by Ross, Aimee
But wait. It was only in a sling. Don’t all fractured bones need casts?
“A metal plate was put into your arm to hold the bone together as it heals, and since you’re stuck in bed for a while, you don’t really need a cast,” he said.
I wondered if the plate and those screws would remain in my body, or if they would eventually need to be removed. But I was too shocked to ask.
“Nine of your ribs are fractured and your sternum is cracked,” the doctor continued.
That explained the pain I felt in my chest when I breathed.
“Those just have to heal over time.”
So many fractured bones, so much breakage. I felt light-headed, almost dizzy. It was all so overwhelming.
“Your lungs were punctured, probably when your ribs broke,” he said. “We had to insert chest tubes to inflate your lungs, but they’ll come out when you’re getting adequate oxygen on your own.”
The tubes, also draining fluid from my lungs, tugged at the skin around them with even the slightest movement.
“You also had a lot of internal trauma to your abdomen, Aimee,” the doctor said.
He paused, almost hesitated. Something serious was coming next. I could feel it.
“The airbag and seatbelt saved your life, but because of the force, there was still damage. You sustained lacerations to your liver, kidneys, and lower intestine—there was a lot of bleeding. We had to remove your spleen.”
Internal trauma.
Internal bleeding.
No more spleen.
“Is that bad?”
Now was the time to know.
“Well, it is an organ of the body, which of course we never want to lose. Your spleen filters blood and helps fight bacteria in your body, but you can live without it,” the doctor explained.
I looked down where a drainage tube snaked out from under my hospital gown into a container at the end of my bed. A watery red liquid was collecting, coming from somewhere inside my abdomen. Later, when the nurse checked my wounds, I saw that the tube was attached to the middle of a black sponge in my still-open body. From my vantage point, the sponge stretched lengthwise from just under my breasts to my pubic bone and across my entire abdomen, a width of about eight inches. A clear plastic film had been stretched over it and around a tube that was attached to a pump to remove excess fluid while increasing the blood flow needed to heal my body. The entire apparatus was called a wound vac.
There it was again. That familiar hollow feeling. My body, crushed in a single life-changing moment, seemed to have shattered into countless irretrievable pieces.
It was broken. I was broken.
From the inside out.
How could all of this have happened?
The doctor studied my chart for a few more minutes before he looked up, cocked his head to the side, and frowned slightly, pursing his lips.
“We think you’re going to make it,” he said.
And with that, he was gone, on to his next patient visit.
Make it?
They think I’m going to ... make it? Could I still die?
It had been almost a week since the accident, and I was out of the ICU. I was awake. I was connected to all kinds of machines.
How could I not “make it”?
I sat there alone in stunned silence, tears falling down my cheeks.
February 2010
I think I always knew our marriage wouldn’t make it.
That one day, I would walk away.
But I don’t know how or when I knew. I just knew.
In my heart. In my gut. In the back of my mind.
I mean, I couldn’t complain. My life as a wife and mother of three was a stable one, for the most part. My husband was not an alcoholic who spent his evenings at the local bar, and he wasn’t abusive. He didn’t gamble away our money, and he wasn’t unfaithful to our marriage. He was a good father and a decent provider.
“Boy, from the outside looking in, you’d never know,” an acquaintance had said to me a few days—maybe hours—after I told Kenny I wanted a divorce.
For a second, I wasn’t sure what the woman was talking about. Then I saw her eyes, wide with shock, and it hit me, like a slap in the face, there in the middle of the grocery store.
She was talking about my marriage. My relationship.
I was stunned. Offended. Who says that to someone?
Appearances must have sketched my marriage as perfect, but it wasn’t.
Our relationship had gotten lost in the woods of our youth. Over time, we learned to cling to the rotting branches of immaturity while stumbling over exposed roots on the trail of who was right and wrong. We traveled in circles, playing to the same roles, rather than appreciating each other as growing and changing human beings, and eventually, we were stranded, having left no crumbs to follow back.
You’d never know what? I wanted to grumble back at her in the produce aisle. Know that we were lost? Maybe we didn’t either. Or maybe it was me, I wanted to say. Maybe it’s none of your business, I should have said.
Instead, I shrugged my shoulders, an “Eh, whattaya gonna do?” gesture. I didn’t care about her opinion enough to have a conversation, and I wasn’t interested in feeding her rumor-mill curiosity. Still, I couldn’t believe she had the nerve.
From the outside looking in, you’d never know.
No, probably not, but wasn’t that the case with every marriage?
Marriage. What a joke.
I had become jaded, believing wedding vows had been created by society to bind people together for a plethora of reasons—cultural, biological, legal, religious, and more. People just couldn’t be meant for only one person their entire adult life, because that went against nature. Plus, statistically, half of all marriages failed.
Why did people even bother?
But twenty-four years ago, I hadn’t believed that. Back when I was a kid, innocent and idealistic. Back when I thought that love was the only ingredient necessary for a successful relationship.
We just weren’t good together anymore, and we fought. A lot. We were stuck in a rut—same schedule, same friends, and same things over and over and over. I took care of the house and him and the kids. He took care of coaching and playing video games.
As time passed, a feeling of discontent grew inside me—like an ivy whose tendrils mature slowly, creeping and crawling over one another until they are tangled and knotted and wrapped so intricately around whatever is in their way, the vines and what they are overtaking cannot be parted unless the life force is severed. This malaise threatened the wall of my heart, already weakened by the twisting, strangling competition of heavy guilt. What a painful ache.
Guilt for wanting independence, guilt for being selfish. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to be happy again. I wanted more than what my marriage was. I wanted to be in love.
And I wasn’t anymore. Had I ever been?
What did it feel like, being in love? I couldn’t imagine, couldn’t remember. And yet, I must have been once upon a time. I mean, I’m pretty sure I loved Kenny when we got married, right? But I had been a mere kid. Did I even understand what love was then?
No, from the outside looking in, you probably would never know.
And a façade of perfection wasn’t enough to hide the truth any longer.
July 1998
From the outside looking in, I was living the perfect storybook life, married to my high school sweetheart and the mother of two little girls when I fell hopelessly in love—at first sight—with another man.
I was in the heart of Europe—Warsaw, Poland—on a Holocaust study tour with fifty other teachers from around the United States, my first overseas trip. Learning about the Holocaust both fascinated and disgusted me, and I knew that my tim
e there and in Israel the couple of weeks following would better prepare me to teach about it. But I was out of my element. I hadn’t been alone or just Aimee—not wife, mom, teacher—in several years. It was weird.
Every morning at about the same time, I heard the rousing chant of the object of my affection on MTV Europe—the only Polish channel I could understand. “Go, go, go! Allez, allez, allez!” he shouted and sang. I was enchanted.
Who was this beautiful man with the velvety voice and energetic dance moves?
Two weeks later, the song still echoing in my brain, I repeated the lyrics to an Israeli music store salesman to find out who it was that I had fallen in love with.
A smile immediately crossed his face in recognition.
“Aaahhh, Ricky Martin,” he responded, handing me a compilation CD with “The Cup of Life” on it.
But then I returned home to real life, my third pregnancy, and teaching, and I forgot about Ricky.
Until February 24, 1999: the forty-first Grammy Awards.
Ricky re-appeared out of nowhere from once upon a time: still beautiful, still energetic, and still singing the same catchy song.
Oh my God, it’s him, I thought, and I was quickly under his spell again, charmed once more by my European MTV crush.
Ricky Martin was perfection to me, visually and musically—a flawless, romantic, Latin hero—and he came to symbolize more than just the soundtrack of my first trip abroad or my first stab at true independence. Ricky gave me something to believe in—something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, but something I longed for—and I couldn’t get enough of him or his music, no matter the language it was in.
I’ve been in love with him ever since.
Trauma Center | Seven Days after the Accident
When Mom and Natalie came to visit after the doctor’s morning rounds, I felt myself sink back into the bed, the tension in my body unwinding at the sight of them. Natalie walked over and took my hand.
“Aw, hi, Nat.”
My beautiful red-haired girl. Tears filled my eyes, eventually spilling over. I hated for her to see me like this.
“Hi, Mom,” she said in sing-song, an ornery grin on her face.
Though it was a hot August day, Natalie wore her usual T-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. The scent of her was a familiar mix of then and now: toddler skin warmed by sunshine and clothing that hinted at the men’s Old Spice sport deodorant she insisted on wearing.
I realized I still heard music playing. Prince again.
“Can you guys hear that music? Where’s it coming from?”
Mom squinted and Natalie wrinkled her nose, both were puzzled, and then they looked at each other.
“It’s real faint—shhhh.”
After a few seconds, I asked, “Hear it?”
Mom walked over to stand beside me and started rubbing my arm.
“Aimee,” she said, “there’s no music playing.”
“Yes, there is.”
“Mom,” Natalie said, “Grandma’s right. There’s no music.”
But I could hear it.
“Well, could you please turn off the TV, then?”
Mom took the remote control that hung from a cord beside me and pushed the power button to show me it actually had been off. The TV flashed to life, and sound blared from the pillow-side speaker on my bed. She pressed the button again so I could see the TV turn off this time.
“So the TV wasn’t on?”
“No, hon,” Mom said.
“Well, what about that over there? I think they’re watching me through that.”
I pointed across the room to a screen attached to the wall behind my roommate’s bed.
Mom never asked who I thought was watching me. She understood. She explained that it was a computer the nurses used to enter vital information.
“Would you like me to cover it?” Mom asked.
I nodded, and she pulled the curtain so that it hung just slightly over the screen—not enough to disturb my roommate, but enough to calm me down.
“Why didn’t Dad come yesterday? I heard him outside my room, but he never came in.”
“Dad flew home Sunday with your sister. This is Tuesday. He wasn’t here yesterday,” Mom said.
“Well, weren’t you guys outside my room yesterday, discussing me staying here? I heard Laurie in the hall talking. She said this is the worst hospital ever and that I should be moved somewhere else.” Laurie, my brother Brian’s wife.
“No, Aimee. That didn’t happen,” Mom said.
I looked at her skeptically. I had heard everything.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Mom said gently.
“But you brought Connor, right? And he was in my room, under the bed and in the corner hiding from me. He wouldn’t quit moving my bed.”
Mom looked at me with pity, while Natalie stared at me with wide-eyed concern trying not to laugh.
“Aimee, none of those people were here yesterday, and none of that happened,” Mom said.
“Then why was my bed moving?”
I was so confused.
Natalie sat down on the edge of the bed near my feet, causing the bed to move. Air started plumping the mattress around her vibrating the bed.
“See? I told you! That’s what Connor was doing. He was messing with me all night!”
“Mom, that’s just the bed pumping air to even out the mattress,” Nat said. “The mattresses inflate and deflate automatically in all the ICU beds.”
What was happening to me? A look of worry came over my mom’s face.
“Am I going crazy?”
I started to cry. I was terrified.
“No, honey. Calm down,” Mom said. “You are on very strong medication to control your pain. They had to wean you off even stronger drugs in ICU, so that you could be moved here.”
Mom left to get my nurse, who explained that the visions and music I was experiencing were actually hallucinations. They were a common side effect of the painkiller Dilaudid, which was being given to me through my IV.
“Can I have something else instead?”
“Of course,” the nurse said with a smile. “I’ll talk to your doctor. You aren’t getting as much as you were, but we can still see about other pain meds that won’t make you feel crazy.”
I didn’t need to lose my mind right now. It was the only thing I had control of.
“Are the other girls okay?”
“They’re all fine, Aimee,” Mom responded right away. “Do you remember what happened?”
“A car sped through a stop sign and slammed into us on the way back from dance camp.”
What if the girls were in worse condition than I was? I knew from what the doctor had said that the driver’s side of the car had taken the brunt of the other car smashing into us, but I had no idea what had happened to everyone else. Jorden had been sitting behind me, Emily was in the front passenger seat, and Sarah was behind Emily in the rear passenger seat. I remembered Emily beside me and talking one minute, and then the next, she was gone.
“So what happened to them?”
“Emily had her nose broken in two places, and Jorden got a lot of cuts on her forehead—she needed stitches,” Natalie said. She was on the dance team with all three girls, but Emily and Jorden were classmates of Nat’s and about to start their junior year of high school.
“What about Sarah?” Sarah was going to be a sophomore.
“She’s okay, Mom,” Nat said. “She wasn’t hurt.”
“Wait—Emily’s nose was broken in two places?” Emily was one of Natalie’s closest friends.
“Well, it was broken in the wreck, probably from the airbag they think,” Nat explained. “And then when Emily got home from the hospital, she passed out and fell down. That’s
how she broke it again.”
“Oh, wow,” I said.
I was relieved that the girls were okay, but I could feel tears forming behind my eyes. I wanted to see them. I wanted to know they were okay.
“Look at me,” I said, my chin trembling. “My life is ruined.”
I paused to get control of my emotions. I couldn’t believe this had happened. I was furious thinking about it. I had no idea what kind of recovery awaited me or how long it would take, not to mention whether permanent damage had been done to my body. My injuries had been explained only the day before, by the doctor who’d said they thought I was going to “make it.”
A car had shot out of the darkness and into us, leaving me barely able to move.
Someone else’s horrible, tragic mistake.
Only five months after I suffered a heart attack caused by stress.
“I better not find out the driver of that car was drunk or high…” I threatened, my voice trailing off.
I never finished that thought, and no one responded.
• • •
Later, after Mom and Natalie left, my younger and only brother, Brian, visited.
Just a year apart in age, we had always been close. We shared the same friends, the same music, the same first cars, and at one point, the same apartment in college.
While we spent a few moments catching up about my injuries and how I was feeling, I noticed that Brian seemed more somber than usual.
“So, Aim, do you know why you’re here?” Brian asked, sitting down in the chair at the foot of my bed.
Well, duh, I wanted to say. Was he teasing me?
“Of course I do.”
I searched his face for a trace of a smile, but there wasn’t one.
“Then tell me why,” he said. He was serious.
“I was in a car accident...” I heard my voice rise a little, like I was asking a question.
I’d been in the hospital for a week and on the trauma floor for a few days. My injuries and the tubes and cast and sling made things pretty obvious, especially to me. Why was he asking this?