on immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of his life. Even with that precaution, Rodriguez said, “there will be a rejection—not if but when.” Rodriguez estimates that between three and five of the now 30 patients who have received facial transplants have died after rejection. When it happens to Hardison, doctors will treat it with massive amounts of immunosuppressants and steroids and hope for the best. In the meantime, Hardison still has considerable pain through his cheeks and forehead and always will. Doctors carefully titrate his Oxycodone, concerned about his past addiction. “I can live with the pain,” Hardison assured me.
The next step in Hardison’s recovery was to reintroduce himself to his five kids, his mother, sister, brother, and Chrissi. It was the kids he worried about most. Nine weeks after the operation, on October 8, they walked tentatively into his hospital room. Hardison bounded toward them with a surprisingly quick step. His face was slowly healing, but the rest of him was fit, almost athletic. Hardison hugged each one fiercely, grabbed tissues to wipe the tears that seeped out from under his new eyelids.
The youngest especially, the 10- and 11-year-old boys, put on brave faces. “No matter how big of a medical miracle it may be, that doesn’t make it comfortable for his kids,” said Chrissi. “It’s still having to adjust to someone else’s face on his body.” After all, a face is more than a face. It’s an identity, a signal to the world of who a person is. By four months of age, infants’ brains recognize faces at nearly an adult level—especially the faces that belong to their parents. The younger boys touched his hair, now a half-inch long. One of the boys joked that he’d buy his dad earrings for his pierced ears. “Hell, no,” said Hardison. It was reassuring to hear his response, so typical of their dad. Still, they wanted to recognize him, to know him. “When I see his face, I want to memorize it, so the next time I see him, I know it’s my dad,” said one son.
Hardison had long ago abstracted his sense of who he was from how he looked. The burn face had been a mask too. For him, this mask was better. One day, he walked to Macy’s a few blocks from the hospital, and no one stared and no one pointed, he told Rodriguez in tears.
Rodebaugh’s mother said she wanted to see her son’s face on its new body, as if perhaps she might get one more glimpse of her son. But her son’s face was long gone. I showed Saskia a photo of Hardison, and she couldn’t recognize the face of the man who had loved her. The face had taken the shape of Hardison’s bone structure. Hardison wasn’t interested in talking about Rodebaugh. Not yet. As far as he was concerned, the face belonged to him, as if he’d been born with it. It had his hair color and skin tone. “It’s mine,” he said.