Wake up
I wake up with a start; my eyes shoot around the room with an intensity alien to even my own self. The room is white, unlike my own room, which is a tan color.
Did I paint my room? No… this isn’t my room. This isn’t my bed. I look around and see the cheap white linoleum floor, off-white painted walls, and potted plant in the corner behind a faded red leather chair and magazine rack.
What’s going on?
I hear a beep…
What was that?
Beep!
I look around, but can’t see anything. My neck won’t respond to my brain’s kinetic signal.
Beep! Beep!
Sounds like a heart monitor!
I try to lift my head, but nothing will move. Only my mouth will open and I breathe in graciously the sweet oxygen God blessed man with.
Beep! Beep!
I try once more to look upwards and to my right at the sound. But nothing responds.
What am I doing here!? What’s going on!?
I try to speak, and only an indiscernible whisper disrupts the air around me.
Just then a doctor, tall and proper in stature with feathery brown hair combed over to the side, and a white lab coat, enters the room carrying a clipboard.
He seems surprised at my awareness and sets down the clipboard on an invisible side table beyond my vision. Then he taps around on the heart monitor up above my head, pulls up the old leather chair from the corner, and sits down facing me.
What am I doing here? What happened? It’s easy to think it, but will talking be just as easy? In an unstable whisper I speak, “… Wha… t… ha…” It starts to hurt, and I stop. What was hurting though? I can’t tell. But pain was definitely there.
The doctor smiles at me. He’s got a kind smile, as if he’d practiced it in the mirror for hours every morning. “What do you remember?”
What? What do I remember? I’m the one asking questions here! I’m the one who woke up in the hospital! My mind’s working just fine. But physically I have no control. I attempt to speak again, “… Wha… t?”
It’s exciting to finish a sentence, even one as simple as that.
The doctor stirs in his chair only just slightly, and keeps his comforting smile, “What do you remember?” He repeated.
… Nothing…? Am I supposed to remember something? I feel a small bit of strength returning, and so I attempt to speak again, “Nothing…”
The doctor picks up his clipboard and scribbles something unrecognizable… although, it probably would be unrecognizable despite the situation.
Are there any doctor’s with decent handwriting? I think.
Then he puts his hand on my head and says, “We’ll talk more later, but for now… regain your strength and sleep.”
As if on queue, as he began to walk out, my eyelids grow heavy and darkness consumes me.
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Beep!
Again?
Beep!
Yep… I knew it… it wasn’t a dream………dang…
I open my eyes and see the same room, but only this time it’s darker. Evening? Morning? I can’t tell.
A man is sitting in the chair reading a magazine.
Who is that? I ask myself before they move slightly and the light reveals his identity.
Dad? He doesn’t know I’m awake. I attempt to say something, but nothing happens this time.
What’s wrong!? Come on!?
Beep!
The doctor opens the door carrying a similar, if not the same, clipboard. He walks in, pushes some buttons on the heart monitor again, and stands there with the same already familiar smile. That must be a way for them to know if I’m awake of not.
Do people’s heart rate speed up when the wake up or something?
My dad sets down his magazine when the doctor turns off the heart monitor and hastily approaches my bed. He’s obviously hoping I’m awake.
The tears in his eyes hit a part of me that never gets hit. He never cries!
What’s happening, I need answers! “Are you okay son? Are you okay?” Is all he says before the doctor put his hand on his shoulder and asked him to step out during the procedure.
Procedure? What procedure?
I feel a tear fall from my eye.
Why? I don’t cry! Why did I just cry!?
The doctor smiles and walks down to my feet, uncovers them from under the blanket, pulls out a needle, and looks at me. “You should flinch, but I doubt you’ll feel anything. Try and tell me if you do.”
The needle taps my right big toe… nothing.
Then it taps my left big toe… nothing.
The remaining eight toes get the same reaction. He covers my feet back up, walks back over to the table, and scribbles more information onto the clipboard.
What does that mean?
He sets his clipboard back and asks me the question I keep asking myself, “What happened?” His smile came after the question, but before he seemed solemn. Sad, even.
I don’t know what happened…
“I… don’t…know” I squeeze out. My voice is getting stronger, but it will still take some time before I can carry on a good conversation with someone.
The doctor picked up his clipboard and scribbles something, frowns, makes a motion that looks like he’s marking it out, and then writes something else, or possibly the same thing. Who knows? I definitely don’t…
A wave of a fading dizziness hits me, and my eyes grow heavy. Darkness consumes me once again.
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The black pavement of highway 90 smelled like tar, burnt rubber, and years of use. My world was spinning. Everything seemed blurry. Things seemed black and white… no, it’s night time. Then I hear my name, “Darien! Get out of the road!” I awkwardly look up and to my left to see Lacy, my wife of two and a half years, running frantically across the street towards me.
The world is spinning as I get up and take a drink out of the bottle in my hand. There is no label. What exactly is this stuff?
My senses finally focus on a set of headlights to my left, approaching at a solid seventy-five miles per hour. It gave no warning honk as it approached, and it showed no signs of slowing down.
Lacy crashed into me, made me loose my balance, and I fell into the other lane. My drink flew from my hand and landed somewhere behind me with a soft thud. I drunkenly look from the darkness to the road ahead of me. My vision went haywire. It was blurry, I couldn’t focus. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, and during that motion I heard a blood curdling thud of body on bumper. I looked up, and blurrily saw the love of my life mutilated across the highway.
I knew what had happened, and I could not believe it. I could not accept the fact that she was gone; taken by a seemingly uncaring or possibly unaware truck driver.
I stood up in complete fright driven panic.
Is this a dream? Can this be real? I call her name, “Lacy!?” Bystanders stood in awe from the parking lot of the pub. Surely someone had called…somebody, like the police or an ambulance. But there was no way to be sure.
I took a shaky and unstable step towards to lane I had last seen Lacy.
Honk! Honk!
Was the last thing I heard before seeing the headlights and feeling a powerful push from my left. Then I heard a sickening crack from my neck and met darkness.
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My eyes shoot open and the doctor was standing over me, watching. He must have known something had happened. A new development had taken place.
I remember!
I can’t contain myself. I don’t even think about what I remember, just the fact that I do.
The doctor leans down towards me and asks, “Do you remember?”
I muster out a simple, “…Yes…”
“So you know what happened?”
I think so… It’s far easier to think the words then to actually say them. “… May….be…”
He stands up straight and stares passed me in silence for a while before summing up what happened, “You had been drinking that night, Mr. Matthews.”
He looks me in the eye. I feel understanding begin to flow through me.
“You unknowingly stumbled outside into the street. Mrs. Lacy Matthews ran out to bring you back.”
He sits down in the chair and continues, “She was able to knock you out of the way in time for you to avoid the 18 wheeler, but she was unable to save herself in the process. We believe the impact severed her spinal cord in several places, which in turn means she died instantly. No pain.”
Oh my God! Understanding sinks in and burning tears swell up in my eyes.
He continued, “We found her body drug twenty feet from the impact location, which explains why she seemed to have disappeared.”
He stands up to his previous place, “Almost instantly following the first impact a black Ford F250 hit you at approximately fifty-three miles per hour and shattered three of your vertebrae in your neck. Surprisingly, against all odds, the spinal cord remained intact.”
He went silent for a moment.
Keep going! What else!? Tears fall from my eyes as I try to take in the news of the seemingly impossible accident.
What does that mean for me? Am I dead?
I attempt to muster a few words, but my tears choke them out. I try again, and still the same result. The doctor, pity in his eyes, seems to understand what I’m trying to say. He pauses for a very long time, appearing to fight with himself. Then he speaks, “Mr. Matthews, you have full body paralysis. And there’s a less than one percent chance that you will ever move anything below your neck. I’m sorry.”
NO! This can’t… this has to be a bad dream! Wake up! Wake up! Lacy!
“…La…cy…”
The doctor’s pity grew more intense, “Like I said before, she died instantly.”
I sense there’s more. He’s keeping something from me. I have to know everything! I frantically spit out the words, “…What… else…?”
He sits in silence, and I can’t help but ask myself the obvious questions.
Why!? Why did I have to be so stupid!? Why did I randomly decide to take the extra drink!? Why didn’t I listen to my instincts!? WHY!?
He stirs, and catches my attention. Then with a tear in his eye he says in a quiet monotone voice, “She was pregnant…Mr. Matthews.”
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Originally Posted by TosaInu
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