“Corkscrew!” I was alone and still I felt compelled to yell— “Fucking Corkscrew!”
My knuckles turned white from gripping the wheel, my briefcase flew past my face as I focused on suppressing breakfast. Yet my greatest fear came when I was completely inverted and noticed my zipper was down—wide open, tighty whities showing and everything.
There wasn’t a lot of time. Why couldn’t I have put on colored boxers? I didn’t dare let go— just like I couldn’t let go of the safety bar on that frigging roller coaster Kyera had coaxed me on.
When the cab of my pick-up lands on the pavement I’ll be either knocked unconscious or into my next life. That was the reality and oddly the image that popped into my head was of emergency responders finding me flying low...
Michelle and Kyera loved roller coasters in a way I could never understand. It wasn’t the minute-thirty seconds upside down at G-force that I didn’t enjoy; it was the way the effects lingered. One stupid ride and my world spun for hours. Last Sunday, after disembarking the “Corkscrew” in the afternoon, I felt like I was below deck on the Norwegian Dawn during a typhoon long into the evening. Being a “coaster-pussy” was something I wouldn’t cop to. Nor would I run from a dare to ride. Doing so would translate to listening to taunts from my girls for the rest of the week— something too painful for my ego to bear.
Motion sickness aside, I was happy to have a Sunday off. Going to the office on weekends had become common since becoming an associate at a Boston law firm. The work was time consuming in the beginning because I was still getting used to civil litigation. What was most important— almost miraculous— was I’d made a clean break from the DA’s office without having to defend. Many of my former co-workers were not as fortunate. After putting all that time in as a civil servant for shit pay what we left with was experience, fine-tuned in the criminal arena. Without charisma and connections most former ADAs found themselves short on clients and quickly resorted to taking court-appointed cases. I credited the higher profile cases like Donahue for getting my name in the news and the offers from firms with diverse areas of practice coming in. Now, as soon as I got a handle on the rules of civil procedure, I was confident I could successfully spin any set of facts in favor of my new clients.
Friday’s were casual dress days at the firm. Routinely, I arrived at the office before 9:00 AM by leaving at 7:30. With so many business people taking the fifth day of the week off in the summer, today I felt comfortable leaving at 8:00. Ten minutes earlier I pulled away from our newly constructed home, waving to Michelle and Kyera as they packed Michelle’s Lexus for the beach. Snap shots of them—and how beautiful my life was— shot by right behind the briefcase.
Even at this early hour the August humidity was unbearable. Usually I could catch a breeze off the Merrimack River, which wove to my right along Route 110. Today what I found was thick, stagnant, stillness when I stopped at the traffic light. Jumping on the gas I thrust my left arm out the window and opened my palm to grab every molecule of passing air. I should have sprung for AC?
Low speed and tapping breaks indicated the driver of the compact in front of me was lost. When the right blinker of the empty boat trailer he pulled finally flashed I shot past on the left. Goddamn that breeze-felt good!
The sharp impact into the frame below my passenger door was deafening but lasted only a second. A crunch of bucking steel immediately followed as my oversized rear tire drove up and over the compact’s hood, catapulting my truck diagonally through the air. There seemed a long period of silence, most of which I was upside down. It seemed pointless to contemplate why he’d turned left. What transpired next comes back in glimpses like frames spliced from a larger reel of lost film.
Despite the way I recollect it I’m certain everything happened rapidly, rose to ear shredding volume, and involved immense pain. What I discovered is in times like this the mind and body form a partnership— an agreement to protect each other. That morning unimaginable trauma befell my body yet my mind did all it could to shield me. It suspended my senses— shutting out sound, killing the taste of blood and vomit, extinguishing the scent of burnt rubber and radiator fluid. It filtered my sight but there was simply too much devastation to eliminate completely.
The instant I became inverted gravity took over. When the roof of the truck’s cab finally met the road the back of my head was inches behind. Somehow I see myself wince on impact. There comes a second when I’m in the air, one where I curse not wearing a seatbelt, and another where I’m helpless in the street. It remains silent although I am aware of crushing steel in the distance— and screeching breaks right in front of me. I have every intention of moving out of the way but I’m positive I am too late. The only thing I recognize then is darkness— no, there’s one image. Looking down I see scissors tearing up the sides of my pants in the ambulance while emergency personal utter something about internal bleeding. Then there is absolutely nothing.
My memory seemed at rest for a long time. When I wake its pain that brings me back. There is lots of pain— in specific places. Excruciating pain at the base of my skull, my right shoulder, left knee and right ankle. My lower body burns from skin left behind on the pavement. But nothing compares to the searing down my middle.
“We had to remove your spleen,” the doctor explained. “It was severed and bleeding relentlessly.” He continued on about how lucky I was and while I contemplated the irony of this he told me about the button. “You can press it as often as every eight minutes. It will help with the pain. Don’t worry you’ll get used to it.”
The button was attached to a cylinder connected to a hose leading up to a bag of morphine. Pressing it brought on a torrent of nausea that caused violent dry heaves. I don’t know if you’ve ever dry heaved on your back with forty fresh staples in your belly but it hurts— like a bastard. Minutes later the pain began to subside. When it registered why, I became resigned to dealing with being nauseous, so I pressed again.
Not long thereafter I learned the doctor was right about getting used to the drug. Inside of two days any hint of sickness had passed and by the end of the week I welcomed the warm itchy glow I found had more to do with masking pain behind a veil of euphoria than eliminating it the way aspirin cures a headache. Before long I was fumbling for the button at the six… five… and four-minute marks.
When finally I was transferred out of the intensive care unit the morphine drip was replace by a battery of pain medications. Without asking a question I choked down every miniature cup full of pills the nurses placed in front of me. They weren’t fast or efficient but once they took hold, as before, pain was placed on layaway.
Bedridden and incapacitated from fresh incisions, torn muscles and missing skin, I found my new hospital room less than secure. In ICU the greatest threat came from being invaded by a pair of three hundred pound nurses during a late night sponge bath— a foul that while in a comma apparently no one calls. Now the threat of violence assumed a new level. Lawrence General Hospital was a war zone on par with Lowell District Court. Surrounding rooms were filled with gang affiliates from Latin Kings to the TRG. These were victims of stabbings and gunshot wounds whose warring friends and family waged battles of revenge that spilled into the halls. Wielding knifes and swinging mop handles like baseball bats one teen was beaten and stabbed by four others outside my door. With a bedpan wedged between my skinless thighs my first reaction was to get up and help. But no sooner had the notion risen it was over and my second thought was to pray no one looked in with an eye towards eliminating witness. Fortunately the perpetrators scurried off. And their victim became my new roommate. No asked if I’d seen anything, and if they had, I hadn’t. Nine years would pass before I’d witness a beating as savage— one I would watch behind steel through wired glass. And come to think of it no one asked if I’d seen anything then either.
The splenectomy turned out to be the least of my problems. Over time I underwent surgeries to reconstruct my left knee, right ankle, my septum, and four abdominal hernias. Pain medications were administered liberally during these procedures and prescribed thereafter by each surgeon. After consulting with Neurology my primary care physician provided a further diagnosis of brachial plexus nerve damage. The explanation for the fierce pain that shot across my upper chest then down my back and arm like electricity was a spinal cord injury. “The chance of a surgery repairing the nerve damage is low so I will put you on a comprehensive management regiment.” What the good doctor meant was more drugs— lots more including one that in 1999 I’d never heard of: OxyContin. “You’ll have to continue on this medication for the rest of your life to manage pain,” he told me. Truth be told I knew better; knew I couldn’t keep on popping pills and living in the clouds without serious, lasting repercussions. But by the time I gave enough of a shit to try to stop— off the deck came my next card.
