A NOTE from the Garden Team: A huge thank-you to
Madeline Fletcher
for her editing of this story. While the events of this story are fictional, the many stories which inspired it are true. For those who have a sensitivity to vehicle accidents, descriptions of pain, or who have experienced trauma in the past, PLEASE proceed with caution. If you enjoyed this story, please consider making a donation either to
The Neighbourhood Clinic
through our site, or to a hospital in your area. As always, we thank all of our readers -- be safe.
Tuesday, March 21st, 2011.
"God dammit, Michael. Just keep him in the office for five minutes. I'm literally two blocks away."
"
Literally
two blocks away, or as in you're stepping off your apartment step right now?"
"Two blocks. Five minutes. Just keep him in the waiting room, okay?"
"Okay," the young man's voice, slightly tinny on the other side of the telephone line, sounded resigned, "As fast as possible--okay?"
"Okay," I repeated, "Keep him there."
The telephone beeped as the call cut off from the other side. Cursing quietly, I slipped my phone into the pocket of my dress pants, picking up my pace slightly as I made my way across the white-striped crosswalk that connected French Street to 9th Street Northwest. I was on my way to Johnson-Lockman, an investment firm across the street from Benjamin Banneker High School. Tucking my hands into the pockets of a suit that I couldn't possibly have afforded without our business loan, I made my way around the corner passed R Street. Normally I could get a chuckle out of myself, looking at the street names of Washington, DC. Whoever had named them had been a genius, I thought--O Street, R Street, N Street. Pulling my phone out of my pocket once more, I clicked it on and checked the time below my waist.
12:18
. Three minutes late to our 12:15pm meeting. Not a disaster yet, but something that could very quickly become one. Our business, a telecommunication startup that integrated GPS tracking with VPN safety-features, was relying on the investment-loan which we had been offered eleven days previously. Twenty-three million dollars. That was the estimated value of our company. From what had been two five-hundred dollar, second-hand laptops plugged into the electrical outlet in Michaels mother's living room. Forty-one thousand, today. Twenty-three million, maybe, by this time next year. Putting the phone back into my pocket, I stepped over the curb onto the red and white painted bike path.
It was an average day in Washington. The sky overhead was somewhere between grey and blue, managing to look overcast without being fully threatening. The air around me was almost damp, despite that it hadn't rained in three days and there's no rain expected for at least another two. A gentle breeze waved the leaves of the small trees which had been planted on each street corner. The buildings around me were all uniform; red-brown brick, two and three-story dwellings. Even the school was made of dusty brick, though the windows stretched slightly taller than the buildings around it, and the roof was flat rather than steepled. A bit of weak light reflected from the flat facets of the glass, catching my attention for a moment. Ducking around the front of a white BMW which had seen better days, I tucked the cellphone out of my pocket and clicked the screen-on button as I stepped onto R Street NW. I was a couple of feet off the cross-walk, which showed cracked white lines against the grey of the pavement. My eyes touched the screen of my phone--
12:16pm
.
It was a Ford E-Series Cutaway; the kind of white-walled box trucks that you usually see delivering packages for Amazon, or delivering the produce for lower-end restaurants. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I only heard that later--days later. They hadn't done anything wrong. They were driving fifty-nine miles per hour in a fifty mile zone. They were going the right way down a one-way street. They'd signaled their turn. None of that made a single bit of difference.
At first, I didn't even realize I'd been hit. It wasn't that I didn't feel it; I definitely felt it. It was just how quickly it happened. They don't show you that part, in the movies. How fast everything happens. How fast everything goes. One moment I was looking down at the phone-screen peeking out of my dress-pant pocket, and the next I was rolling over the front hood of the vehicle. Well, not quite rolling. I felt the impact on my legs, the sharp crack as my hip met the reinforced driving plate. I'd always expected that a car would throw you backwards, but that's not how it happens, in real life; instead, I folded. I don't remember that part. If I really think about it, I might be able to remember my head and shoulder coming down over the curve of the front end, between the hood and the headlight. The screech of brakes. Maybe a scream; not from me, but from a woman on the other end of the sidewalk. The next thing I really knew, I was laying on the pavement.
Another part they don't tell you about in movies?--what you end up thinking about. My first thought, as I lay completely still on the uneven pavement of R Street NW with droplets of blood clinging to the inside of my open lips, was I'm going to be late for my meeting. I've never taken a first-aid class in my life, but I knew that I was broken. Not broken, like in a spiritual, psychoanalytic, force-of-will kind of way; broken in half, like a stick which had been cracked over a persons' knee. Not breath knocked out of me. Not give me a minute. Broken.
Broken
, irreperably.
I knew it because my fingers were dragging over the pavement below me, and my chest was shuddering as I struggled to breathe through the thick blood in the back of my throat, but the bottom half of my body was completely still. I wasn't trying to move it, but I knew I couldn't even if I had been. There were voices speaking from all around me. Shouting, high-strung voices. They didn't bother me; mostly because I couldn't hear what they were saying. Whatever pain I felt, it wasn't the way I had felt pain previously; it was an enormous, crushing, dark hand. A weight, holding me to the road, like an anvil had been set down on my chest. The voices didn't make any sense. There were just too many words, too many consonants, too many vowels, too many different sounds. It became a background hum as the world darkened. The road felt as if it were rotating, as if I were sliding downward toward a long, dark hole. I experienced a sickening sense of vertigo. My body was too heavy. I couldn't lift my chest to breathe. It was noon--so why was the sky becoming so dark? For a moment, I thought that it might be about to rain, despite the forecast.
I wanted to laugh, thinking of an admittedly derisive joke about weather forecasters. Then I realized, with a strange and sickening kind of clarity, that the sky hadn't changed hue at all. It was my vision which was failing. Part of me wanted to look down, to see what had happened to the bottom of my body. I knew I couldn't move an inch if I tried. The world darkened further. There was a man--at least, I think it was a man--leaning over me, talking rapid-fire with words which my brain still failed to comprehend. It wasn't even a buzz, any longer. I think maybe he had been trying to tell me something. I had an inkling that it was something important, but I just couldn't bring myself to understand the words. I kind of wanted to tell him my forecaster joke, but I couldn't speak. I didn't even have the energy to try. Closing my eyes, I let myself slip into the darkness. Strangely, the pain had somehow become more powerful, more urgent, yet more distant all at the same time. I choked one final breath, and then stopped trying altogether. Around me, sound faded. The world went black.
Acute fracture of the thoracic vertebrae, T11 and T12. Acture fracture of the lumbar vertebrae, L1 and L2. Minor fracture of the sacrum, six-inch break of the left pelvis. Two broken femurs. Complete shattering of the left patella. Two separate tears of the Iliopsoas, rectal femoris, sartorius and vastus lateralis. Tear of the ischiocavernosus. Full breakage of the external oblique, left-side gastrocnemius, left-side vastus medialis. Acute strain of the tibialis anterior, acute strain of both adductor muscles
.
Basically, I'd been right. I hadn't taken the analogy far enough, though; I was like a stick which had been cracked over a knee, but which had not broken cleanly or completely. I was still connected--technically. A couple of fibers still held me together, but everything else below the waist had either splintered or fractured. Of course, I didn't know this at the time. It was all on the chart which hung on the end of my hospital bed. It had been recited to me in the compassionate but no-nonsense voice of the on-call medical advisor, after seventeen hours of intensive surgery and forty-eight hours of recovery. Not from the accident, but from the fog of sedation and the much heavier fog of disbelief.
I'm sorry Mr. Reyes, but you've lost the use of your legs
.
"For how long?"
