Corzine Will Leave Hospital W/ Second Lease On Life

Governor Jon Corzine expects to be discharged from the hospital next week. Corzine has been at Cooper University Hospital where he has been recuperating after severe injuries after the SUV transporting him (where he sat seat-belt-less in the front passenger seat) crashed on the Garden State Parkway.

NJ Acting Governor Richard Codey and State Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts visited Corzine at the hospital, and Roberts said, " “I think that he views this, very literally, as a second lease on life. In many ways, I think Governor Corzine is a different person than he was before all this happened. He told me, ‘I’ve never been at peace with myself the way I have been since this happened.’ ”

When he leaves the hospital, Corzine will be living in Drumthwacket, the Governor's mansion in Princeton and not his home in Hoboken. The Star-Ledger says his rehab will take place there, where he can swim in the pool and hold meetings on the public floor. However: "The state will have to install an electric chair lift on the elegant center staircase in order to get the governor, who will be using crutches, safely up to the second-floor living quarters."

To what we imagine may be the relief of taxpayers, Corzine has also said he will pay his own hospital bill (though we also imagine some people are grousing he's a show-off for having the cash to do so). His spokesman Anthony Coley told the press, "We don't know yet the total cost of his care right now, but we expect it will be hundreds of thousands of dollars. From the medevac helicopter to the hospital stay to the cheeseburgers to the strawberry milkshakes, the governor intends to pay for all of it himself."

Photograph of Governor Corzine by Mel Evans/AP, aka the only member of the press to see Corzine since his accident