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by LINDSAY FABER
Firefighter Jeffrey Cool yesterday was discharged from a rehabilitation clinic and walked without help into his Garnerville house with his wife and young sons by his side, just three months after falling 50 feet from a burning Bronx building.
Cool, who spent three weeks in a coma and needed multiple operations and almost 50 pints of blood to heal the wounds that nearly killed him, left the Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw a week ahead of schedule.
Yesterday Cool, 38, of Rescue 3 in the Bronx, attended a Nassau Coliseum hockey game between police and firefighters.
Seated in a wheelchair, Cool, an avid hockey fan, cheered his team. "The FDNY will prevail," he said. Cool added that he was "happy as hell to be alive."
"I am still in pain," he said, clutching his left shoulder. "I have a long road ahead of me."
For the past month and a half, Cool underwent four hours of physical therapy every day, the determination to be with his family pushing him forward, his family said.
This week, for the first time in months, he walked without a cane, according to his family.
"That's when they decided he would come home early," said Cool's mother-in-law, Gerry Morris.
Cool's wife, Jill, didn't tell their two young boys, Jeffery Jr., 8, and Dylan, 5, until Friday, that their father would be coming home so soon.
"The oldest immediately asked, 'Can I take dad to show-and-tell on Monday?'" Morris said. "We are all just so happy."
The Jan. 23 inferno at 236 E. 178th St. took the lives of city firefighters Lt. Curtis Meyran and John Bellew. Besides Cool, firefighters Brendan Cawley, Joseph DiBernardo and Eugene Stolowski were also seriously injured.
Cool was hurt after he couldn't find a place to tie his personal safety rope. He tossed it to DiBernardo, who tied it to a window guard and looped it around his arms.
Cool was able to lower himself 10 feet before falling. DiBernardo then began to lower himself when the window guard snapped, fire officials said.
Cool, DiBernardo and Stolowski have all filed notices of claim to sue the city for failing to provide them with safety ropes.
Copyright © 2005, Newsday, Inc
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