The long Game
It was a day like any other. I was busy listing to the dispatcher's boring voice waiting for directions on what to do next. I loved the driving I did to make a living, but I hated quiet times like this where I was stuck sitting waiting for something to come in. Being stuck in a car during the heat of the day was unpleasant, but it did pay with the cost of gas to keep the van going unnecessarily.
My personality is such that I always had to be moving or doing something. It had to be a hot or a rush because I was sitting with a bunch of regulars for the downtown business core. I was a courier for Quicksilver messenger, and we delivered small items all over the city. Sitting for me had always been an easy way to frustrate me. This job in a lot of ways was teaching me something I never had patience.
Finally, I got a rush, which meant delivery within one hour, so I went to the address to pick it up. After informing dispatch it was on board, I was told to head on in and deliver it first. I was stopped at a red light on a steep hill heading down towards the business center when the frigging trucker hauling a twenty-eight-foot trailer behind his cab hit me from behind. His brakes had failed. He ended up pushing my back seat into the front. Shoving me halfway through the intersection at the same time. The first responders had to cut me out with the jaws of life.
Using a board, they carefully strapped me in and transferred me to the hospital. After three ex-rays and one MRI, they called the specialist in by this time I knew it was serious. The medical staff informed me that my wife was on her way in.
When she showed up after doing the paperwork, she was escorted in. I could see the genuine concern on her face. I said in an attempt to settle her down I told that no matter what I would heal and get to the point that I would be all the way back.
The specialist told us that my neck was cracked at such an angle that they were afraid it might have been severed completely. The c three, c four, and c five bones in the back of my upper neck that held all my nerves and muscles were broken at a forty-five-degree angle.
They would put me in a halo but as severe as I was, they believed I would no longer be able to walk. It was believed that I was going to be completely paralyzed from the neck down. I was transferred to a nursing home after stabilization near my home to begin the long road to recovery.
My wife of four years was devastated, so was I. She heard and believed what the professionals believed, I did not. I held onto the hope that I would walk. It was the only thing that kept me going. The doctors, the mental health caregivers, the specialists, and my wife all tried to get me to accept my situation, but I would not. I knew I was going to have to play the long game to beat them at their own game.
They all thought I was a horse's ass for not accepting their advice. I was the most mule-headed stubborn person they ever met. The more they thought they were right about my situation the more I became sure that they were not. When they started to talk about my life after recovery, I stopped listening.
To this day there are two things I don't miss and that's looking at the floor or ceiling twelve hours a day. My sanity was saved by talk radio and the roommate I had with me for the last six months.
Mr. Stevens was an old feller who humored me with his tales about his life. The nursing staff hated the talk radio and his old stories. I loved them both and developed a deep respect for the man. He was dealing with cancer and didn't have long to live. Since he was already assigned to hospice care we both knew for him it was not if but when.
Whenever I asked about my situation and what was going on, I was told it would take time to find out what was going on because I had to completely heal first. On a regular basis, they would touch my feet to see what I was feeling. At first, I felt nothing but then it started to come back. I found I could move my toes and stretch my feet. It was a secret my roommate and I decided to keep to ourselves. We both knew that if I showed them, they would write it off to something else other than the sign I thought it was.
At first, my wife showed up after every day at work and would stay with me until about nine at night at the nursing home. But over the year it got less and less. I had gotten the message from her conduct that she could not see herself spending the rest of her life with an invalid and had decided to move on with her life. After about nine months of her bull shit, I finally told her one day that I did not need any more of her sympathy visits.
I had come to the belief that she would wait till I was out of the hospital and out of the public's eyes to tell me she wanted out of the marriage. She was still young and wanted to enjoy life. The problem was she couldn't be honest about it. Not even to herself.
My best friend from childhood who had never really grown up was my savior for his encouragement was unending. When he wasn't playing in his band, he was always stopping in trying to keep my spirits up. After a few months, because I knew him so well, I was able to discern from his behavior that he had something going on with his life that he was keeping from me. Around that same time that my wife stopped coming regularly, I found it interesting because he seemed to behave the same way.
When friends and extended family showed up it wasn't long till I figured it out that they were all doing the same thing. I knew that something concerning my life outside the nursing home had changed and no one had the guts to tell me. I was spending a lot of my quiet time trying to figure it all out. With my roommate who was becoming close, we discussed all the possibilities of what could be going on.
My wife who I hadn't seen in at least a month came in one day to tell me she was going to Cuba for a girl's holiday for two weeks with her married sister Susan who lived in the city two hours away. I accepted that fact without question. It had now almost been eighteen months since the accident. I had to ask myself why she felt the need to tell me. Since she had left me emotionally a long time ago.
The doctors and specialists kept saying to me only a few more weeks when I asked about my situation. I was tired of their bull shit answers and their refusal to help me get on with things. I was living with the reality that no one wanted to tell me the truth.
I would not have thought anything about it but while my wife Linda was off in Cuba her sister Susan dropped in to say hello. She was in town to spend time with her mother. I didn't ask her about Linda because I knew she had no clue because otherwise, she would not have dropped in.
To understand how I felt you have to know that from our formative years until now. My wife Linda, my best friend Simon and I had been friends. Simon's dad dropped in during that time period and had told me Simon had gone to Cuba too. That was when I knew what everybody didn't want to tell me.
Because of the history of the three of us, I knew what was going on. My best friend had moved in on my wife. They were now involved. That was the big secret everyone was trying to keep from me.
Linda was a beautiful lady with blonde hair, a slender figure and a nice set of breasts. With a voice that when in a song could melt anyone's heart. Many a man had their heads turned by her because she was just that attractive.
My best friend Simon had always wanted her as his lead singer and thought she would be a great front for his band. I had refused to allow that to happen because I wanted to start building a life and was doing university by correspondence. I was in my last year when my life changed. Now I realized that Simon had seen my injury as his chance to steal my wife by getting her to join his band.
I was always on the lean side. My dad said I could eat like a horse and not gain weight. At five feet ten inches I was not a big man, but I did not consider myself small. At the time of the accident, I weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. Yet dad knew everything I ate went into muscle strength, not physical development.
Anyone looking at me always underestimated my abilities. It was not uncommon for me to carry two boxes of printing paper up or down fourteen floors with them on my shoulders.
While they were off together on their pre-marriage honeymoon, I began to plot my revenge. I knew that I would have to plan a long game because everything concerning me was an unknown.
