Dead Earth
Page 17
God, it hurt.
The round, I would later find out, had ricocheted through my body like a loonie on Red Bull in a padded cell. The round penetrated my chest cavity, fractured and bounced off my left scapula, hurled back through my chest, fractured a rib, then bounced back through, traced a path around another rib, punctured the pleural lining of my left lung, flew straight through my spinal column —fracturing my T-9 and T-10 thoracic vertebrae — then finally transecting my spinal cord (I’m a paraplegic).
It felt like she unloaded the entire clip into me. It wasn't until the next day I found out that she fired only once. Apparently, the misconception about being shot multiple times is common with “us”. By “us” I mean the growing list of people who are victimized by America’s liberal gun laws. I started an online support group for people who've been shot and suffer PTSD as a consequence. The mailing list is 90% veterans, 9% gang-bangers and 1% suburban white dad — me.
The blast blew me back. I have no memory of the next twenty minutes or so. The Next thing I recall was laying on the floor behind the counter, back against a half used bag of Bounty paper towels, a pawn shop employee with a nametag that read "Ray" lying in a fetal position with his intestines encircling his waist like a hula hoop from hell.
Police reports said after getting shot I jumped right back up, darted across 9th Ave and into the safety of "Ray’s SELL-BUY-TRADE ". Apparently after hearing the gunshot, Ray rushed out the backdoor with his own gun, and sprinted down an alleyway right into the path of a fleeing ganger Jill. They popped a round off each. Ray took a round to the gut, Jill took a flesh wound to the bicep. Karma my ass.
About this time, the real pain set in.
I felt my left lung squeeze, and my breaths became agonizingly painful and short. Breathing felt like a corkscrew twisting my insides. The heaviness kept mounting, like there was a fat man on my chest. Then that fat man traded places with a fridge, the fridge swapped out for a Buick, then an elephant, cement truck, a house. My body was imploding.
Vision went next. There wasn't enough blood in my system to keep my eyes working, so everything dimmed to shadows, then blackness. I could hear sirens going off and I thought it was the ambulance, but every-time I moved my head the sound stopped. The sirens were in my head.
A friend asked once, in all his morbid curiosity: “How come when I see a video of someone dying, no matter how painful, they never writhe in agony?”
Yes, he actually asked that. Can’t you believe he volunteers?!
No, I personally did not WRITHE in agony, like I had been set ablaze, but I was thrown into the most excruciating, truly agonizing experience of pain I have ever known. I honestly didn’t think this level of suffering was possible. The reason I was not WRITHING in agony is because I was knocked into a state of indescribable shock and my spine was literally severed, leaving me incapable of much, if any movement.
The pain subsided somewhat by the time the medics came, but that wouldn't last.
At the hospital, they drained the fluid from my lungs with a chest tube to bring my lung capacity up to snuff, and oh man was that smarts. Imagine a nurse putting a rubber catheter through your ribs and into the pleural lining of your lung. The pitying look on the nurses just before they started probing and draining told me exactly what way this merry-go-round would spin.
My lung collapsed and the task was to re-inflate it. To do that they had to get at the lung. To get at the lung they put a scope up my nose and down my throat. If I could relate the pain to you, just imagine someone tore off your fingernail and ran your fingertip across a cheese grater. Imagine that pain inside your chest, multiply it by five and you'd be close.
That’s not all. I had air trapped in my chest which was “relieved” with a python-sized tube (or so it seemed). Reddish-blown fluid was drained from the gaping wound into a plastic collector.
I had to learn how to pee again. And not shit myself. I feel nothing “down there”, can’t masturbate and because God loves working in mysterious ways, he kept my sex drive fully intact. Yep, I'm horny and can't do a think about it. How ‘bout them apples?
What makes it worse is that I was only 16 when it happened so never had sex. I’m a good looking guy — not to toot my own horn — and women seem to pick up on that fact you’re not on the prowl. Paraplegic or not, they threw themselves at me. Realize how frustrating that made me... it STILL makes me.
Explaining my ordeal to the dozens of girlfriends I had was no fun, but it doesn't matter now. Here’s the crazy part about all this, so listen up —
Last June I became the luckiest guy in the world when I married the women of my dreams — Stacey. My dad was my best man and our Pit-bull was the ring bearer.
Luckily the gunshot didn't leave me sterile, so I got my buddies extracted by means far less enjoyable than the orthodox method. I’m a proud father.
I first talked to my wife while she was working at the spinal rehabilitation center. If I hadn’t been shot, we wouldn't have never met. Would I take away the bullet, the pain, and the impotence if it meant I wouldn't have Stacey in my life? Nope. I would have taken the entire clip of that Magnum .44 if it meant Stacey and I would be together.
To sum things up – did it hurt? Oh, boy; it most certainly did. It’s a pain I’ll think about every day, several times a day for as long as I live… The more you know.