Tired. Exhausted. Eyes won't focus - they close and then I slip into a dream of the scene already before my eyes in reality. A road stretches out in front of me; an endless line reaching out like an asphalt plane bisected by a reflective dotted yellow line. But then it gets dark…instantly. It's as if someone just shut the bright afternoon sun off like when you yank the string hanging from a bare light bulb in a broom closet. Now all I can see is the illuminated pavement bathed in the lights of my halogens, but instead of the familiar amber illumination of normal headlights, it's a green and murky like the light shined through an old coke bottle. The purr of my car's engine changes to the deafening and disturbing buzz, like clippers in barbershop; clippers that need to replaced. That can't be good. I'm going to have to have the car looked at when we get back to the city. Damn, I can't afford that right now.
Next to me my wife is sleeping. She's saying my name in her sleep. Even though I answer her, she says it again. Again I answer her, but then she says it even louder - panicked. She screams it without opening her eyes. Must be a wicked dream she's having…
* * *
A faint blurry light - orange behind my closed eyelids - a dusty sunset; it moves back and forth from one eye to the other. I manage to open them a slit, and doing so is like trying to bench-press an elephant. A nurse is leaning over me shining a penlight into each of my pupils. As her face comes into focus, I realize how ugly she is. A huge mole, and a hairy upper lip. "Hey hot-stuff," I think. “I'll pass."
She stares down at me through horned-rimmed glasses that magnify her buggy brown eyes. I feel a twinge of pain in my temple…
* * *
This time I hear voices, but I can't open my eyes. One is a man's voice, and the second could be a woman's. They're close to my face. I can feel the sound waves of the man's voice right between my eyes. The woman's voice is laden with gravel, and I can smell menthol cigarettes on her breath. I can't make out what they're saying. It must be evening because there's no light. I try to open my eyes and lift my arm to look at my watch, but neither my eyes, nor my arm respond to my brain's command. I'm too tired to panic…
* * *
I smell perfume, my wife's perfume. It's unmistakable. My lips are dry. I try to lick them and open my eyes. No dice - I can't even move my tongue. I do feel my chest rising and falling. It feels like there's a balloon inside me, and it's being pumped full of air and then released; it's not natural. I don't breathe like that. It's too much air. No, wait…it's not enough. I can't breath. My lungs burn, but now I'm dizzy. I want to inhale quickly and hold it. That would feel good, but I can't. As soon as my chest rises, it falls again. My throat clenches around some sort of tube. Gagging, I try to move my arms to yank the tube, and this time they respond! But only for a second before they fall back down. I feel a warm trickle of liquid on the top of my left hand - the trickle runs over my knuckles and between my fingers; then a stinging. I hear an alarm start to go off. A gasp and the smell of my wife's perfume getting immediately stronger…
* * *
"Holy shit, ouch!" my mind screams as what feels like barbed wire is wrenched from what has to be the hole I pee out of; I now know what a sword's sheath feels like when the blade is yanked out. I'm going to kill the bastard responsible for whatever the hell this is all about. Another blinding flash of unbearable pain as the sword, this one must have been soaked in ice water, is jammed right back up into it's sheath. I feel my leg rally behind my anger. I lift it and feel my kneecap make solid contact with a face, with a nose. It crumples underneath the force of the blow, followed by a satisfying exclamation of pain, and male voice swearing. I can almost smile smugly - the voice says, "vegetable son of a bitch," and then an impact on my stomach. The balloon in my chest inflates too quickly causing agonizing pain in my chest; it stays that way for a few seconds, and then collapses. It doesn't inflate again immediately though. Spots begin to form in the darkness behind my eyelids, and I panic. Breathe in you lazy SOB! Breathe in… please… An alarm goes off behind me, and I hear that male voice mutter, "Aw shit!"
I hear feet in the hallway outside, and another voice, "Murray…what happened?"
"I dunno, I was just changing his catheter… I'd… I'd finished, doctor, and was cleaning up when he just…you know…all of a sudden spit out half his breathing tube…and"
"Nurse, pull his tube," the doctor interrupted the bumbling tech "What happened to your face - get a towel and tip your face forward."
“Murray…Murray; Muuuurrrrrray,” I said it slowly in my head to memorize it. I'll remember you, you sadistic little shit…I'll make sure to - choking.
I feel a garden hose being pulled out of my throat, and when it's gone I inhale deep and full. My lungs are sore, but they work! I gasp, and my eyes flicker open to see three people standing around me looking shocked.
The doctor, no more than thirty, in a white coat, his lips pressed firmly together, stands to the left of my bed holding a clipboard with a pen hanging from a chain in one hand. In his other is his trusty penlight, thumb at the ready on the tip of it (eight years of school, and his weapon of choice is a clickity-click penlight?), and he has a stethoscope around his neck.
To my right stands a nurse, cute but battle worn. She's got the tube clutched in her little fist like a dead snake. She wears an expression of surprise, but not amazement.
Then I see him. Murray, a short little guy with black curly hair, droopy bloodshot eyes, and a slack jaw. His face is red, and he's frantically trying to stop the blood gushing from his nose with a hospital gown. “Going to fix that slack jaw for him. I'm going to, do him a good service,” I think.
I'm feeling light headed all of a sudden. I turn my head towards the doctor, and collapse back against my pillow. Although the pillow stops my head, my mind falls right through it, through the bottom of the bed and down through the floor. I see flashes of light as I pass from floor to floor that provide glimpses of different wards of the hospital…
I smell that perfume again. Oh, eyes… please open! Please let me see my wife. They obey, but it takes effort like trying to pry open a manhole cover with a knitting needle, but they eventually do. I keep them propped open for just long enough to turn my head and see the woman sitting next to me. She comes into focus; she's beautiful. She's sitting in a chair in a hooded sweater that exclaims "VEGAN!" I smile inwardly. It's the middle of summer; she's always cold though. Always getting on me about turning up the AC when she's in the bathroom. The blinds are cracked open, and sunlight creates parallel shadow lines across the room.
She's reading a People magazine with Prince Charles on the front cover. The picture has a blacked out silhouette standing next to him with a big yellow question mark on it. I can't make out the headline, but it's pretty much what you'd expect from a pseudo tabloid. Her eyes move back and forth. She's so beautiful when she reads. I can't stop looking at her. If this were the last image I was going to be privileged to have…if I were to just die right now, I'd be fine with that. Even the silly "VEGAN!" sweatshirt, which normally would have drawn a snort and a verbal barb about tree huggers from me, didn't seem to take away from the perfect image of my wife in the sunlight.
"That prince Charles will jump anything that moves, huh sweetie?" I grumbled. My voice was dry, and as soon as I got the sentence out, I choked and coughed. I sat up, tangled in wires like a fly in a web.
In an upright position, I'm able to cough like I mean it. There wasn't anything to cough up, but it feels good. My lungs feel good. I felt like I could now cough hard and strong enough to break the icy cold fingers of any doctor that dared to check me for a hernia ever again.
My wife's tiny hand patted my back, and she brought a tiny pink cup with a straw in it up to my lips. I drained it, and she quickly refilled it while at the same time pressing the nurses call button.
Two nurses and the same doctor from the other night, or whenever that night was, appeared. The doctor smiled and said, "Welcome back, Mr. Carlisle. How are you feeling"
"Nauseous," I said.
"Mmm," the doctor replied. "And, any pain in your head, stomach or throat?"
"Yeah, I'm feeling a little disoriented,” I said. "I can't remember how I got here."
"Good…good," he said looking at my chart.
I shot my wife one of those incredulous looks that communicated, "This guy would have the same dismissive reaction if I told him his wife and I had just finished having sex in his BMW.”
My wife sniggered, and then covered a grin behind her hand as the doctor said. "Well, do you feel like standing up?"
"Sure," I said. I felt like playing eighteen holes of golf. What my body decided I could manage was another story.
I made it to the bathroom with the aid of my wife and we laughed as I made my first unassisted movement in who knew how long. I didn't know how long I'd been here, and I didn't care. She was alive and with me. She was here and healthy. She was beautiful and sweet. She'd take care of me better than any one else in this hospital. Just give me my walking papers…
* * *
The day passed like a dream sequence. By the next morning, I didn’t even remember going to bed I was so elated. I was dressed in the clothes I'd come in wearing, or at least the one's I'd been wearing in the car that night. I guess they didn't have to cut them off of me. My legs were strong, and I was going to walk out of there. I'd even carry my own suitcase and my wife's purse if she needed me to…
* * *
My head jolted up; my chin had been resting against my chest. I heard the deep moaning horn from a semi truck. My own name being screamed by my wife pierced my ears, and the two glaring halogen lights at eye level with my windshield seemed impossibly close. I jerked the wheel to the right and missed the oncoming monstrosity by inches. We were sliding sideways on the road watching the landscape flash past us, and then the car started rolling. I saw my wife thrown against the roof of the car, and then she was tossed out of her window. It was just me in the toppling car now. I felt the roof give and the metal push against my skull. The airbag went off in my face burning the skin off of my chin and forehead. The steering column pushed up against my chest securing me to the seat. Then I felt my stomach leap in to my throat as the ground beneath the car disappeared; the car had gone off something high. A cliff? A bridge? I don't know. I actually got used to the sensation, though - the eerie quiet, save for the rushing air - and then came the impact. The top of the car smashed down another inch or two, crunching my neck into the base of my torso - I felt vertebrae crackle. Water started pouring in through all the windows. I wasn't going anywhere. I'd seen a TV show once on the Learning Channel where divers who'd actually drowned and then been resuscitated say that, while most people found the thought of drowning to be the most horrible way to leave this good old world, it wasn't all that bad. You just held your breath until you couldn't do so any longer and then inhaled the water and your fate. They said it felt like a great big gulp of sweet spring air. Then you'd pass out almost immediately after that. I hoped that was true, because as I said before, I wasn't going anywhere. I was upside down and didn't have to wait long. I could hear screaming from somewhere above me. My name again. I didn't even bother with holding my breath. I knew somehow, that I was going to be all right. I steeled myself for what must come next, what I had to do. I spit out all the air in my lungs and sucked in all the water I could, and I tried to inhale it into my lungs and get to that peaceful unconsciousness. I was in a lot of pain, and being dead for awhile, even if I knew I'd be awake again at some point, seemed sensible. However, my survival instincts didn't allow anything but swallowing the water. My body refused to let me breathe it in. So, I kept swallowing that water until finally I choked on it, and then I did breath in, long and deep I felt my lungs get heavy like water balloons. A gentle peace and warmth came, and I wasn't scared. Unconsciousness didn't come immediately though. My last thoughts were marveling at how I was going to survive this, how medics were somehow going to keep me alive long enough to get me to a hospital where my wife was going to sit by my side while I was on life support. How that bastard was going to slug me in the stomach, and how beautiful my wife looked reading a magazine in the sunlight. I wasn't scared. And then, like a dimming movie, the lights on the dash console gently faded in the murky water as blackness closed in around me.
"I'm going to see you again soon, sweetie," I thought. "Be strong."
