It was a perfectly fine day.
My espresso was perfection: overly sugared with whip cream along the top.
The coffee kept me level-headed—zen in a cup. Nirvana. A way to get my mind to not think about the forty-five minute drive it took to get to work from the suburbs. I had no issues getting from my apartment to the local Starbucks and then onto the “they call it an interstate highway, but it’s a parking lot”, just like Joni Mitchell said.
I wished that I owned a motorcycle, but I was a little too big to own anything other than a Harley-Davidson and I didn’t have a spare twenty-grand in my bank account to finance one as I was playing off my recent divorce. No extra money for toys but I could dream of weaving in and out of traffic on two wheels. I could also dream about flying in a helicopter. My own personal air taxi that would set down in front of my apartment and jet myself to work. Every morning and evening I could flash a double bird at all of the peons playing bumper cars on the freeway.
It was a fine day.
Traffic moved along at a brisker pace. I guess people finally learned how to drive without brake-checking every other second. My ex-wife was one of those who loved to scream at drivers—literally, she would get hoarse by the time we arrived at our couple therapy sessions—and she wasn’t even the one driving. She would yell at an idiot who couldn’t keep a constant speed and stated he was pathetic in life and had some form of fetish fantasy of wanting to be a woman.
The idiot in question was me.
Work, driving, home, sitting in the living room, bed; wake up, coffee, drive and repeat. You may be thinking I left out a few things like taking a shower, shaving, eating or sex?
I did all of those things and the only thing I did with my wife at the time was eat, everything else was a solo endeavor. I didn’t want to go out places. Didn’t care about seeing Las Vegas or Miami. I had no intention of ever leaving the country on my own free-will: you would have had to hold me at gunpoint and then drug me in order to get me on airplane because I didn’t want to go too far from where I was. She kind of knew that when we were married. She saw my collection of “Lord of Rings” figurines (hand-painted and limited edition, by the way) and maybe she thought she could change me.
Perhaps it sounds like I’m being too hard on her. She did help me one day when she said that I was only half a man. At 260 pounds I assumed I was pretty much all man, maybe a little on the “Stay Puft Marshmallow” side, but still a man at that time. She didn’t agree and one night she left the apartment and never came back.
It was a day…
Traffic picked up and everyone moved at a nice clip of 65 miles per hour except for every other car around me. I didn’t know I volunteered to be a part of “The Cannonball Run 2019” but there I was: trying to avoid being a hood ornament of a semi while attempting to keep out of the back seat of an SUV in front of me. However, there was the sound of this horn that made me jump, drop my coffee into my lap and caused me to lose where my feet were. I had slammed the brake and—as I looked into my rear view and saw the letter KCAM rocketing forward. The truck’s brakes squealed and there was an awful sound of twisting metal, breaking glass and snapping plastic. I also saw a lot of blood.
My own.
Damn, I almost had the car paid off.
A Day Called Zero
I read that people feel different while they’re under the effects of anesthesia. Some say they could hear the doctors and nurses, they could reply but no one could hear them, a la Joe Bonham. Some had either wondrous dreams that placed Oz and Wonderland to shame while others woke up as if only seconds had passed, only to learn of the horror that had happened to their bodies. I didn’t feel like hearing people comment on the fact that I wore a pair of green satin panties that day; I probably would have a never-ending nightmare if my brain decided to kick into high gear while under.
No, I got to wake up to a blinding light in my face. Knowing it couldn’t be God, I surmised that it was someone trying to see if there was any life in my eyes. My consciousness glided back down into the world and the doctors immediately went into telling me everything that was wrong. They disregarded the tube in my throat.
Never mind that it hurt like hell to cry
Forget the fact that my arms were immobile and they asked me to sign form after form.
Ahh, the wonders of the American medicine system.
I had been in the hospital for over three weeks with absolutely no visitors. I shouldn’t have expected any since the alimony checks were taken directly out of my bank account. Pat and Alex were my friends in the evening and the rest of the day was spent in a revolving door of pain and the absence of any feeling whatsoever for another week.
The tube was eventually removed and I could whisper a bit when the nurses asked questions. They were hoarse whispers as my throat was raspy and it was painful to talk to the slight depression I felt after I saw continuing coverage of a little girl who was involved in the crash that day. The reporter looked like Sally Struthers begging for the forgotten children in Africa as she spoke of the little girl who was missing school, ballet recitals and her little puppy at home who was lost in the accident. That little girl was at home with nary a scar on her. She was missing her right leg, but she at home at least with her mother, father, and maybe PETA, as they gathered information to maybe come and see me.
Less than five days before they were planning to let me convalesce at home, I felt like not wanting to go home. I didn’t just have survivor’s guilt, I think I had a death wish.
Tragically, the hospital had me speak to a therapist, I had no physical strength in my arms and the windows were quite thick.