SEQUIM — Adrien Gault’s holiday season is busier than usual.
Other teenagers he’s never met keep walking up and saying, “Are you Adrien? Whassup?”
Then there are those who e-mailed him during the two-week period he doesn’t remember.
He’s working his way through their messages and calling them to say thanks.
Gault, 17, is living a kind of Sequim version of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Not that he’s ever despaired the way George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) did in the movie. No, Gault was a popular student at Sequim High, a football player sailing into his senior year.
On Oct. 20, during the Sequim Wolves’ game with North Mason High School, Gault suffered seizures and collapsed into a coma on the sidelines of the home football field.
“It was weird. I don’t remember having the seizure, or coming off the field or anything. I remember getting tackled,” he said Thursday.
“I just remember closing my eyes.
“And the next time I opened my eyes, I was laying down in a bed with a thing in my nose to help me breathe.”
Gault had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage.
He was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he underwent brain surgery; doctors cut away a piece of his skull to relieve pressure on his brain — and froze that bone fragment in order to replace it in a later operation.
After the surgery Gault made eye contact with family members and said, “I love you Mom,” and “I love you, Dad,” his mother, Patricia McCarter, said.
But the teenager doesn’t recall that or anything from the two weeks following the football game.
Gault said his return to Sequim, however, will long stay vivid in his mind.
His family brought him back from Seattle the Friday before Thanksgiving. He went back to school on Dec. 4.
On campus, on the street and at the store, he meets people who followed news reports of his recovery — strangers who had for five weeks eagerly anticipated his homecoming.
“I knew my close friends and family would be worried,” Gault said. “But it was like the whole community welcomed me back. Everybody was so happy to see me.
“I never thought that would happen,” he said. “I am so thankful.”
