Martin’s new skin

Falling face down in the snow, he said to himself: “That’s it, you’re leaving, you’re dying.” »

He was not panicked or in any distress. A 30 cm blade had pierced his colossus body from side to side. But Martin Legros was not in pain.

“It’s weird now, but I thought, ‘If that’s it, dying, I wouldn’t mind. It’s like falling asleep…”

It must be said that at 47, he had already died several times. “My friends told me that I was like a cat, that I had nine lives. »

Bouncer in hot bars during biker war. Four car accidents, including one face-to-face. And this mania of going to right wrongs with bare hands, of playing with fire all the time.

He had never been so dead as that night, though.

It’s February 28, 2020. Martin has finished his working day at the Post Office. He is alone that night. His girlfriend had gone to see her daughter. His friends can’t go get a bite. Little ordinary Friday. He decides to go have a beer at La Chope, a neighborhood bar in Châteauguay where everyone knows each other.

Three somewhat tipsy guys arrive after midnight. They have beers in their coats and begin to open them. The bartender kicks them out. Martin sees that one of the guys is threatening her, pushing her. He gets up to intervene with his 270 pounds of muscle. He doesn’t know that this guy, Benoit Bergeron, has seven knives on him. Bergeron pulls out a huge dagger, stabs Martin, runs away.

He sees the blade coming out of his body. He sees himself falling again into this strange serenity. Then the lights go out for a month and a half.

When Martin Legros becomes conscious again, on April 14, he is alone in a hospital bed, plugged in everywhere.

He does not know that the whole world has been confined for a month. And amid his medicated delusions, the idea that a virus has forced humans into lockdown makes no sense. All this masked staff in astronaut clothes calmly explains to him that no one can visit him.

“I felt like I had been kidnapped. I started tearing out the wires, the tubes. I was shouting, “I’m going to call the police! Let me go !” They tied me up.

“No matter how much they explained to me, it didn’t fit into my head. It was hard to understand for people in town, imagine when you come out of a coma!

“They told me that lots of old people were dying… I didn’t understand a thing. »

He was able to FaceTime with his children. His daughter Naomie, who was 10, had written to François Legault asking permission to visit him. I had a chronicle of it. Obviously, no exceptions were allowed.

“I don’t know if you can tell, but eventually her mother dressed her up as a nurse and she came to see me…”

Three years later, I think we can say that.

During this month and a half of coma, doctors at the General Hospital and the MUHC saved his life several times. On March 12, the day after her birthday, the hospital called her family to say goodbye. He had already been operated on ten times in two weeks, had received 45 transfusions. But there was nothing more to do.

“My father was with my brother at the courthouse for the proceedings against Bergeron. My mother called them: “While you take care of him, Martin is dying! Come to the hospital.” »

It was the last day before the Grand Confinement.

To the surprise of the doctors, Martin still survived. “A doctor said to me, ‘We saw people coming to the hospital after 20 stab wounds, and they were in better shape than you.’ Another said to me: “When I read the medical file, I opened the door of the room quietly, I thought to find a death.” Another: “You survived thanks to your physical strength, but also mental strength.” »

The knife had severed the vena cava and damaged organs. We had to install drains, move the organs, replace them, do skin grafts, etc.

“If you had told me on the first day everything that awaited me, I would never have accepted,” he told me. A bit like a mountaineer who turns around and finds himself dizzy in front of the incredible ascent he has accomplished, painful step by painful step.

He remembers the feeling of dehydration (he was hydrated intravenously), “the worst of all suffering… When I think that people have died from it”. He was asking for ice cubes (which he was not allowed to “drink”). He would have given anything for an ice cube.

“When they told me I’d probably never walk again, I said, ‘Never mind.’ I was secretly doing lengths with my walker in my hospital room. »

The first thing he said to his parents, in his dead voice through the pandemic phone screen, was, “Are you okay? »

“That’s good Martin, that: half dead, but he worries about others,” said his brother.

Bergeron tried to make the jury believe that he had been assaulted by Martin Legros. It didn’t hold water and he was found guilty of “aggravated assault”. Without the miracles of contemporary medicine, it was murder. For Martin, the four-year prison sentence handed down by his attacker is a “candy sentence”.

He did not digest the late apology letter (after contesting the accusation) where Bergeron regrets having “ruined his evening”.

It’s a whole life that he wasted. More than a life. Those of his daughter, his son, his son-in-law, his whole family.

The post-traumatic shock is still very present. “When I put a knife in the dishwasher, I put dishes on top of it. I think to myself, “If someone comes in, he won’t find him.” »

He always checks his doors. Can’t stand a movie where someone is playing with a knife.

It took him a long time to come out. Then to go somewhere other than the market.

“My shrink told me to expose myself. I managed to get back to the bar where it happened. People were looking at me… One day, a delivery guy came and I thought he was a little weird. He wrote to me later to apologize: he was there that night, he recognized me. So many people have been traumatized.

“I often think back to that night. If my girlfriend had been there. If my friends had come for supper. If I hadn’t gone to the bar. If I hadn’t gotten up… Nobody got up, you know. It’s stronger than me. At 14, I weighed 220 pounds. I was the one protecting the best player on the team in hockey. I saw high school guys again 30 years later: they told me that I had fought to defend them because they were made sick of by toughs. I didn’t remember that.

“There are plenty of ifs. But I do know one thing: If I hadn’t stood up and the bartender had been stabbed, I couldn’t have lived with this. »

He stayed eight months in the hospital. He is on sick leave and will likely remain so. But he “came out of the good” of all that, insists Martin.

“I am no longer the same man. I was 47 years old and I had not seen life pass. I worked 70 hours a week. I couldn’t say, “I love you.” I was insensitive to the suffering of others, except my relatives. I said to myself: if someone is depressed, kick their ass. »

“I became very sensitive. I cried all the time coming out of the hospital. I can’t listen to the news and see people who are suffering.

“I realize that Quebecers are compassionate with the disabled [il marche péniblement]. People help me. I had incredible care, physio, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, psychologist… Well, I no longer have a shrink, the program is over, it’s hard to find. I thought I was fine, but it’s long. »

He walks with a splint, but he walks. “The more muscle strength you gain, the more pain you have… So on the one hand, it hurts, but on the other, I’m regaining it, so I’m happy to be in pain.

“I think back to before, it seems so far away. »

Martin Legros woke up in a new skin, it must be said.