53 pages • 1-hour read
My Next Breath: A Memoir
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Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section contains graphic descriptions of serious injury.
Part 2: “Patient”
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Jenga”
The chapter opens with Renner in a medically induced coma, his face virtually unrecognizable due to severe swelling. He reflects on how this forced anonymity contrasts sharply with his pre-accident life, during which his celebrity status made simple public activities challenging due to unwanted attention and fan expectations.
The chapter provides a comprehensive catalog of Renner’s extensive injuries, which included more than 38 broken bones affecting nearly every part of his body. His injuries ranged from multiple rib fractures to breaks in his pelvis, limbs, hands, and facial bones. Additionally, he suffered a collapsed lung, liver damage, major head lacerations, and hearing damage. These injuries required him to be connected to multiple life-support machines while medical staff focused on addressing the most life-threatening conditions first.
The narrative then shifts to describe how Renner’s family learned about, and responded to, the accident. His niece Kayla discovered the news through a phone call from his sister Nikki, who had received a barely coherent call from their mother. The family’s initial confusion and panic escalated as they received increasingly disturbing updates about Renner’s condition. Kayla coordinated an evacuation from the snowy mountain location where they had been staying, working to protect Renner’s young daughter Ava from the traumatic details while ensuring everyone could reach the hospital.
Renner describes the vigil his family maintained at the hospital, creating a makeshift community in the waiting room. His sister Kym took primary responsibility for coordinating his care and managing visitors, while his mother read to him, believing he might be able to hear despite his comatose state. Medical staff periodically brought Renner out of deep sedation to test his responsiveness, which he managed to do almost imperceptibly.
The chapter explores the psychological impact of the accident on each family member. Renner recognizes how the incident will permanently affect each person: His mother will never forget the sight of his broken body, his niece will always associate helicopter sounds with tragedy, and his young daughter will carry the memory of when she heard the news about her father.
The family carefully managed the conversation in which they told Ava about the accident, providing minimal details while ensuring she understood the seriousness of the situation. Ava’s response was to retreat into watching videos of herself and her father repeatedly, which Renner interprets as her way of processing the dramatic change in their anticipated New Year’s plans.
Despite the severity of his condition, Renner’s medical team discovered that his vital organs remained functional and his spine was intact, suggesting the possibility of significant recovery. This news provided hope for his family and friends during their first sleepless night following the accident. The chapter concludes with Renner describing small acts of defiance from his hospital bed, such as deliberately kicking off the blankets to expose his feet (his preferred sleeping position), which he sees as early signs of his determination to recover.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Flail”
Renner describes his first major surgery on January 2nd, 2023, following the accident. Medical professionals determined that his chest cavity and severely damaged leg required immediate attention. Renner sustained 12 shattered ribs on his right side, two on his left, facial fractures, and a spiral leg fracture. The chest injuries created a “flail chest” condition, making breathing nearly impossible due to lost structural integrity in his rib cage.
Dr. Peter Althausen, a renowned trauma physician known as “The Carpenter,” cut his vacation short to fly in and perform the complex surgery. He used an innovative technique involving titanium plates to anchor broken bone fragments and restore chest structure. Doctors also repaired a liver laceration and inserted titanium rods into Renner’s leg.
Upon awakening while still intubated, Renner’s first instinct focused on acknowledging the trauma he had caused his family. He used sign language to apologize to them and express his love. Renner explains that he later interviewed family members to reconstruct the events he missed during his coma.
Recognizing he might not survive, Renner composed messages to his family. His general message expressed a willingness to forego life support if recovery seemed impossible, stating that he had lived and loved fully. He wrote separately to his 10-year-old daughter, emphasizing her strength and assuring her his love would remain with her always.
Renner describes feeling prepared to die but ultimately choosing to fight for survival because of his love for his family and his desire to spare them additional suffering. He articulates a transformative realization that love is eternal and unconditional. This insight would become foundational to his recovery philosophy as he committed to daily improvement to facilitate his family’s healing.
Renner reflects on his relationship with his nephew Alex, who witnessed the accident and its trauma. After years of Alex living independently and traveling around in a van as he tried to establish his own identity away from familial and societal expectations, a tough but loving 2020 conversation between Alex and Renner strengthened their bond and led to Alex working for Renner. Renner explains that he is a fatherly figure for Alex, and that he emphasizes to Alex the importance of personal accountability and building capability through consistent action.
The chapter concludes with Renner’s recovery philosophy, which centered on purposeful action and forward momentum. He rejected self-pity and encouraged his family to view the accident as an opportunity for growth rather than tragedy. Renner emphasizes that while relationships are crucial, individuals must take responsibility for their own development. He connects his survival strategy of focusing on breathing one breath at a time to his broader philosophy of purposeful living and intentional action in overcoming challenges.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Worst Patient Ever”
After being extubated, Renner immediately took a selfie showing his injured state and posted it to Instagram with a brief message thanking his supporters, despite being only about 60 hours removed from the accident. This social media post created confusion among his publicity team, who questioned whether the family had been exaggerating the severity of his injuries. Renner explains his motivation for sharing the image publicly, arguing that since the accident had already become public knowledge, he felt compelled to control the narrative and demonstrate to his daughter and the public that he was surviving and recovering.
Renner details his multiple attempts to escape from the Reno hospital despite being connected to medical machines and requiring blood transfusions. These slow-moving escape attempts, with Renner enlisting his friend Alex’s help, were quickly discovered and stopped by hospital staff and family members. Renner’s desperation to leave stemmed from his belief that hospitals were places to get fixed rather than to heal; constant interruptions from staff prevented him from getting proper sleep, which was necessary for his healing and recovery.
Renner describes how various medical personnel would enter his room throughout the day and night for different tests, blood draws, and examinations. This lack of sleep contributed to his increasingly difficult behavior and his determination to leave the facility. To address this problem, the family hired Renner’s brother-in-law Jeff to serve as a guardian who would limit access to Renner’s room except for essential medical care. Jeff also served the secondary purpose of preventing further escape attempts.
Renner acknowledges that he behaved poorly toward hospital staff, becoming verbally aggressive with nurses and challenging their competence. He also recounts discovering janitorial supplies in his bathroom—which he interpreted as a sign that staff expected him to die—and this led to an angry outburst directed at the nursing staff. Despite this difficult behavior, Renner explains that he used humor as a way to gauge his mental state while under the influence of pain medications. He believed that his ability to make jokes and get positive reactions from staff served as an indicator of his cognitive function.
After six days in the Reno facility, Renner successfully convinced medical staff to allow his transfer to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. This transfer involved using the same ambulance that he had previously donated to the local fire department, followed by a flight on a medically-equipped private aircraft. Despite being closer to home, Renner’s experience at Cedars-Sinai presented new frustrations. The chapter describes his continued impatience with medical procedures, multiple specialist consultations, and the need for various scans and blood tests. Renner acknowledges that he continued to be “the worst patient ever” (142), such as when he attempted to use the bathroom independently, despite being connected to multiple medical devices.
On January 7th, Renner’s 52nd birthday, he underwent surgery to repair fractures in his ankle, face, and jaw. The facial surgery involved inserting plates and screws, requiring six weeks of consuming only liquids and soft foods. The chapter highlights support from celebrity friends including Anthony Mackie, Sam Rockwell, Jimmy Kimmel, and Paul Rudd. These visits provided emotional support and helped Renner understand the true severity of his injuries through his friends’ reactions to his condition.
Renner articulates his belief that his recovery was entirely his own responsibility, regardless of external medical opinions about his prognosis. He rejected the idea that outside forces would determine his future capabilities and committed to a simple daily goal of feeling slightly better than the previous day. This philosophy drove his impatience with hospital procedures and his determination to begin active recovery at home.
The chapter concludes with preparations for Renner’s discharge from Cedars-Sinai, including modifications to his home environment to accommodate his injuries and limitations. Despite medical concerns about his readiness to leave, Renner’s determination to control his own recovery process ultimately prevailed, setting the stage for the next phase of his rehabilitation.
Part 2 Analysis
In covering his initial hospitalization and early recovery, Renner constructs a narrative framework that positions his physical trauma as a catalyst for deeper understanding about human connection and personal agency. The author uses a dual temporal perspective, alternating between his immediate post-accident consciousness and his later reflective analysis of those experiences. This structural approach allows him to examine both the raw immediacy of trauma and the processed understanding that emerges through recovery.
The Importance of Information emerges as a key organizing principle throughout Renner’s hospital experience, manifesting in his need to control his narrative and maintain agency despite experiencing physical helplessness. The author demonstrates how information becomes a form of power when traditional forms of control are stripped away, particularly evident in his decision to post a selfie on Instagram shortly after his first surgery. The medical establishment’s constant need for diagnostic information—through x-rays, blood draws, and examinations—creates a parallel dynamic where Renner’s body became a source of data while he simultaneously sought to control the flow of information about his condition to the outside world. This tension between being a subject of medical inquiry and an agent of his own narrative establishes information as both a tool of empowerment and a site of struggle.
Renner’s employment of medical terminology and detailed injury catalogues functions as both narrative strategy and psychological processing mechanism. The clinical precision with which he lists his “thirty-eight broken bones” (159) and various injuries creates an inventory approach to trauma that transforms overwhelming physical damage into manageable data points. This cataloguing serves multiple rhetorical purposes: It establishes the severity of his condition for readers unfamiliar with the accident, creates a baseline against which recovery can be measured, and demonstrates his engagement with the medical aspects of his situation rather than retreat into denial or despair. The author’s adoption of medical language reflects his strategy of mastering his circumstances through understanding and articulation rather than succumbing to victimhood.
The theme of Mastering Fear and Taking Action operates through Renner’s consistent rejection of the “passive” patient role and his transformation of potentially passive circumstances into an opportunity for assertive behavior. His repeated escape attempts from the hospital, while medically inadvisable, serve as manifestations of his refusal to allow fear or medical expertise to define his recovery trajectory. The author frames these actions not as reckless behavior but as necessary assertions of his fundamental identity as someone who “faced [his] fears one by one” (150). His insistence on humor as a calibration tool for his cognitive function demonstrates how he converts uncertainty about his mental capacity into actionable assessment strategies. The progression from his initial inability to breathe independently to his determined pursuit of discharge illustrates how he systematically addresses each limitation as a problem to be solved rather than a fate to be accepted.
The Centrality of Love and Family functions as a moral framework throughout Renner’s recovery process, with family relationships serving as the primary lens through which he interprets his suffering and responsibility. His immediate post-surgery gesture of signing, “I’m sorry,” and, “I love you,” establishes the foundational principle that his recovery is fundamentally about repairing the trauma he caused his family rather than addressing his own physical limitations. The author presents love as obligation, describing his guilt over “ruining” New Year’s and putting his nephew Alex through the trauma of witnessing the accident. Renner writes, “I couldn’t get over the fact that I’d ruined New Year’s…and it would take time to understand the road that I was on, the road my family was on” (122). This acknowledgment positions his recovery as a collective journey rather than an individual healing process. The detailed accounts of his family’s vigil, their logistical sacrifices, and their emotional labor serve to establish the interconnected nature of trauma and recovery within family systems.
The hospital setting operates as more than mere backdrop, functioning as a contested space where institutional power structures meet individual agency and family advocacy. Renner’s characterization of himself as “the worst patient ever” (142) reflects his systematic resistance to hospital routines and protocols that conflict with his recovery timeline and personal autonomy. His conflicts with medical staff over sleep schedules, procedural timing, and discharge planning illustrate broader tensions between professional medical advice and what Renner deemed desirable or sufficient for his care.
It should also be noted, however, that Renner’s description of his verbal abuse of hospital staff also reflects the dynamics of socioeconomic power that his celebrity and wealth afforded him even when within an institutional structure, which complicates his portrait of his resistance as an assertion of personal willpower. Likewise, he frames his eventual transfer from Reno to Los Angeles as a reclamation of personal agency in determining the terms of his recovery, although such privileged treatment also reflects Renner’s significant wealth and social status as a celebrity, providing him with options and financial resources that are not always available to the average patient.
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