A C-shaped scar remains from the serious head injury suffered by Trooper Brendan Doyle, shown at state police headquarters in Scituate yesterday. In the background is Col. Brendan Doherty, superintendent of the state police.

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The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

SCITUATE

The odds were that Brendan Doyle would never wear the state trooper’s gray uniform again.

He hadn’t been expected to survive the severe brain injury caused when a driver he was trying to stop allegedly punched him to the pavement a year ago.

But Doyle lived.

He wasn’t expected to be his old self again, regain his memories, or his abilities to walk, see or to speak in his own voice.

But Doyle knew who he was, and when he could speak again, his family and friends recognized their “Buzz,” his childhood nickname. He began to walk, and then to run.

He hadn’t been expected to be a state trooper again.

The only ones who were sure were Doyle and his father, the world-class marathoner Bobby Doyle, who worked for the last six months before he died coaching his son back to health.

Yesterday, as Doyle sat in his uniform at the state police headquarters, he remembered his father’s words: You’re mentally tough. You’ll make it back.

Two neurosurgeons and the physician for the state police have cleared Doyle as medically fit to return to work. He has endured three weeks of 13-hour days of a mini-academy of classes, retraining and field tests meant to gauge whether he was able to be a state trooper. Col. Brendan Doherty said Doyle gave a “stellar performance” and passed every test.

Tonight, Doyle begins his first shift since the assault one year and four days ago –– back in a cruiser as a regular trooper, working out of the Chepachet barracks.

Doyle wears badge No. 47 pinned above his heart, and his wide-brimmed trooper’s hat covers the C-shaped scar on the right side of his head. “This is my dream,” he said. “I never wanted anything else but to become a trooper.”

Doyle had been inspired to join the Rhode Island State Police by his uncles, Lt. Eric LaRiviere and retired Lt. Robert Magnan, who’d also worn badge No. 47. “I’m a huge fan of civil service and giving back to the community,” Doyle said.

He’d been a trooper for three years when he ran into trouble that nearly ended his life. On June 16, 2007, Doyle was off-duty and out with friends in downtown Providence when he attempted to stop an alleged reckless driver. The driver, a former corrections officer named James Proulx, allegedly punched Doyle in the face. The trooper flew backward and hit his head on the pavement. Proulx sped off and boasted about the beating in a call to an ex-girlfriend. (Proulx is out on bail awaiting trial on felony assault and reckless-driving charges.)

Maj. Steven O’Donnell still relives that 2 a.m. phone call –– one of your troopers is at Rhode Island Hospital, and he’s not doing good.

Not doing good? O’Donnell asked. What does that mean?

He was told: Brendan Doyle may die.

The neurosurgeons opened Doyle’s skull to relieve the pressure of his injured brain. They talked to Doyle’s family about organ donation. The family, friends and the state police kept a constant vigil by the trooper’s bed. Strangers flooded the hospital and state police with cards, letters and prayers for Doyle’s recovery.

One day, Doyle gave his family a “thumbs up.” Then he saluted Colonel Doherty from his hospital bed. That was the beginning of a comeback.

In July, as he was being moved to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, in Boston, Doyle could barely speak. But when asked whether he’d come back to the state police, he whispered, “Yes.”

Time wasn’t his friend. The medical director of Spaulding’s brain-injury rehabilitation program said that the next 14 to 16 months would determine how much Doyle’s condition would improve.

The doctors told Doyle it was unlikely he’d return to work. He was paralyzed on his right side and had double vision. Although he’d been a competitive runner before the assault, Doyle needed to learn to walk again.

Weight had dropped from his slender frame, from his Boston Marathon weight of 156 pounds to 130 pounds in the hospital. “It was slow at first. I have the personality that I want to get from A to Z in two seconds, but my doctors said I have to take it like a marathon,” Doyle said. He was an endurance runner, and that was a term he could understand.

By fall, after the surgeons reattached the piece of his skull, Doyle noticed that his fine motor skills began to correct themselves. The double-vision disappeared, and he regained strength and mobility on his right side.

He continued with outpatient therapy at Memorial Hospital, in Pawtucket, and then lifting weights and exercising on his own, eventually gaining 40 pounds. He started boxing with a heavy bag at Grundy’s Gym, in Central Falls, the same boxing gym where Doherty started boxing as a teenager.

By spring, Doyle had proven himself, in neuropsychological tests by his own doctors and the physician used by the state police, Doherty said. Doyle wanted to come back. The colonel discussed Doyle’s case with the doctors and his command staff to decide how to test whether the young trooper could return to work.

They put Doyle through rigorous retraining in firearms, pursuit driving, use of force techniques, and through “shoot –– don’t shoot” scenarios to test his reactions under stress. He reviewed all in-service lessons and legal updates, was recertified in drunken-driving enforcement and use of the Breathlyzer. He completed his field training with Trooper Robert Creamer and Trooper Matt Salisbury. He even earned the combat master pin for his perfect score with firearms.

This kind of a recovery is very rare, said Dr. Marc Goldman, chief resident at Rhode Island Hospital, who’d been the neurosurgeon in charge of Doyle’s care last summer.

To O’Donnell and Doherty, it’s miraculous. They saw Doyle when he was comatose, his skull battered, his body hooked up to machines. “It’s the triumph of the human spirit,” O’Donnell said as he looked at Doyle.

The 26-year-old trooper doesn’t remember those first weeks in the hospital, but he realizes how close he came to dying. He was overwhelmed by the love and caring from his family, his friends, the doctors and nurses, and the state police and others in the law enforcement community. And, from many strangers, who wished him well as he recovered.

The ordeal has made him grateful to be alive. “I’m more thankful for my family and just to wake up every morning,” Doyle said. “And to go to work.”

amilkovi@projo.com