He produced a flashlight and checked my pupils.
"Yes, I feel good. Rested."
"Excellent. Can you tell me why you're here?"
"Drugs...and I fell off a stage."
He took the flashlight down and looked me in the eyes, and then at the nurse.
"That's what he told me," she said.
"Do you mind?" He motioned to the stool and the woman stood. Dr. Krishnamurthy sat beside the bed. "Do you do drugs, Mr. Keefe?"
"Never before then."
"What kind of drugs were they, Mr. Keefe?"
"Heroin?"
"I see." He took out a gadget, attached a black cap to it and began looking in my nose and ears. "Mr. Keefe, there are no traces of drugs in your system. I guarantee it."
"That's a relief."
"Yes, as a matter of fact, aside from a few minor indicators, you are in very good health and you are incredibly lucky."
"Oh yeah?"
He looked at me gravely, and we kept eye contact. He took the clipboard from the nurse.
"He seems lucid and aware of his surroundings," he said to the nurse. She tapped. "This is Betty, she is the nurse on duty for your room, but she will be bringing you to another room shortly. Tell me, what is it you last remember?"
"I was just telling Betty - taking my drugs and falling off a stage."
"That did not happen, Todd. You were in an accident, and you have been here under our care since the accident. Do you know where you are?"
"You just said -" He said we were at Saint Lucius. I was in Boston. "Saint Lucius? Twin Falls, Saint Lucius?"
"You were in an accident..." he looked at the glowing clipboard. ”April twenty-second, 1994."
"Okay. Sure. That was our first show, when that guy crashed into the van and almost killed us all."
"You remember, then?" He flipped it back to Betty, and once again she tapped her fingers on it.
"Yeah, like ages ago."
"Ages ago?"
"Well, touring for the last three weeks," my voice was horse, "although some of it makes no sense in there because we had a show in June, but then it was December already and we played with Radio Head."
"Radiohead."
"That is what I said. And we were in Boston. What, did I get air flighted here or something? Did Hirons pay for it to get me closer to my family?"
A smile edged the corner of Betty's face, the red lipstick shone in the dim light of the room.
"I'm afraid to tell you some things that may come as a shock to you. We're here for whatever support you need."
"Okay," I said slowly.
"What year is it?"
"Ninety-four."
"Mr. Keefe, the year is twenty-nineteen. It has been twenty-five years since your accident."
My mind was blank. In any other circumstance, it seems that I would be angry, or upset. I was confused, but mostly, I was just... Blank.
"You were the sole survivor of the accident. A drunk driver hit your vehicle. John Xiong was killed instantly and Steven Harvester was ejected and died later. Your van was pushed up and over the barricade over Snake River, and the van fell into the gorge. The van then took on water, with you and Kurt unconscious in the back. Kurt Lobel drowned in the van. The van sank in such a way that you were found above water on boxes in the back of the van.
"You are a very lucky man, Todd. I know that this is going to be a difficult process for you-"
"No."
"No, what?"
"No...” I was trying to be patient. “I get it."
"Okay. We are going to make sure you have a therapist and neurologist available as a part of your treatment. There is something else we need to talk about right away, however."
I sat stony and still. He took an instrument out of his lab coat along with a little rubber hammer. The instrument looked like a tiny pizza cutter with spikes instead of a blade. He held them in his hands between his knees as he addressed me.
"This is a lot of information to process, and it will take time. I'm afraid there's no better way to say this, Todd. In the accident you were gravely injured, and you have come a long way in twenty-five years. You have battled some things that I am sure you didn't even know you were battling. It says in your chart you had a near fatal bedsore that I am sure you still have scarring from... In the accident you had three broken ribs. A fracture of your right orbital bone behind your eye. A broken tibula. Four bones broken in your foot. Hemorrhaging everywhere, namely in your face. You were a mess.
"You also fractured a few other bones that were a little more important than these. Of course, all of your bones are important, but some are those we can not fix. You fractured cervical vertebrae four, five, and six. You fractured thoracic vertebrae one and two. You shattered almost all of your lumbar vertebrae.
"The medical team that assisted you did a fantastic job with you. You were brought in on a back board, and they immediately went to work stabilizing you, many surgeries to put some hardware back there to keep everything from falling apart. It was bad, but not impossible."
"So?"
"We're pretty certain of some things. Before I say anything, I would like to check if that's okay?"
He took his little hammer, and bonked by right knee. I braced for the uncomfortable shock and reaction.
It didn't come.
Nothing.
He did it two more times.
He switched to my left knee.
Three times.
Nothing.
"Betty, note reflex hammer elicits no response."
He put his hammer back in his pocket and took out the spiky pizza cutter.
"Your only job is to react as you feel this instrument. Tell me if and when you feel it, and I am going to ask that you stare at the ceiling or close your eyes as I complete this test.
I looked up at the ceiling and closed my eyes.
Twenty five years.
I've been on tour for twenty five years?
I've been away for twenty five years.
I have eaten myself and been reborn, chewing on my years. I've been a waif for twenty-five years.
Just yesterday, I was worried about what was next, and what was next, and so much potential. It seemed as though it was guaranteed to some degree, and then...
No, I have to get out of here. This is some sick -
I grabbed the bed railing, but then held my hand in front of me. The skin was distended, floppy, and pale. There were brown marks that hadn't been there. My bones showed through the grey flesh, and the muscles seemed weak. The fingernails had ridges running lengthwise that weren't so before. Grey hairs peeked from the sleeve of my blue johnnie robe like brush on the side of the highway, or the bottom of Snake River Canyon.
"Where are my friends?"
There was a pause.
"They died in the accident."
"Does my mom know I am awake? -ow!" there was a pain to the side of my right thigh near my testicles. "-the fuck?"
I looked down at the doctor, and he looked up at me from where he sat on the stool. He turned his attention to Betty.
"Reaction anterior right thigh, approximately four inches from mid coxal?" He paused. "Todd, I am so sorry."
"No ... I know, I...understood what you were saying, but you can just tell me."
"Your mother and father. I don't want to me bringing you all of this news at once, but I also don't want to lie to you."
"I thought you were going to tell me that I can't-" and I looked at my legs.
He didn't say anything.
"While you were in the coma and recovering, we've been under the impression that you are not going to be able to walk."
"Oh."
"We are going to do everything we can, though. May I continue?"
"Yes."
"Beginning left foot."
My eyes were back on the ceiling. Twenty five years, and this ceiling. The only thing I could look at was this ceiling, even if I had opened my eyes.
Mother. Mother and father. The fountain of my existe
nce. I knew they were gone.
It was immediate.
There was a feeling of momentum that began to grow in me that I was falling toward some abyss of terrible news. It was a horrendous terror at the bottom of a cliff, and I stood at the precipice with an understanding that these horrors would be screaming up at me like demons. An earthly hell, horrible and unimaginable, and banking toward me with all manner of industrious news of suffering, death, and new griefs that would open their mouths and swallow me whole.
It began with these spikes, prodding me and pushing me in places I cannot even feel - and that, a new horror, the horror of nothing or the horror of the lack of feeling anything. The horror of emptiness and apathy, numbness and dissolution. Dissolution of self, as my feeling creeps up with this tool writing a numb, bloody history up my legs.
This emptiness grew. It was a nothing that spread through my brain. It was a cancer of negative space. It was a hole, or a series of holes growing rapidly and exponentially, joining like bubbles to meld together in one dual-sphere of emptiness. One began in my heart. Cold. Cold nothing. Empty as lungs, a cavity of air and void of all emotion.
The ceiling. There. That is a constant.
Oh, and how I couldn't perform anymore? Like a real rock star? Who ever heard of the rockin' wheelchair man? The wheel in the sky is now the wheels beside my thighs, propelling me to nothingness and insignificance. I felt it in my legs.
My life is over.
"Ow!"
"Anterior left thigh in line with the right, about four inches mid coxal." Betty tapped tapped tapped her clipboard thing. "Do you have any questions?"
"Can I walk?"
"No."
"Are you leaving?"
"I will be leaving soon, but I will see you again. I need to write up a lot now that you're up. Meanwhile, you're getting a room. Your nurse will get you anything you need in the meantime."
"Can I have some paper?"
He nodded to Betty and gave me his pencil. The pencil was strange and made of some kind of wax. I tried to dig my fingernail into it, but the dent healed.
"...and a mirror?"
"There will be one in your new room."
We stared at one another for a minute.
He was a stranger.
"I'll be leaving and Betty will wheel you down to the third floor. From here we are going to get you moving and keep an eye on your gastrointestinal and renal systems as we transition away from the liquid diet and get you vertical. We will also be keeping an eye on your circulation. You'll continue on blood thinners to prevent clots from forming, but wean you off those eventually as well.
"Now we focus on undoing everything that we've had to do over the past twenty five years to keep you alive. Your parents have taken great care of you, though, and that is something to be thankful for. They listened to our interpretation of your GCS data, visited all the time, and followed us along with any new data or treatment changes. They always believed you would be waking from this. They were right.
"They also made sure everything would be paid for. The only thing you need to worry about here is getting better. We will keep you here for the least possible amount of time, and then get you over to rehab. Hopefully this is speedy and painless. We'll keep a close eye on you to make sure you have a speedy recovery."
"Thank you, doctor."
"Anything else?"
"No."
"At the very least, the good news is that you're not a heroin addict."
He left with Betty, and I stared at the ceiling. The pocks in the panels swam, moved, and dissolved.
The empty, the nothing, filled and extended beyond by body. The weight was the gravity of a supernova in a galaxy far away. I was the center; the dense, heavy mass of everything. As the explosion expanded in the form of my emerged consciousness, so did matter collect at the core of my ever-expanding void of nothingness. Heavy, heavy, heavy dense matter, and it attracted more.
Watching the ceiling, I could only think that nothing would escape the density of my despair; not even light.
Chapter 17
"So, the remote is right here on this cord. This button is to call me if you need anything. This button is for the light above your bed. These work the television. The sound comes from the little speaker here."
The young, strawberry blonde nurse bent over the bed. Her breast lightly touched the top of my arm as she showed me the remote. I felt a stirring. It was good to know that everything wasn't broken.
"Where's the TV?" I asked.
"What?"
"The television?"
"On the wall."
I saw a terrible pastel photo of a vase of flowers, and a chalkboard on a pivoting hinge.
"Look." She pushed the power button, and the chalkboard came to life with a show.
"What?"
"Oh. Oh, I see. Yes. Yes, televisions are flat - they don't have the old ones anymore. Better for the environment. Look," and she showed me her clipboard. It was a little screen with my charts on it. There were no wires. She showed me how she could write on it with her finger, and switch screens like on Windows, but without a mouse. It was the same clipboards that Betty and Krishnamurthy were preoccupied with in the coma room.
"...and it just - you walk around with this?"
"Yeah, it has everything. Always updated on the network with everyone's records."
"The network?"
"Yeah, wireless. Did you have the Internet?"
"Yeah. There's a modem in there, or something?"
"A modem?"
"Hmm..."
"Listen, I have to visit the rest of my patients again. Press that button if you need anything, okay?"
"I thought that was a chalk board," I said, pointing to the television.
"Chalk board?"
"Before you go, the doctor said there would be a mirror?"
She flipped up a little box on my tray table, and sure enough there was a little glass mirror built in. Some things don't change.
"Thanks."
She left. I didn't even get her name.
I turned up the volume on the television. A newscaster was speaking.
I pulled the tray table up to my stomach and adjusted the height of the back of the bed with the controls so I was sitting up. My balance was strange. My legs were almost in the way, anchoring me down, and yet failing to be an anchor point. I felt like I was going to tip over and slump to the side. After leaning my butt over in one direction, I managed to stay vertical.
The mirror was a narrow sliver of silver, and required a little bit of tooling around to get my face into position to see it. A flash of skin, a toss of hair, and finally I was able to see a glint of myself reflected in the small rectangle.
It was horrifying. I teetered on the edge.
I first saw my eyes. Once blue, the eyes that looked back at me were grey and glassy. They looked like I had been staring at the sun, and crying, and sucking the life out of everyone's party and leaving it to distill and fade in the sunlight. The color was gone. Bags hung in heavy wrinkles around my eyes.
My cheeks were sallow, my eye sockets and jawline were skeleton-like. My skin hung into jowls on my thin face. It wasn't used to the new gravity. I looked tired - I was tired! I wasn't sick, but there was no question that there was a lack of tone and definition to my facial muscles. I had wasted away to nothing. I was nothing on the outside, and I was filling with nothing. I remained nothing but a skin soaked skeleton.
My teeth looked good. Untouched by any food for ages, they remained immaculate piano keys. They were somewhat discolored. There were wrinkles around my mouth, though. My mouth was crepe-paper skin tossed haphazardly on a frame of a face. Alas poor Todd, I knew him Horatio. I held my own skull on my neck.
I maneuvered my gaze up to the top of my head. My hair was a brambly wisp. Much of what was there had fallen out at some point. Single hairs danced in the air from my pate while a crown of sparse fur encircled the poor fading twilight above my ears.
I looked ol
d.
The nothingness spread, and I felt old and that I had lost myself to the sentence of going too fast, too young. What was there to show for it but old age and trembling fear of whatever was left of my sentence on this earth.
What was left?
It seemed that I wanted to go back.
I wanted to go back to the incomprehensible strangeland of fame and youthful exploration of the fantasy dream state that I was living in for the past twenty five years. It seemed like only a couple weeks. It was my familiar world, filled with the dreams of my youth, and making it, and art, and music, and potential, potential, potential.
But this? This was another story altogether. I was nothing. I was broken and shattered in an empire of nothing. I would be leaving here in a wheelchair and learning how to live my life all over again. Not only that, but I had never lived my life as a...forty year old? I had never done anything to deserve this, and would I have had any idea about what I should have been doing? Or how? It was ridiculous.
I wanted to get up and run, but I couldn't. I could only stare at my old wrinkleyes, and a male pattern baldness that I had no choice but to accept.
"...coming up on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. President Bush wants to commemorate and defend his tactics in the years leading up to the wars in the Middle East..." the announcer said on the television. "...and there are new developments in the length the troop will be staying in Iraq after the second round of increases that President Obama ordered five years ago..." A black man signed papers and flashbulbs popped.
It was hard to believe they were still talking about Bush defending Kuwait almost thirty years later. But there was much to learn - a healthy method of coping with my new surroundings and driving away this growing astral nothingness that ate away at my existence.
My health, and the events of the last twenty five years.
There was a lot of programming on the little blackboard television. Most of my favorite shows were no longer on. Music was no longer on MTV, nor was The Real World. Television seemed entirely comprised of normal people going about their business and competing with other normal people to do a variety of normal things that didn't match real world conditions - and the winner got some kind of recognition? It reminded me of a show that a British exchange student that stayed with us for two weeks one year got in a shipment on videotape – Eurovision. But everything on television was like Eurovision. But plain. Plain Eurovision all of the time. Approvision.
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