They say, we are taking you to the big room.  There are nine doctors there, some huddled around your ankle, some your knee, some your shoulder.

They say we will have to cut your clothing off.  And they do.  You lie there naked as they discuss your various body parts; what could be broken, what tests need running, cat scan that, x-ray this.

As naked and visible as you are, you fade into a cloud—probably the drugs they are giving you—the adrenaline has to have worn off by now.

They ask you what you remember.  You tell them you remember it all.

You are grateful when they put you under, put a catheter in (you’ve had to pee for hours, and couldn’t) they set your shoulder and ankle.  You wake up in a cast, knee brace, sling.

If you were a tic-tac-toe game, you’re a diagonal win—left shoulder, hip, lumbar, right tibia, right ankle, right heel; all broken.

This is the first time you think of your body as a mechanical thing—hinges and supports. You will learn how to make them work together again.  You will learn how to move with one working leg and one working arm.

The driver was going 10, 15 miles an hour when he hit you. Broke your shoulder on impact, and the rest when you landed, from being thrown in the air. 

You are lucky, and are given a big room on the Ortho floor.  Large enough to hold the visitors and flowers and food that comes.

Large enough to have one, two, three film crews come in, interview you.  Because Jones was pissed off.  Because Jones couldn’t sleep after getting the news, he called every station.  Told them a poet and preschool teacher had been hit by a car and the guy left. The guy left.  The first station shows up at 9:30 the morning after.   

You tell them what happened.  How you were crossing at the crosswalk, on the green light, how he started his left-hand turn and then just kept coming.  How you realized he wasn’t stopping, his windshield dark—you couldn’t see who was in the car, only the big black engine as it smashed into you.

As you are flying through the air, you are thinking, this is not how I’m gonna die.  I’m not dying this way.

And when you land, you get your right hand down, because you aren’t going to break your teeth—how uncomfortable that would be? How much time that would take to fix?  And you don’t hit your teeth—just your lip, small scratches on your face from your glasses and the road. 

Your lip bleeds enough to stain your jacket in splotches, blood red.  Your ankle’s new position is enough to keep you from getting up, although you want to.

People come out to help you. The couple from the bus stop—the woman in her salmon-colored shoes, the man with her, tall, with beautiful silver-gray hair.  Then others. You look up, and a woman hands you your glasses, asks if there is anyone you’d like to call before the ambulance gets here.  Your phone is fine, slipped from your pocket, onto the road.  A semi-circle of people around you, you ask if we can move to the sidewalk—you are worried about them getting hit.

The man who hit you, crouches behind you, says, I’m sorry.  I didn’t see you.

This feels good. It’s a truth, a fact.  You can accept this.

You call your partner at 4:28, tell him you’ve been hit by a car and an ambulance is coming. Then you call your son.  You were on your way to meet him, were going to see Cornbread Harris, playing at Palmers.  You tell him you can’t meet him there, are going to HCMC.  He says he will meet you there instead.

Someone asks, where is the driver?

He left, someone else says.

Someone else says, I talked to him. He said he didn’t see her. He was on his phone.

No one got his license plate. It’s a black car, probably a Kia Sportage, 2017. The camera on the stoplight doesn’t pick up the plate number.  He hit you and drove away. Sorry, and probably freaked out—but not man enough to see this through.  See what he did to you and that you are not okay, but will be in a few months.  If walking again, learning how to, counts as okay.  He has taken at least a year of your life away with his inattention, with his carelessness, with his his car. 

So many of your friends and family want to find him.  Find a way to make him pay what this has cost you and them.

The EMT tells you they will cut your clothes off, asks if want to save your coat, sweater.  You say yes and take them off, despite the hip and dislocated shoulder.  You save them, this bloody coat and your favorite sweater.

The cop that comes to the side door of the ambulance looks barely out of high school.  He says, so you were in a car—and the EMT says, No.  She was walking, crossing the street.  He say, oh.  I have a couple more questions.  The EMT asks, are they relevant?  We need to get her to the ER. He says, I talked with some of the people on the street.  Then he says, I have to get your case number.  Its in the car.

The EMT says, again, were need to get her to the ER.

The cop returns a minute later, hands you the folded blue card, says your case number is written there, you can go online and look it up. 

It isn’t until you are in the ER that your older son calls your younger son.  He is in Duluth, heading out to camp in the morning.  You didn’t call him from the street, because there was nothing he could do from Duluth, you on the road, and that with a little more information, he could make the drive back, in daylight.

He and his girlfriend arrive, that Monday morning, moments before the TV crew.

Your room feels like an ocean, waves of people and nurses and blood draws, and flowers, art from the children and food, come spilling in.

Your ex-husband comes into the hospital room, carrying a bouquet of flowers, says, this is the smallest one I could find. Behind them, he is visibly upset.

Whether this is an attempt at humor or symbolic, you aren’t sure.  Perhaps both.

Friends from elementary school come, sit with you.  Co-workers, old neighbors, poets, your siblings, children from the preschool, and step-father. You see all their beautiful faces, their intact bodies, with working arms and legs.  You watch how they stand and move.  You forget that you can’t do these things right now.  You have no idea what you look like—can only feel the parts of your body, encased. Can feel the scabs on your face, the fatness of your lip.

You tell the blood sugar nurse, that she is the Sugar Queen—she takes your blood so painlessly.

You tell Mederin, your most-beloved nurse, that you are staying on a liquid diet until you can get up and use the commode.  That you can’t use a bedpan—you don’t understand how that could ever work, and she nods, understands why you aren’t eating solid food for the first five days.

When nurse Abby gives you the blood transfusion, she says we have the same blood type.  She says, I’d give you my blood, and you say, you would give yours to her.

You have two surgeries, both five hours long. They screw your tibia back together and put a plate and hinge in your shoulder during one surgery, and fuse your heel with 8 screws during the other.  There might be clean cadaver bones in your heel now.  The doctor asked, prior to surgery, if that would be ok to use, if you needed them.  If you needed them, how could you say no?

The man who measures you for your brace, tears up, and tells you he has fitted more people for braces who have been hit by cars this year than he has in his entire career.  When your brace comes, it feels like armor, the way it encircles your torso. 

Your partner sleeps in your room with you every night but one.  On a recliner, that barely reclines.  He has his bike seat and rack stolen, when it is locked outside the hospital one of the first nights you are there. Walking home and back takes an hour.  The wind and cold make it feel like two.

You son sleeps in your room with you, the night your partner can’t.

You are so loved, so cared for.  You understand this staying close, staying the night.  It is what you did when your mother was dying.  It is what you did when your boy were babies, slept near them, to make sure they were sleeping, comfortable, safe.

Your son tells you how he remembers as a small child, waking up, quietly saying your name, them walking to your room, standing by the side of the bed, until you woke up, scooped him up, and laid him down next to you.

You remember this too. The dreams and owls that woke him.

As your room fills with people, you realize, this could be your wake, and you are glad you are there, alive, part of it. The nurse who brings you meals, says, this is a party in here, this is good.  This is what helps you heal—all this love and support.  You say, and you help too, all of you nurses.  She says yes, but the people who only have us, the nurses, don’t do as well.

Tyler, from PT, shows you how to get in and out of a chair, a wheelchair, a commode.  It is a game-changer.

You are moved to the rehab center, where Casey, your PT, says, after reading your chart, I have no idea what to do with you. You’ve got one good leg and one good arm.  He says, let’s head to the car, get in and out of it.  And you do.  You figure out how.  Then he takes you to a bed, helps you figure out how to get in and out of it yourself too. Lying down on it, he has you do exercises, muscle tightening, and you talk, as you lie there, about your lives.  He rides his bike to work. His wife is an oncology nurse.  He has two sons, like you. He likes your partner’s vibe.

Emily, your OT nurse, helps you shower.  Your first one in 12 days.  It feels so good to rinse away the street and days you’ve been through.  There are still initials on parts of your body, where the ER doctors marked you for work. JAG.  You’ve been tagged. Emily tells you; her job is a lot of furniture moving and trying not to get wet. You do your best not to spray her. You realize, she feels like a sister to you, as you bath and she hands you shampoo, soap, conditioner, towels, all the while talking.

You have had so much love and support and care since this happened.  You think about what the man who hit you might be feeling, what he might be seeing; the image of you flying through the air after he hits you, your body a crumpled mass on the road. So much damage done.  Who makes a left turn without looking? On his phone? Because a message or video is more important than the life of a woman crossing the street? Drunk? High? Driving without a license or insurance?  Not your problem(s), although he has made them so. 

You’re not even sure how many weeks you will spend in a wheelchair.  How many more, learning through the pain, how to walk again.

The day before you leave, day 16, Casey tells you its your last day working together. He asks if you want to see all your x-rays.  You see the history of your broken body—the dislocated ankle, and shoulder cracked and out of socket.  The heal crushed like a cookie, the hip cracked, the fractured lumbar, the knee chipped away.  He says, when you can, walk over and say hi to me.  You tell him you will.  He pauses, and says, I shouldn’t tell you this, but I got four new patients today.  All hit by cars.

You roll back to your room in your wheelchair, and the man in the room next to you has the TV on, football. You hear the crunch as the players collide and you feel your stomach tighten.  You feel each break in your body. All five six seven of them.  You wonder when people started to choose conflict as a way to feel? Watching, and cheering, do they even think about how that would feel?  To collide with another body, large and determines to crush you? Or have we been reduced to inches, yards, the fabled touchdown, the extra point.  Cheering, as if our happiness depended upon it.

Your rental wheelchair is delivered.  You are released to go home. Riding in the car, you watch the city go by; the buses and stoplights, the restaurants, coffeeshops and offices. You cross the 3^rd Avenue bridge.  See the stoplight and the crossing where you were hit.  The road looks so wide. There is so much sky above it. This place made of asphalt and air. You look for signs that you were there—expect to see a small indention of where your body landed, on the road, your blood splattered, but there is nothing. Just hard flat road.  The air that held you long enough to know that this was not how you were going to die, thousands of miles from here now.

jks, December 2024