Page 14 of How to Walk Away

Three

I WOKE UPas all hell was breaking loose in the trauma bay—but that’s not the first thing I noticed. The first thing I noticed was my back hurt like fire. And as soon as I noticed it hurting, I realized it had been hurting all along—since back at the crash site, even.

It sounds completely crazy, I know, but it wasn’t until Inoticedthe pain that Irememberedit.

“My back hurts,” I said, to no one in particular—and I wouldn’t have even knownwho to say it tobecause there were at least twenty people moving in and out of my peripheral vision in utter chaos, calling to each other in words so fast they just sounded like noise. I recall sounds and sights in little pinpricks of memory from that room—noises and images I can’t even put into the right order. People in aqua scrubs moving with purpose, arms and bodies in motion, machines beeping. An unearthly light rained down from the fluorescent fixture above and blurred out the edges of my vision. Someone changed my IV fluids. Someone else asked for a catheter. I heard the words “x-ray” and “CT scan.”

My neck was uncomfortable in the collar, and I asked a plump male nurse with a kind face if we could take it off.

“Not until the C-spine is cleared” came a voice across the room.

“A little longer, sweetheart,” the nurse said.

Was I allergic to medications?No.Did I have any preexisting conditions they should be aware of?No.Was I pregnant?God, I hoped not.

“Healthy as a horse,” I said.

A guy I later came to recognize as the neurosurgeon paused to tell me that they were evaluating me for pressure and sensation with pinprick tests, and they were starting me on a steroid to prevent swelling because the benefits of its use outweighed the complications.

“Okay,” I said. But it didn’t occur to me until after he’d stepped away to ask, “Swelling of what?”

I said it to the room, but I got no reply.

After the evaluation and CT scan, the neurosurgeon popped into view again and began to talk nonsense. “Your scans reveal a burst fracture to your L1. We’re sending you to surgery to clear out debris. Your evaluation shows some deficits, but there appears to be some sacral sparing. The good news is that your iliopsoas seems to be functioning, and we believe at this time it’s an incomplete injury. Of course, we’ll know a lot more once we get in there.”

“Incomplete injury of what?” I asked at last.

He blinked, like he thought I already knew. “Your spinal cord.”

I held my breath a second. “Is that why my back hurts?”

But he’d turned away to a nurse with a question. When he turned back, he said, “You’re lucky. The L1 was good and crushed, but it didn’t sever the cord. Now we just need to get in there to stabilize and clean up.”

“Now?” I asked.

He nodded. “We’re heading to surgery. And while you’re there, we’ll have a plastic surgeon evaluate your face and neck and the area above your trapezius—maybe debride what he can. But that’ll be a second surgery. After you’ve stabilized. First things first.”

“What will be a second surgery?”

“The skin grafts. For the burns.”

The skin grafts. For the burns.

The surgeon was ready to get moving. “Do you have any questions for me?”

I wanted to nod, but I couldn’t. Yes, I had questions for him. A thousand, at least. I just couldn’t figure out what they were.

Instead, I asked the only question I could come up with. “Could somebody please find my mother?”

***

NORMALLY, MEMORIES HAVEa chronology to them. Even if you’ve lost pieces of the story, you usually have a sense of order, at least—this led to this. What I recall from the ICU is just a pile of images, sounds, and feelings so jumbled, it’s like a game of pick-up sticks.

They say everybody loses time in the ICU. It’s basically Vegas in there, minus the showgirls and slot machines. No windows, for one. Bright fluorescents humming at all hours of the day and night—dimmed, sometimes, but not much. Doctors, nurses, techs, residents, physical therapists, occupational therapists, social workers, case managers, administrators, family members, and just about anyone else who feels like it walking through at all hours. Machines beeping and hissing. Rolling carts with computers. Shoes squeaking the floor. Phones ringing.

It annihilates your circadian rhythms, to say the least.

Plus, you. You’re asleep, then you’re awake. The world is blurred with drugs and pain. You’re woken at all hours—to take medicines, to be turned to avoid bedsores, or even just because someone, anyone, has a question for you. You’re a passive, drugged-out element of an unearthly ecosystem that churns day and night to keep you alive—but you’re about as far from alive as it’s possible to be.

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