PRESQUE ISLE – John McDonald doesn’t remember much about the day he almost died.

He remembers that an acquaintance wanted to spend the night at his apartment, and he remembers telling the man and his girlfriend no.

But he really doesn’t remember anything after that.

He doesn’t remember the man returning to his apartment and he doesn’t recall being beaten almost to death in his own bedroom with a 5-pound dumbbell.

At the time, nobody expected him to live; not the doctors, not even his family.

Despite massive head trauma, he survived. Almost two years after the attack, the 49-year-old Presque Isle resident still is relearning how to live on his own.

On a recent spring day, McDonald sat down in his new apartment with his brother and sister-in-law, Roger and Louise McDonald, to talk about life since May 22, 2005.

“I’m still alive,” McDonald said with a shrug.

But almost everything else is different. One of his eyes is permanently closed and he has no bone behind that eyeball. With his other eye, McDonald can read text about an inch tall and see objects about an arm’s length away.

He used to be a painter and carpenter, but now he can’t work. His average day includes visiting his brother’s family – they live one street away – and puttering around his apartment. McDonald will never drive again or live completely independently, nor can he play pool like he did in the “old days.”

“I used to run 47 balls without missing one shot,” McDonald said. “I can’t do that now.”

On top of the life alterations are the physical differences. The attack left holes in his skull, bone fragments in his brain and required significant reconstructive surgery. Louise McDonald said his looks make friends uncomfortable; others don’t want to be seen with him.

“It’s pretty crazy what he did to me,” McDonald said in a detached sort of way.

Other than looking in a mirror, McDonald has no firsthand connection with what happened to him.

Family members try to jog his memory, but even after two years, McDonald has little recollection of who he used to be or his childhood, and he doesn’t remember the attack.

“I wish I could remember, but I can’t,” he said.

McDonald has lived in Presque Isle for five years. He was born in Mars Hill but spent most of his life in Massachusetts. In 2002, he moved back to Aroostook County to take care of his dying mother.

Two years ago, McDonald was in an Aroostook Band of Micmacs program that provided him with seed money to start his own construction business, and he was taking care of his 14-year-old step-son, Scotty, and his 3-year-old grandson, Nathan.

On May 22, 2005, a friend he used to “party with” stopped by to ask a favor. Christopher Currier, then 27, wanted a place to stay for a few weeks with his girlfriend, according to a court affidavit.

McDonald said no. Currier later told police that McDonald had promised him a place to stay but had reneged even though Currier had given him money and drugs.

The next morning, McDonald’s step-son woke to find Currier in the apartment and asked him to leave. On the way out, he checked McDonald’s bedroom door, which was locked. Around noon, after getting no response, Scotty picked the lock and found his step-father slumped over his bed, kneeling in a large pool of blood. Police estimated he’d been there for 10 hours.

The teen bolted to his uncle’s house. Roger McDonald said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he walked in and saw blood and pieces of bone all over the floor.

“My brother was laying there. He was on his knees and he had one hand on the edge of the bed and he had his forehead on his forearm. His lung had collapsed and he was trying to breathe,” he remembered. “It’s hard to believe that’s your brother there in that mess.”

Though family tried to shield McDonald’s 3-year-old grandson from the sight, he somehow caught a glimpse.

“Grampy has no eyes,” he cried.

Emergency crews rushed McDonald to the hospital in Presque Isle, then to Bangor, but no one thought McDonald could survive such a beating. He sustained depressed skull fractures, facial fractures, a ruptured spleen, renal contusions and rib fractures.

But Roger McDonald said he realized his brother was going to live when he was in Bangor – head shaved and tubes inserted everywhere – and McDonald tried to rip the tubes out.

“We had to hold him down and get a nurse,” Roger McDonald said. “I think that’s when I realized he was going to make it. He was so strong, even then.”

Police found Currier in Mars Hill less than 24 hours after the attack. After he was taken to the state police barracks in Houlton, Currier told them that McDonald needed to be taught a lesson and that he was on a mission from God.

He stated in the affidavit that he beat McDonald several times with his entire body, pounding him with his hands, fists, knees, feet and head. Currier said that McDonald picked up a weight and swung it at him, so he took it away and beat McDonald with it “a lot more than 10 times.” Afterward, Currier said, he stood in the room and thought about his actions. He told police he felt calm and good about what he did.

Currier was convicted of elevated aggravated assault and attempted murder. Last November, he was sentenced to 16 years in jail with all but 10 suspended. He also will be required to complete four years of probation and pay $20,000 restitution. McDonald’s family said Currier could be out of jail in 2015.

As far as violent crimes go, this just doesn’t happen in Presque Isle, local Police Chief Naldo Gagnon, who has been on the job 27 years, said recently.

In an annual count between 2001 and 2005, Presque Isle saw a high of 11 and a low of 3 violent crimes, and no murders. Gagnon chalks that up partly to the department being proactive in some areas, and in other areas, providing deterrents – a tracking bloodhound to prevent burglaries, for example.

The chief remembered the attack in 2005 as horrific and the case as difficult to investigate.

“When you have such a horrific crime, you drop everything you’re doing to work on this particular case,” he said.

While life isn’t back to normal for the victim, Gagnon said he knows police have done their job.

“We had a successful conviction to bring the right person to justice,” he said.

Following the attack, McDonald underwent more than a year of recovery, reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation, including months at health care facilities in Boston. A year ago, he was able to return to Aroostook County, but wasn’t quite ready to live on his own, so he stayed in an assisted living facility in Limestone until February. He’s been in his own apartment for the past three months. To live as independently as possible, McDonald has participated in many brain injury workshops, learning the basics again, such as how to cook.

Every day is a struggle, but McDonald and his family see progress every day. And while they can’t fix what happened and there’s still a lot of healing to be done, they said they’re trying to move forward one day at a time.

“At first, he couldn’t remember how to do anything,” Louise McDonald said. “But now he’s on his own. We’re real proud of him.”