Bessman Shares Story of Sons' Accident and Recovery

“On July 27, 2023, my son, 15-year-old son, Forrest, miscommunicated to me what time he had to be at driver’s ed. His brother went to get him there in very awesome fashion and they ended up rolling on the Kid Curry Road, just before the (Dodson) Overpass.”

Amber Bessman has spent just short of nine months living with, and dealing with, all the nightmares a mother never thought she would have to face. It is a story she shared in my office of what trials and tests of her faith she has encountered.

Bessman said the word about the accident came to her indirectly, she got a text from the Dodson School staff stating they hadn’t seen Dirk yet; she called Dirk’s phone, “and I knew the minute that Forrest answered…that something…was really wrong.” The motherly intuition kicked in, and Bessman was right.

She said Forrest told her they had rolled and that Dirk wasn’t waking up and she needed to get there. “I yelled at him and told him to hang up and call 9-1-1.” She said she didn’t think of calling 9-1-1 herself. Forrest was unable to find his phone, and only found Dirk’s because she was calling him.

Dirk, the eldest of Amber’s four children, was riding in the vehicle with Forrest when the accident happened. “Dirk was ejected from the car and Forrest, because of CPR training years before in Boy Scouts, was able to make sure they made it out of the field. He rolled his brother on his side so he wouldn’t aspirate, because his lungs were punctured.

“The bloody mess that he was…he was banged up, his back was tweaked, and he had cut his head pretty badly. He ended up needing ten staples in his head… he hobbled over to the overpass to meet Faith (Phillips County Undersheriff), …with only one shoe on.” Bessman added, “I made it there before Faith did.”

“The EMT’s showed up, Faith told them to keep me away but I wanted to be there with Dirk. They got both of the boys loaded into the ambulance and brought them to the Phillips County Hospital.”

Bessman continued, “They were sure they were going to life flight Dirk out, Forrest was still up in the air. I went and told my other two children what had happened.”

She said “The rescue vehicles didn’t pull up until the ambulance was leaving…it was so cute…it was like everyone showed up late for the party (adding a quick laugh)!

She said Dirk was outside the car. Forrest doesn’t really remember if he was in or out. She said she found Forrest on the bridge which makes passing the bridge every day difficult.

“She was a champion that day…sincerely. She was doing assessment and stuff before the ambulance showed up, it wasn’t long before they got him loaded up.”

Bessman said, “They got them to the hospital; they knew they were flying Dirk out, they weren’t sure about Forrest. That was a hard decision as a mom, one is flying out, the other they are not sure of. And you’re leaving two other kids behind. That’s heartbreak. Because you don’t know. It was hard. It was so hard. It’s a big decision as a mom.”

She continued, “We found out in a hurry why our lives have been such hell, because we needed that conditioning to survive all of this.”

Bessman said she had called her employers, Mike and Melissa VanNus (Malta DQ) when she was at the crash site. They took over the care of the three children so that Amber could leave in their care in her absence.

“Right as we were pulling into the Billings Airport, I was being sneaky, I was lip reading the nurses’ comments, and when they figured that out, they moved their little microphones over so I couldn’t read them,” then added that the one blonde nurse grabbed my arm and whispered, “We’re pretty sure he has five fractures in his back… and I was like HO HAA!”

“Forrest had to grow up in a hurry, he was laying in the ER room freaking out, because his head was just getting bigger, literally.”

A touching moment for Bessman was when Forrest told her to go with Dirk, because he needed her more than he did.

“That was kind of awesome…because that’s a big person call.”

Bessman wasn’t allowed in the room in Billings when they put the stent in his head. She was then taken to a room with other families to talk to, who were waiting on their loved ones as well.

“I thought…well…this is just another day, just another day. That’s what I had told Maggie (Young) at the hospital, they were prepping the boys and I asked if I had time to go see the other kids and she said I did, then asked if I needed someone to drive me. I told her, it’s just another day!”

“Mike and Melissa and their daughter showed up; we left and went to eat. I got a call from the hospital that they were taking him back in for emergency surgery. One of the fractures in his back had a fracture breaking off that was cutting into his spinal cord and it was causing hemorrhaging.”

They bumped up every surgery to get him into surgery and he was there until 3 o’clock in the morning. The surgery was about eight hours. At this point in time, her dad, Gary Tremblay, and friend, Steele Mikesell showed up. Shortly thereafter, the surgeon came out to visit with her.

“The look on his face was distraught; I said, ‘just give me facts, we like information, I don’t want your opinion or what you think. I just want you to tell me what, scientifically, you did across the board, and he told me.”

She shared what they were told, “We put two rods and four screws in his back to stabilize the fractures. And we had to do some clean up on the hemorrhaging and we got the chip that was cutting into his spinal cord removed, cauterized hemorrhaging…then he said, with things like this, he is probably not going to be able to move from the neck down. If he’s lucky he’ll move his upper but not his lower.”

The fractures were between the shoulder blades. The Doctor gave them the information and they sat in the ICU for the next 20 days.

Bessman shared that all in all, they were so fortunate. “You want to talk about blessings, we have had blessings for days. They wrecked where there was water on three sides of them, and they didn’t land in the water. It was amazing. If Dirk would have landed another two feet from where he was, he would have landed in water and Forrest wouldn’t have known where to find him.”

She said she didn’t think Dirk would have even been able to move in the condition he was in, his lungs were punctured…she can still recall him laying there in the fetal position, gasping around blood for air. “It’s not something you get out of your mind. Ever.”

Ironically, at the motel they met the lady, whose husband’s surgery was postponed because there had been an emergency surgery. Sometimes it is a small world.

Dirk was moved over to the Advanced Care Center, where they did physical therapy assessments. The family took a break when they moved him and came home. While it was nice to get home, she said, “…it was so hard because you’re leaving parts of your heart everywhere…scattered to the wind…like…who needs me?”

When back in Billings, the doctors started doing their assessments, some were very negative. The brain doctor in the ICU pretty much told her to be prepared for him to be a vegetable for the rest of his life, and that he won’t be home in his head.

“I stuck my hand in his face and raised it and told him I don’t care what you said, I don’t care what you think, God is working here…and we kind of lost our mind.”

“I was very polite,” she added.

Two weeks in the Care Center passed and Bessman and Mikesell were able to come home to the kids.

She said the staff was really stoked because of his drive. “The faith in that building is amazing.”

“All I wanted to do when I saw Dirk laying in that field was to hug him. On the second day when we went into the Care Center they had him sitting up in a chair, Steele said to him, ‘give your mom a hug’ and Dirk wraps his arms around me…and I wasn’t crying until he wraps his arms around me and I started crying and then he started patting me on the back. I wanted to take a video of that and go rub it in that guys face. You tell me my son’s not home.”

Dirk made such progress in the Center that within two weeks they had him moved to the low care. He was then flown to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Center in Spokane. The focus was to get him as far as he is. He flew out one day and therapy started the next.

“The guy asked him what day it was, and Dirk, using sign language, because he hadn’t found his voice yet, told him it was July 27th. I told him, he thinks it’s the day of the accident. The guy takes a deep breath and goes ‘Okaaaay! The guy tells him it is Sept. 9th…and Dirk starts grabbing the pillow in his lap - he’s like a 36 year-old in a 17 year-old body. He’s like…I have to handle this, I have to handle THIS…what in the hell happened? He is amazing. There are so many times I am proud of my kids. He just pushed, and kept pushing, anything they asked, he would push to do, because he understood it needed to get done.

One day the speech therapy lady was late in coming, the little idea popped into Bessman’s head, knowing that Dirk’s not being able to talk is frustrating everyone because he is trying to sign, his brain is garbled and it is not always great. Dirk had learned to sign from Steele, who had learned in order to commmunicate with Robert (Kindle) at work (Randy’s Machine Shop). It was then she decided to do it “Helen Keller style” and she took his hand and put it on her lips and told him they were going to work on the alphabet. They worked on small words, names and sounds. When Elizabeth (speech therapist) came, she apologized for being late.

Bessman said she responded “NO! STOP! We found his voice, and Dirk said ‘hi’..” When the doctor came in the next morning he was pleased, he squatted down and visited; Bessman said, “…that part was so beautiful …you know that he is invested.”

Things then got aggressive, pretty intense, pretty grueling. By this time they had figured out he couldn’t see. People would come up to Forrest and tell him his brother was brain dead. That was something that wasn’t necessary or kind.

Bessman said Dirk has no memory of the accident. This is common, as nature protects us from events that are potentially harmful or detrimental to our healing.

Fast forward…they came home on October 4th…to their “new reality,” as Bessman termed it. Dirk started attending school in Dodson. Bessman was asked to ask to work as his paraprofessional within the school setting.

“His short term memory isn’t quite what it was. He was able to remember an English book they were reading, and when I asked him how he remembered it, he said because he didn’t like it, it was just stuck in there.”

“Just the part that his brain is able to work as it does, is miraculous. The processing, the snarkiness, it is amazing.”

The family is at the stage of their life where they have survived and are moving on. There are so, so many chapters in life behind them. There are things they don’t talk about. As Bessman said, “Dirk feels he messed everything up…I told him, you’re not writing this story, you’re just existing in it.”

She shared that about two weeks before the accident, there was a missionary man at the church. He called Dirk and Forrest up, not knowing they were brothers, thinking they were just friends. Before he dismissed them back to their seats he said, “God has a story for you boys.” Adding, we have been through hell a couple times, if we hadn’t, none of my kids would have survived. Everything is for a reason.

“I don’t know if we will ever find a ‘normal’…we are still reeling from everything.”

You don’t know how strong you are until you are tested, and it is all you have.

On April 16th Dirk was taken to Great Falls where he will be assessed for ten days by the School for the Deaf and Blind.

“I have absolute faith it is going to be exactly what it needs to be, I’m not saying I am going to be excited about the outcome either way, but it is going to be what it needs to be. I have seen the leap of faith.”