story # 12

car crash

by bob gottlieb

copyright © 1978-2009 Bob Gottlieb, all rights reserved.

The first thing that I remember was someone sticking a pin in my right foot, I tried to kick the offender with my left foot as he had a death grip on the right one. At the same time an exceedingly bright light was flashing in one of my eyes (I don’t remember which one). Well I kicked at the perpetrator with the pin, and yelled, or tried to, although it didn’t sound too loud, about the annoying light and push it away, however there was a heavy weight holding my arms down. I remember hearing some people start to cry and others laugh when I started trying to get free from these demons. It was cause for joy from some of the people crowded around my bed by the laughter and long exhales, though I couldn’t see them, because one eye was covered by something soft and the irritating light was shinning in the other, however I could hear them. Definitely there was no smile or laughter coming from me.

I tried to ask what was going on, and where was I? Why were all these people gathered around me? Why couldn’t I move my upper body freely? Why was one eye covered and why was that damned light shining in my eyes? For that matter, why the hell couldn’t I open my mouth? There was a lot of confusion, some milling around. I think I heard my mother crying. My friend, Henry, who is also a Dr., said something about it being a relief. Then someone, and I guess it was my father stepped up to stand beside the bed to say I had been in a car accident, that I’d been hurt pretty badly, and I was in a hospital in Brooklyn. None of it made sense in an ordinary linear way. The last thing I remembered was leaving a bar with a friend after stopping there to check about the accuracy of some information on a final project that I was finishing for an entomology course, and the person who could answer the questions was more efficient than I was and he was finished. Thus they were out celebrating. There were all these sort of visions, or bits of dreams, like removed disconnected and discombobulated memories, floating around in my head. Like what the hell was I doing in Brooklyn I had been going to school way out on Long Island. They were vivid, real vibrant fragments that I knew I had to get straightened out. But no one around seemed inclined to talk. They were all pretty happy that I could kick my leg, and yell (in a manner of speaking) about the light in my eyes. No one wanted to discuss what I wished to clear up. It just kept getting side-passed, and pushed out of the way. I guess I knocked out again, because the next thing I knew it was a different time, though I was still in the same condition, however there were only a couple of people around, which was a relief.
One very important part of this story is that my mouth was wired shut. I had broken my jaw in 7 places and shattered it at the right joint where the upper and lower jaws connect. No eating! I was conscious and needed food because I was getting very tired of the intravenous tube, beside I remembered that they forgotten to change it to the other arm at one point, and somehow though uncommunicative and disassociated, I realized this, and that it was poisoning me through infection, and created enough uproar to make them pay attention, even though I was not conscious yet. It is amazing what the body knows and reacts to all on its own without the help of any doctors.

As I said the thing that made me happy in this new time was the crowds in the room had vanished. All I could hear was just my father, my mother, and Henry, who I discovered was acting as the coordinating doctor. He was a long time friend of my parents, and their contemporary, but he was also a friend of mine, someone I could talk to and seek advise from. I have great respect for Henry. At this point they gave me a little more of the details of what happened to me. I’d like to avoid a visual description, cause it sure as hell wasn’t pretty. In fact if made me gag when they showed some pictures much later on. My jaw was broken in 7 places and shattered at the right joint, my nose in 3 places, my skull in 3, and my face in about a dozen places. There were about 25 stitches in my face, and those in small batches so you can’t even find them now, and I think it was 15 in my knee. The part we don’t talk about is the brilliant coloration and swelling in the vicinity of my eyes. I was as goggle eyed as a frog, and puffy with colors that go way beyond black and blue, that makes a peacock look like a conservative dresser.

This had happened when I was a passenger in a TR-3 that ran a stop sign that was hidden by a tree, and hit another car that was speeding. I had no seatbelt on, I was young and invincible, to the best of my recollection the car didn’t have any seatbelts, and I tried to rearrange the dashboard with my face. Needless to say my face was rearranged and not the dashboard. Because the skull was fractured the way it was they couldn’t give me painkillers. All I’ll say is, I know what pain is. However these details explained why I couldn’t open my mouth. It was wired shut, and some people wish it had stayed that way. It also cleared up why I was strapped into some strange bed, with something covering my eyes.

Once I had an explanation of where I was and why I was in this situation we got down to some of these scorched into the brain memories. Were they bad dreams or was there some substance to them? Come to find out they were based on actual events while I was unconscious for the 7 or 8 days.

I remembered punching a face because it was right up in my face, merely inches away. As it happens it was my father’s face I tried to punch and it was during the ambulance transfer from one hospital to another. He was trying to hear what I was mumbling and moved his face up close so he could hear over the highway noise. I didn’t like the invasion of space I guess. I apologized to him, never asked whether I hit him or not, or if I even really did take a swing at him. That was an easy way to tidy up, and to straighten out one of those fragments of apparent reality that was stuck rattling around in my head.

The next memory that needed clarification was much more complicated and exceedingly vivid in my mind. In the cloudiness of partial consciousness I remembered waking up in the middle of the night and getting out of the bed, having to clamber over those high side rails they put up to keep in those that may fall out of bed, in the bed. Once out I remember grabbing the rack that held the intravenous tubes and using it to steady myself as I went over to the window. While looking out the window I saw that someone was trying to steal my Porsche (I never have owned one, and in fact at that time I didn’t even own a car). I evidently thought I could stop them and somehow I found my way to the elevator dragging along all my paraphernalia behind me, this consisted of that rolling stand that had all kinds of intravenous bags and the tubes that were locked into my arms by needles. Remember this is before I was ever conscious in this hospital and I don’t know how I found my way, though it is difficult to get lost in a hospital corridor. I evidently walked right past the nurses’ station and got onto the elevator. Two or three floors below the elevator stopped and a nurse entered and saw me. Fortunately she was on the ball and she realized that something was wrong because I wearing my intravenous tubes with the feedbag attached to the rolling post, and nothing else, not to mention my froggy eyes that were colored like a rainbow, and a mouth that was wired shut. No one ever figured out how I got past the nurses’ station, or where they were while I was out meandering. For that matter where the hell was the private nurse who was supposed to be in the room with me constantly. I guess the sharp nurse on the elevator looked at the little bracelet that they put on you (now you know why they do it) and took me back to where I was supposed to be.

Last and definitely not least, there was the male nurse who was playing with me sexually, while I was out of it, but was somehow in it enough to realize this wasn’t supposed to be happening. I was told I outed him in very graphic language that allegedly would make drill sergeants blush, in a loud voice in front of all the doctors and whoever else was in the room at the time. It came down to my word against his and since I supposedly was out of it I don’t think he was fired but removed from ‘caring’ for me. We do remember and have consciousness of what goes on when we supposedly don’t know what is going on, quite interesting. Does this mean dreams have a basis in reality also? One of the things I am still curious about.

Here I am conscious with an active mind and confined to a hospital bed, with eyes I am not allowed to use for reading or TV, or for that matter, anything else. The doctor was increasing the amount of time they were uncovered each day, but when you start with only 15 minutes twice a day, and increase by adding 10 minutes twice a day; and you figure there are 24 hours in a day! I could listen to the radio but there wasn’t much on that held my interest for much more than an hour or so in 1964. The main station I enjoyed was a rhythm and blues station from Newark, and my little radio wouldn’t receive it during the day, it came in well at night. I think it was WWRL; those are the call letters that stick in my brain (if I’m wrong about the call letters and you remember this station out of Newark, N.J., please let me know what they are). It was one hell of a station. Real solid Rhythm and Blues late day and early evening, artists such as Wilbert Harrison, Chuck Willis and Big Joe Turner; and then Jazz with some great DJs to spin the platters later at night. One of who was Jocko. Jocko was great and would put everything into rhyme that had a rhythm to it, kind of a precursor to Rap and Hip-Hop music.

The days at this point were filled with trying to occupy my mind. Time for reflection in there was enormous. It was an on going battle to try and overcome the miasma that seeps into every thing done in a hospital. There is dis-ease, and there is disease, and the former is a more encompassing and pervasive word for the environment of a hospital. The family came in generally towards late afternoon or evening when my father could leave work early. The hospital wasn’t in the easiest to access place in Brooklyn, nor was it in a safe and picturesque area (this is something I was told because obviously I wasn’t allowed to amble into the streets and go exploring). I didn’t get a lot of visitors that I knew from my life prior to the crash. Some Interns and Nurses from around the hospital would drop in and chat (by the way thank you, it sure helped and I know I didn’t get much chance to express my appreciation). One ‘nurse to be’ would stop by and read to me (special thanks). This is one powerful reason that hospitals are counterproductive to their stated mission, and they are not healthy places to be sick. Think about being confined and nothing to stimulate you, or no way to react to what does stimulate. That in itself is decidedly detrimental to your health. I did have large stretches of time to contemplate what I had been doing with my life, and what I wanted to do with the portion that was to come. It opened my eyes to death and how quickly and unexpectedly it can come. It was a very liberating experience, I often have reflected that it was the most cathartic experience I’ve had. When you’ve met death and realize it is only an extension of life and quite unavoidable.

Two things happened during the first week I was conscious that I would never forget. The first event occurred on the very first night I was conscious, after the day of lights in eyes and needles in feet, I drifted in and out, between consciousness and sleep. A man (I had no way of knowing it was a man except something about the sound told me that it was, and it was later confirmed) across the hall from me coughed. It was a short cough about two beats, but It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was as if someone was inside of him was beating his lungs, there was a dull, hollow, echoing sound, resembling empty dirty garbage cans being beaten inside a reverberating tunnel. I buzzed for the nurse and said to check on the guy because I was sure he was dead. She looked at me as if I was hallucinating, when she left she didn’t indicate she was going to do as I asked. She never came back and said anything to me, however a short while later I heard them wheeling a gurney down the hall. I asked the nurse the next morning and she told me the fellow had died that night before from emphysema.

The second ‘event’ happened later in that week. After those first few days of consciousness and not being able to do anything at all as my eyes were slowly being allowed to adjust to light, the first day for two 10 minute stretches, and longer each day until by the end of the week I just refused to cover them up any more, the heck with what they said. There was no pain and no seemingly ill effects. Now that I could see and navigate, during the day they were allowing me to move around my room a bit. Pretty soon I convinced them to allow me to get in a wheelchair and cruise the halls for about an hour a day. Obviously no longer was I being fed intravenously, but was eating melted diet ice cream. After the days of doing nothing, but watching the mindless offerings of television I was in heaven. I had to have an attendant with me at all times (I think at this point because I was conscious I no longer had my own nurse. At least I was out of the room, and seeing some different people and scenery. I had heard about this college student two doors down from my room that had been in a chemistry lab explosion, and he couldn’t do anything except lay in the bed. I figured I’d go in and talk to him, as he must have been as bored as I was. I was shocked when I rolled in to see him. He looked like a mummy with holes for what remained of his nostrils and his mouth; otherwise he was swathed in bandages. He was blind, seriously burned over most of his body, and had lost most of his hands. But he was sitting up in bed and giving the nurses a pleasantly hard time. He heard me being wheeled in and stopped what he was doing and took a long pause, as he looked me over as if he still had his eyes. That also gave me a pretty good look at him, which wasn’t real easy to do. Then he said to me, “I don’t look too pretty do I?”

I answered thru my wired jaws that no I didn’t think he would win any prizes for beauty. Then he said, “Thanks for being honest, not many people are. You’re welcome to come in and talk if you’ll talk up a bit.”
I explained why my speech was muffled and what was the matter with me. We talked about what a fine pair we were. He became a constant stop on my excursions in the hall, even though I knew the nurses didn’t like to look at him. But he was alive, and living and had a good attitude about life. Not like some of the people who had far more physical capabilities than the two of us put together, but were killing themselves in their own minds. I never knew what happened to him, one day he just disappeared from the hospital and no one would tell me diddly.

I had my hour a day out of bed, which was gradually increased over the remaining 2 and a half weeks I was in there. That allowed me to explore even more and helped pass the hours. I was allowed to read, though that was tiring on the eyes, and watch the TV. I didn’t do much of the latter cause I wasn’t really interested in what was on. It seemed to be insulting to anyone with a modicum of intelligence (I don’t think it has gotten much better. Most of the shows that portray some sparks of either intelligence or diversity seem to be cancelled rather quickly.). In looking back on the accident I am glad it happened. I had been walking a tightrope for several years. It seemed as if I had to pick a direction; the first option was with my life all laid out for me, the easy way, or living life as if it was an ever-changing vital entity, but absolutely no security or certainty about anything. I was studying to go into the family business, orchid growing, with a thought to expanding it to do interior landscapes. I enjoyed the field because of its creative possibilities, but I was never sold on the idea of it as a ‘life work’! I didn’t like the idea of a family business, but I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted but I didn’t think I wanted that. I had been exposed to a lot of new ideas and thoughts, and real strange juxtapositions, like growing up on a horse in New York City. I knew I wanted a life that would be constantly changing and challenging, but I had been afraid to go out on a quest for it. It seemed like a very risky business and I would have to give up a lot I had been taught to value. But then there was life! All kinds of possibilities and adventures, so many new horses to ride, so much country to explore. I realized lying there that I had to try the horses, particularly when I saw the lives my parents’ generation had lived, so constrained and restricted by some of their own self-imposed rules. They were happy in some ways, but there was something in the eyes, as if the sacrifice for security killed off some other integral portion of them. As if there was a dark spirit going to overtake them before they got to the dessert they had promised themselves. Afraid they would be cheated at the last minute of the prize they had been waiting for all these years. It wasn’t a sudden flash, nor a big boom, not even a little boom, let alone a slap across the face, it was just something I knew one day. As if it was like the beard I’d been shaving off each morning for all those years was there in full bloom. I also made myself a promise that I would just do it, no looking back, no regrets, no remorse, just accept what came my way, and make the best of it. No, not make the best of it rather accept it into my life and see what it is made of. Make what came to me a part of me and use it to further my growth, and no complaints.

Full responsibility for all my actions........

To anyone I’ve ever offended that happens to be reading this, I was only trying to do what I thought was correct. I made many mistakes, however they were honest, and sincere. There is an apology. I never set out to hurt you, if I did it was unintentional, all I was trying to do was live. That accident, and the time spent unconscious was what gave me the impetus to act. I guess I was in a pretty deep sleep if that is what it took to wake me up to life; I hope your personal awakening is much gentler.

 

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