My bed brewed boredom as I lay on my back. While being left labor less on Labor Day is normally likeable, lying on my back looked like the least exciting thing going on. Sunshine seeped through the slightly cracked window showing me a sample of what is on the other side of my room. With no barbeque to burn burgers at or baseball game to play, I was left alone, only to play with myself. Perhaps I would partake in some labor today. The television taunted me with images of sunshine and smiles showing me that this uneventful event seemed to be eventful to everyone but me. I prayed for any sort of opportunity to get out of my house. With this prayer sent, my phone rang.
After nearly two hours of ceiling
watching, it seemed, I finally had something to do. My friend informed me he
would be outside in 5 minutes. I couldn’t wait. Without any time to shower I
slid through the side door and sprung towards my front gate. Ben sat in his Mini
Cooper, the grayish silver shining as the sun sprung from it. Big bold rims were
wrapped in black tires. Ben was the kind of guy who always got what he wanted,
the newest and nicest cars, the most expensive food, and he even found a way to
squeeze into an extra-large when it was clear that a extra extra large was in
order. He sat in his seat looking quite jolly with his jelly flab stomach
slightly spilling from the underside of his polo. He was the kind of guy who was
generous and available, almost an Asian Santa. It was evident he was an only
child and that his needs were always voiced. While he acted younger than a
college student, he complained enough to be confused for a menopausal mother. I
popped into the passenger seat pressed my back into the leather and pulled my
seatbelt into place. Routine.
Ben burned rubber and we were back onto the streets.
“Where do you wanna go?” He asked. My mind followed suit with the car and began to race, I needed an answer because I did not want to go back home any time soon. My bed was the last place I wanted to be.
“I’ll go anywhere” I replied hoping that he secretly had something in mind. He did.
“Let’s go to the Audi shop, I have to go check on my friends car.” Getting onto the freeway felt right, felt relaxing and felt free. The car shot onto the freeway, gears shifting smoothly, and the engine screaming, it was the sound of escape. The flow of freeway traffic found a special place in my heart. While the city was full of red lights and stop and go, there was no stop on the freeway. On this Labor Day the freeway was the only way for me to feel unencumbered. Wind whistling in through open windows wiped my scowl off and replaced it with a wide grin.
As we approached 27th street exit in Oakland, Ben muttered, “This is us, ” We slowed for the exit dropping the speed from 80 to 70 and then down to 60. As we approached the red light, it changed and at roughly 50 miles per hour we drifted towards the intersection.
Our car cruised past exit signs and crosswalks and with the permission of the green light we cruised into the intersection. I stared out of my side window only to see a black 1967 mustang barreling towards me. Eye contact was made between me and the driver of the other vehicle understanding that we both shared a common fate. BAM! As we were approaching our turn we were blindsided by a man who could not wait for his. The car filled with white as the airbag exploded and nearly left me with a broken jaw. The windshield shattered shooting sharp shards of broken glass through the air, slicing my neck and chest. My world was rocked and before I knew it, the car was airborne. It bounced across four lanes, skipped over the center divide and only came to a stop after crashing hard into a traffic light.
“Holy Shit” I said, shakily.
“Oh my God, Are you alright?” Ben asked, clearly rattled.
“Ya” I responded unconfidently. He opened his door and checked out the damage done to the car. I, on the other hand could not get out so easily. My seat belt was broken and refused to release me from this piece of twisted metal. My head was spinning and thanks to the glove compartment, which now lay upon my feet, my knee and leg were busted and bruised. After a long fight with my seatbelt I was finally able to stumble out of the vehicle and lay on the sidewalk.
Within minutes the paramedics were by my side with hundreds of questions and soon after that, the police were there with more. For precautionary measures, I was securely strapped into a stiff stretcher and lifted into an ambulance. Once in the ambulance I was fed a steady flow of oxygen, which gave me some sort of a high and left me in a daze. However this momentary high in a horrific experience was shattered by the talk of the paramedics in the ambulance.
“We can’t take him to Children’s. He’s far too old” One paramedic said to the other.
“Alta Bates is way too far away. We have to get him to Children’s. It’s our only option” The other responded. This scared me. What do they mean, “It’s our only option”? Am I going to die? What if they don’t accept me at Children’s and I have to go all the way back to Alta Bates? Will it be too late? The thought of dying was killing me. However, my thoughts were sidetracked by sharp, stabbing pains shooting into my arm. Morphine. The oxygen could not hold a candle to this stuff. Numbness crept through my body, nearly knocking me out. I became a spectator to my own life. My body which seemed to be tossed around like it was nothing just a few seconds ago, was now feeling like it weighed a ton. My eyelids felt as if they weighed more than any other part of my body. I drifted into a mixture of sleep and daydream. This sleep was uninterruptible, uninterruptible by anything but the subject of my favorite car.
“Did you see that car?” Asked a pretty, young, redheaded paramedic.
“Ya, that what pretty sweet. What was that a ’68?” An older man replied.
“Sure was.”
“A-a-actually, it was a s-s-sixty s-seven” I jumped in, uninvited. Rude, yes, but they couldn’t do my baby injustice like that. It was life-threatening information!
“Haha, ok, just go back to sleep. We’re almost at the hospital sweetie.”
Sweetie was the last thing I wished to be called at such a vulnerable point. I wanted Hulk or Sir. Couldn’t she have called me one of those? On top of that, I have hair on my face, my chest and if she dared to go any lower she would see that I have hair there as well. I outgrew sweetie a long time ago. Though perturbed by this injustice I was too tired to plead my case and fell asleep, validating her word choice.
As the ambulance pulled into the back of the hospital, I was whisked through the wide white hallways. I lay on my back with images of only doctors heads peeking over my head and in the background, beautiful, blaring fluorescent lights. I finally made it into the chosen room. Once there, all clothes that remained on became nothing more than remains. Shreds of shirts and shorts sheared and stored in a pile as if I would enjoy bringing home what I used to enjoy wearing. An elderly lady peered over my stretcher and into my line of sight.
“We’re gonna go ahead and put all of this stuff in a bag for you. Aight Hun?” She said. At least this lady was old enough to be my grandmother or I would have definitely told her to call me Hulk. I looked down at my wrists, aside from the blood; there was something out of ordinary. Four wristbands were wrapped around my wrists.
“What are these for?” I asked, breaking my silence.
“These two, these two are from your being in the emergency room today. The other two, those are from when you were her just four days ago.” She replied with a smile. I had completely forgotten. Four days ago, I had been sitting at home, watching TV when my chest wrenched up and my mother rushed me to the hospital. I was diagnosed with chostochondritus, a disease that consists of tightening of the chest, making it extremely hard for me to breathe. If this week was any prediction of what the school year was going to be like, I might as well drop out now. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to because I’ll be confined to a bed or worse yet, a wheelchair. Homework on a bed tray, I couldn’t think of anything more depressing.
I heard quiet sobbing and thought it was the white noise of the hospital. Someone gently touched my hand and I could hear my father say,
“Hey Bud”
I soon realized that it was my sister sobbing and tears were trickling to her chin. They stood there with ceramic faces, my mom, dad and sister…shocked and stunned. I could read the fear in their faces and it made me feel like I was in free fall. The nurses informed me that they needed to wheel me down to x-ray to check my spine. I couldn’t move well and I was fearful that something inside me snapped. My family accompanied me to the x-ray room. My dad was trying to make light of the situation, comforting both him and me. They rolled me onto the x-ray table like a hotdog on the rotisserie. It felt like the car accident all over again. Somehow my cells would remember the impact of that moment forever.
After a series of painful x-rays
I was wheeled upstairs again. I didn’t think an emergency room could feel so
warm and comforting but it was a welcomed contrast to the icy, stainless x-ray
table. Now we were thrown into a waiting game, the radiologist would read the
x-rays and come up to discuss them with us. We skimmed the angled, ceiling hung
TV for signs of life. Somehow only Vin Diesel and the Animal Planet were all
we could connect too. At least in my bedroom I had more choices, didn’t they
have cable here? We fell into a mindless stupor, actually enjoying the Animal
Planet. We made the small talk and chatter of people desperately trying to
avoid an obvious topic. We could hear the rustling of feet and orders shouted
in the hallway. No matter how much ER you watch, the adrenaline rush is alive
when it is YOUR experience. The morphine made me claustrophobic, it was
occupying the free spaces of my cells. I felt I was out of my body, my head
detached from the rest of me. All my organs felt removed and replaced by
sand. I was a human paperweight.
A rush of attendants moved me from a holding place into an official emergency room. Once there I realized that emergency is all-relative. A young girl flown in by helicopter was placed in the room next to me. She had nearly drowned in a swimming pool as she wandered away from party guests. Her parents were distraught and living their worst nightmare, their child was brain dead and her body was lifeless. I realized at this point that I had it good. The Radiologist walked into the room. I was looking for signs, lack of eye contact, chart staring, head shaking, none of those occurred. She looked me straight in the eye and said my spine looked good but my jaw may be broken. At this point I was able to lie in the hospital bed without the back brace. Unfortunately my neck brace would need to remain and the hospital bed wasn’t much more comfortable. They wanted to keep me over night for observation but there was no way I could allow that to happen. I longed for my bed, for more than one pillow, for something better than Animal Planet. Unwillingly the hospital obliged, that is, followed by six pages of release forms signed by my tired parents. We drove home in silence. It felt weird and wrong to sit up in the car. My love for driving and for cars was taken away. With every turn my dad made and every intersection we crossed I would look for an oncoming driver from the corner of my eye. All trust was lost.
I made it home and was eased
into my bed. The neck brace remained on for three days after that and I stayed
in bed for seven more. Aside from the occasional visits from friends and
family, I was alone. Left only with my remote I craved the outside world. I
craved the sunshine, which I hadn’t seen in over a week. I craved solid food
and was sick of ramen noodles. While ten days ago I craved leaving the house,
my friend and savior was now my innocent incarcerator.