By Wayne Drehs
ESPN.com
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Nearly every day, Kreg Culler walks by the rusting, blue power press, feels the horrific flood of memories rush back and has to look away.
It’s been almost two years now. Two years since he heard the kids screaming and hollering at the other end of his factory. Two years since he sprinted to the chaos and found his son’s best friend walking like a zombie, helplessly holding out his two crushed arms in front of him.
“I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Culler said. “His one arm was missing at the elbow. Just gone. And his other hand, he still had his work glove on, but it was mangled -- in a bad, bad way.”
Midway through the first day of what was supposed to be a lazy summer job for twin brothers Brad and Chris Hurtig, Culler’s worst nightmare as a factory owner came true.
Brad, a 17-year-old high school junior, a kid Culler coached back in Little League, inserted a sheet of metal into the giant stamping machine, noticed a part that didn’t look quite right and, after yelling “clear,” instinctively reached back into the machine to adjust it.
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“We always said, ‘clear.’ We always made sure we were back,” Keenan Culler said. “That time, I pushed the button, looked back and Brad was stuck in the machine.”
A light curtain should have sensed Brad’s hands were in harm's way and stopped the press from collapsing. It didn’t. In part because his hands were so skinny, slipping through the laser beams that criscrossed like a chain link fence. And in part, as an investigation would later discover, because the safety device was incorrectly installed.
“There was a set of freaky circumstances,” Kreg Culler said. “And they all happened the wrong way.”
The results were gruesome. Five-hundred tons of pressure, the equivalent weight of 245 Ford F-150 pick-ups, pulverized Brad’s right forearm, leaving only flapping skin below his elbow. On his left side, the press had crushed half of his hand. All that remained were his thumb and index finger, though barely attached.
The devastation flattened the veins and arteries in Brad’s arms, limiting blood loss and possibly saving his life.
“It felt like a fire,” Brad said. “Like my blood was boiling or my skin was melting away. I kept thinking it was a bad dream. And I wondered when I was going to wake up.”
Brad was dazed but still conscious when Kreg grabbed him by the shoulders, threw him into the front seat of his Jeep and, at 2 in the morning, raced through the moonless night to the hospital. Along the way, he gently rubbed Brad’s leg to keep him calm. When Brad finally began to speak, all he could talk about were sports.
He was a three-sport athlete: The starting middle linebacker on the football team. The starting right fielder on the baseball team. And the starting shooting guard on the basketball team.
Now, he figured, that life was over.
“I’m never going to play sports again. I’m never going to play sports again. I’m never going to play sports again,” Brad insisted. “This is not good.”
“I didn’t want to say, ‘You’re right. You’re not going to do that anymore,' ” Kreg said. “But he was right; it didn’t look good.”
Left behind at the plant, Keenan and Chris waited in silence, the horrifying scene replaying in their minds over and over again. After speaking with a nurse from the emergency room on the phone, Chris went back to the machine to see if any body parts could be saved. Keenan watched from a distance.
“It was the worst night of my life,” said Keenan, the twins' best friend since they were in first grade. “I didn’t know what to do. My mind just couldn’t process what had happened. All I remember thinking was, ‘He didn’t have an arm. He didn’t have an arm.’ ”
The receptionist shrieked when Kreg and Brad walked into the hospital. Doctors didn't like what they saw either, and soon Brad was life-flighted 60 miles to Toledo’s Medical College of Ohio, a Level 1 trauma center better equipped to handle the most serious of injuries.
Chris and Keenan, by then back at the Cullers' house, say they remember hearing the helicopter fly over. “I had no idea what was going on at that point," Chris said, "but I knew it was him.”
Once Brad arrived in Toledo, doctors rushed him into surgery, cleaned up both wounds and attempted to save what little remained of his left hand. They had no use for the finger that Chris had recovered from inside the machine.
In the days that followed, Brad struggled with phantom pains. Although the ends of his limbs were gone, the severed nerves continued to send pain signals that made him believe the limb was still there. He writhed in agony. His stomach resisted the pain medication that doctors gave him, causing him to vomit as many as 10 times a day.
In the first days after the accident, there was hope that Brad would be able to keep his left thumb and index finger. It would, they were told, make his life infinitely easier.
“We spent a lot of time praying that he wouldn’t lose that hand,” said Kim Hurtig, Brad’s mom.
Though good news came one morning when Brad moved his left thumb, it was short-lived. A month after the accident, the thumb turned black and Brad was back in an operating room, where doctors “shaved off” what was left of his only remaining hand.
“That’s the pain I remember the most,” Brad said. “I remember being at home in tears from the pain. It just hurt so bad.”
In all, it would take four surgeries before Brad would move on to recovery. When the procedures were finally done, when doctors left him to heal, Brad’s right arm would stop just below the elbow. His left arm would end just above his wrist. He was now a bilateral amputee. And life would never be the same.
“If someone were to tell me I was going to lose my hands tomorrow, I couldn’t face that day,” Brad said. “There’s no way. But until it happens to you, you never know how you’re going to react. And I decided in that hospital room -- I wasn’t going to spend life as a spectator.”
Wayne Drehs is a staff writer with ESPN.com. He can be reached at wayne.drehs@espn3.com.