On New Year’s Day 2023, Jeremy Renner died.
“I could see my lifetime. I could see everything all at once. It could have been for ten seconds; could have been for five minutes,” he writes in his memoir, “My Next Breath” (Flatiron Books; out today). “I know I died … When the EMTs arrived, they noted that my heart had bottomed out at 18, and 18 beats per minute, you’re basically dead.”
The book recounts how the “The Avengers” star heroically took action to save his then-27-year-old nephew from being hit by a snowplow — and was crushed by the hulking machine himself.
“Six f–king wheels, seventy-six steel blades, 14,000 pounds of machine, all ranged against one human body,” he writes. ” I hear all the bones crack … Skull, jaw, cheekbones, molars: fibula, tibia, lungs, eye sockets, cranium, pelvis, ulna, legs, arms, skin, crack, snap, crack, squeeze.”
The “Hawkeye” star was ultimately left with more than 30 broken bones, including fourteen broken ribs, a spinal fracture; a broken tibia; a punctured lung, a sliced liver, a broken and dislocated collarbone and a major head laceration.
As he lay in the snow, “I had no full sense then what a hot mess my body was in,” he writes. “The truth was that my collapsed rib cage and my broken and dislocated shoulder and collarbone had worked to compress my lung to the point of suffocation.”
Perhaps the most gruesome injury was that his left eyeball “violently burst out of [his] skull” due to a broken orbital bone around his eye socket.
“I could see my left eye with my right eye,” Renner writes.
Though his body was a crumpled mess of mangled bones and he had lost six quarts of blood, the most immediate danger to Renner was hypothermia from the frosty January weather in Reno, Nevada, where he’d been enjoying the holidays with famaily.
“With the temperatures that morning hovering around freezing,” he writes, “and my body in shock, stuck on an icy driveway, the killing cold began to dangerously bite.”
He was airlifted to a Reno hospital where he underwent several surgeries.
The first note that Renner tapped out on his phone to family was a plea to end his life, “if I get to a point where I have to live on a machine or serious pain drugs to continue.
“I choose NOT to continue a dishonest life. I have lived all I wanted to live.”
After six days, Renner was transported to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where he underwent even more surgeries.
Incredibly, he was discharged on January 13, but he still had lots of healing to do.
“Everything was pinned,” he writes, “my body titanium-filled, contusions and staples and bones still shattered all over my body.”
The first thing he did when he got home was have a glass of red wine, then he got to work.
He had to agree to install as much rehab equipment in his home as possible, “along with a whole slew of supplements, we would use balls and bands, rollers, an anti-gravity treadmill, Normatec compression sleeves, you name it,” he writes. “But this urge for normalcy, for pushing the boundaries, was what had always gotten me through any trial in my life, not just after the incident.”
By April, Renner was strong enough to go to Six Flags amusement park and ride a rollercoaster.
Despite nearly dying, Renner has no regrets about saving his nephew.
“I had to do something,” he writes. “In those lightning-fast seconds, his (nephew Alex) life hung in the balance. If that machine was to hit him, it would have crushed him to death, no question.”
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