On the afternoon of April 15, 2013, as Mason Wells cheered for his mum at the Boston Marathon finish line, two bombs detonated in the very spot he'd stood only moments before. Three years later, Wells was at the Brussels Airport on March 22, 2016, when two suicide bombers blew up the terminal. He barely made it out alive.
Below, the 21-year-old former missionary talks to Esquire about cheating death, his journeys to recovery, and his new book Left Standing, which he co-authored with Billy Hallowell and Tyler Beddoes.
"My hands and face felt like they were on fire": The Brussels airport
My colleague Joe Empey and I were taking a fellow missionary, Sister Fanny Clain, to the Brussels Airport for her flight back to Utah for missionary training. We'd just walked up to the Delta check-in line, when I heard a deafening crack and the pressure from a blast lifted me off the ground. I landed back on my feet, and my first thought was, Airports don't just blow up for no reason, what's going on? My second thought was, Holy crap, this is a bomb. At that point, I felt the entire right side of my body get really hot, then ice-cold. I could feel a sharp stabbing sensation of shrapnel pelting my body. My hands and my face felt like they were on fire. I was so disoriented. I thought for the first couple of seconds that I had died.
Then, time slowed down. My brain was processing so much, so quickly, and I remember seeing a really bright light everywhere, like a glow. That light, I'd find out, was more fire. Once it dissipated, I could see black piles around me on the ground. They were people. I looked around and saw shattered airport doors to my left. I knew I needed to get away from where I was. But I took one step and my body almost completely gave out. Determined, I put one foot in front of the other, tripping over loose tiles. I'd made it about 40 meters, when I heard a second bomb go off. I made it out of the airport doors and my leg gave out. So, I laid down on the airport sidewalk, in a pool of my own blood.
I spent 45 minutes on that sidewalk before first responders could get to me. I was moved to an airport fire station, where the critically wounded were being treated. I had second-degree burns to the face and there was shrapnel in my head lacerations. I actually saw shrapnel in front of my right ear just kind of embedded in my skull that they decided to leave. I had three third-degree burns to my right hand, first-degree burns to my left hand, shrapnel to the legs, and a blast wound on my heel. My left Achilles tendon got completely ruptured. My heel bone cracked in 7 places. It's a miracle I survived.
Unfortunately, this wasn't my first brush with terrorism. In 2013, I also survived the Boston bombing.
"We Have to Find Mom": The Boston Marathon Bombing
A deafening explosion shook our bodies, then there was an eerie silence. My dad and I had just left our spot at the finish line of the Boston Marathon to find my mom, who'd completed the race. I took my eyes off the runners to see everyone in the crowd looking confused, like What the heck just happened? I wondered if the bleachers had collapsed from the weight of the crowd. Then I heard yelling and a rush of commotion. Seconds later, another explosion rang out.
People began running past me, panting and sobbing. Smoke was in the air and my heart was pounding so fast. I had no idea what was going on, my only thought was, We have to find Mom. Dad grabbed me by the hand and told me to go back to our hotel, while he looked for Mom. So I ran, panicking, making my way past police cars and ambulances and EMS workers with stretchers who were just arriving on the scene.
When I got back to our room, I could see the second bomb site from our window, where first responders were moving fences and debris from the blast. I watched as people armed with AR-15s weaved their way through the crowd, looking for the attackers, and that's when I really started to panic, wondering where my parents were. Right then, I got a text from my dad saying he was in the lobby with Mom, but that they couldn't come upstairs, because the hotel was on lockdown. So, I walked down 34 flights of stairs.
As I wrapped my arms around them, I felt a wave of relief. But, it would be hours before we could head home. After seven hours in lockdown, we were able to get out of Boston and drive home to Utah. As I stared out the window at the Charles River, I started to think about the world in a different way. If we hadn't moved from the finish line where the bomb went off, we could have been injured—or killed.
Two years later, while doing missionary work in Calais, a small town two hours north of Paris, I got a strange text that said, "The mission is on lockdown."
I turned on a French news outlet just after 9 p.m. on 13 November, 2015, and saw news of a terror attack in Paris—where I'd been working just days earlier. Suicide bombers had struck outside of a soccer stadium, then there was a series of shootings and bombings at cafes and restaurants, and the attackers had taken hostages at a concert. Over 130 people were dead. My stomach was in knots as I watched the rolling updates and footage of crowds running and victims covered in blood, trying to stay alive.
"No, that's actually what happened"
Five months later, I was the victim fighting for my life. As I lay in a Brussels hospital bed recovering from the airport attack, I wondered: Why do good things happen to bad people, and why does God allow this terrorism to happen? It took a lot of soul searching to find those answers. After six days in the ICU, I was transported to the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City for six weeks. I couldn't walk for the first four months, and, even then, it was with a limp. My doctors told me I'd never run like I used to or have the same range of motion in my hand. But I worked my body harder than I probably should have. Good enough to pass the medical test to get into the military 10 months after the Brussels bombing.
The only injury that's stayed with me is my burnt hand. This year, I entered the Naval Academy in Maryland, where I'll be commissioned as an officer in the Navy or Marine Corps and have five years of service minimum. My Academy friends didn't believe my story at first. They'd ask, 'What happened to your hand?' And I'd be like, 'Oh, it was blown up by terrorists,' because I'm used to doing my whole spiel. And they'd laugh or look weirded out and go, 'No, really, what happened?' And then, I'd have to say, 'No, that's actually what happened.' I've had to overcome a lot of trauma, bad memories and frustrations along the way. But now, it's just part of who I am.
