I got hit by a drunk driver. Actually, I guess I got hit and run over because as witnesses would report, I had to be pulled out from under the guy’s vehicle. I am not sure how that felt because I was unconscious the whole time. I’d like to pat my body on the back for reacting so quickly in knocking me out cold, but right now that would hurt like hell.
The last thing I remember is saying goodbye to an adorable bike courier and extra-checking both ways before crossing the street to start home. A weird fog that is usually reserved for small and haunted coastal towns had come in. Or I guess, “set in.” In any case, I got on my bike and pushed off from the curb, and I couldn’t have made it more than five feet forward before headlights ripped out of the fog to my right at a speed of 80km/h, as I would later read in the police report. The rest comes in hazy, messy blotches.
This much I have learned: If you are going to get yourself run over, do it outside of a bar that has just let out. Not only will a million cell phones simultaneously dial 911 but everyone is filled with such bravado (beer) that they will charge the scene, surround and hold the car and driver in question and haul you out from underneath. That and sometimes when faced with something I assume (unconscious) is so loud and brutal and jarring, people will rally.
My whole head was wrapped Bret Michael-style and I came to in the hospital waiting room. My friend Ameera, who had seen me being hauled out from under the car and accompanied me in my first ever ambulance trip, called my brother and tried to keep me entertained. This was not hard as I had been reduced to a blabbering mess of incoherence. She probably could’ve left me in front of a vending machine and I would have thought I had finally made it to Xanadu. Concussions allow one a state usually attainable only after a lifetime of disciplined meditation.
My brother showed up, then my ex-boyfriend, then the cops. A lot of my statements did not match up to witness accounts or standard English and it was finally decided that I needed a cat scan. I was helped into last season’s all-over print gown and for the first time saw the enormous road rash covering my stomach and the amount of blood that had collected on the inside of my jeans, where my knees had been reduced to shreds. When the CT technician came to get me I was being force-fed Hawaiian doughnuts and chocolate milk, and had spilled a bottle of water all over my lower half.
There are some parts of this whole thing I wish my concussion swallowed up, like me asking the technician to guess how my brain would look on a scale of “one” to “fucked.” Or calling doctors by celebrity their look-a-like: “I don’t want Shia LaBeouf, give me the fat Peter Sarsgaard!” An old Jamaican nurse was brought in to cut me down to size, which apparently only required calling me “cheeky.”
They put me back in my bed where I was witness to a man projectile vomiting all over the ER screaming, “I’m crazy! I’M CRAZY!” and another guy who got beaten up so badly he was going to lose an eye. That’s when I realized I was small potatoes in this patch.
My forehead was frozen with a needle made for elephants and my entire face was covered in towels. An attending physician came in to start my stitches, observed by my doctor (LaBeouf) and talked about me as if I wasn’t attached to the sutures he was threading through the flayed flaps of forehead, “Her brain had some swelling, a bit of a bleed.” “Real surprise there wasn’t permanent damage.” “The gash looked like it might heal okay but there could be potential for plastics.”
“Is that your boss?” I asked when the doctor left.
“Yes.”
“He’s kind of a dick.”
LaBeouf laughed, we were cool.
I have been in sweatpants at my parents for the past five days and fear there may be no going back. Both my eyes have swollen shut and run a similar array of colors to tropical birds or tropical skittles. The stitches come out soon and my nose has swollen up Balboa style. It is hard to find a point on my body not sore to the touch. I can’t bend my knees. We are waiting on lawyers, insurance, and a police lieutenant named Barry White. I have watched every Civil War biopic known to man. I get too nauseous to eat. Showers are a thing of the past. On the plus side, sleeping is simultaneously both very difficult and easy.
The one, maybe only, great thing something like this can do for you is present an entire universe of support you never knew you had. People will offer themselves and their condolences to the point where it becomes overwhelming to thank them for their concern and also a little embarrassing. It’s like you’re the crippled pope in some sort of Bunuel fantasy. So, thanks everybody, really, but I am getting an armoured ATV and a Rottweiler to ride shotgun.
