Prelude: The Accident

I was slow to wake up. I think I’d been waking up and going back to sleep again for a couple of days before I woke up enough to realize that I was in a hospital bed and that meant that something was wrong.

That led to trying to talk, which didn’t work at all with a tube down my throat. The nurse who was fussing over me gave me a dry-erase marker and held a small board where I could write on it. Unfortunately, I was left-handed and that side was all bandaged up. I’d learned to write with my right hand, some, so I scrawled “Sally?” on the board, and was told “She can’t come see you, she was injured even worse than you.”

Okay, sure. “Tommy?”

The nurse hesitated at that. “Your son didn’t make it. He was declared dead at the scene. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Happen?”

“The witnesses said that two cars were drag racing and didn’t want to stop at a red light. The driver that hit you is dead, too. Both of the cars came apart. You and your wife were saved by the airbags. Your son and the other driver didn’t have airbags. I don’t think your son was wearing a seatbelt, either, but I don’t know for sure.”

Well, I knew for sure, once I’d had some time to think about it. He wasn’t. He was laid out sideways on the back seat, asleep. If we got t-boned at an intersection by a street racer, he probably got hit in the head. At least it would have been quick. Shit. I had to wipe the board with my hand before I could write again.

“When tube?”

“Now that you’re awake, your tube can come out as soon as the doctor okays it. He isn’t going to want you to talk, though.”

“Me broken?”

“What’s broken for you? You have a broken arm, a smashed hand, a broken leg, and some other minor injuries. And a concussion, so after we fixed everything else we woke you up to see how you were. You’d have a really big headache if we didn’t have you on the good stuff.”

“Sally?”

“Apparently Mario Andretti hit her side of the car. She has some internal injuries. We’ve got an assisted respirator helping her breathe right now. You’ll be up and going to see her before she’s able to come see you.”

Apparently Clara Barton didn’t want to impress me with fancy terms like ‘flailed chest’. That’s what they usually called it when your chest was so screwed up they had to have a machine breathe for you.

The last thing I remembered was driving home after the company’s annual awards dinner. I didn’t want to go, but it was pretty much mandatory for everyone over a certain level in the corporation. Sally was in the front seat. She was always willing to do things like this as, “If I don’t like spending time with you, why did we get married?”

Tommy was a harder sell for the dinner, but dammit if I’ve got to go I may as well get him a free feed, too. Besides, it was educational about how a career in one company worked. “Look, you bust your ass for a whole year and stay out of trouble, and for a reward you get a free meal with enough bad speeches to spoil your digestion.”

I’d had one drink since I was driving, and stuck to water after that. Sally and Tommy had both had more than their share. Tommy was too young to order alcohol, but every time someone brought me another glass of wine I gave it to him. It hit him pretty hard, and he was sleeping in the back seat. In the morning I’d give him crap about ‘kids these days can’t handle their liquor’. Sally would have been asleep, too, but she was trying to keep me company, so that maybe I wouldn’t fall asleep while I drove.

“Others?”

“Were others injured? Yes, several people were hurt by flying debris. Two pedestrians were killed. The other driver would be in a lot of trouble if he was still alive. The police want to charge the other racer, too, when they catch him.”

I tried to cock my head but that hurt WAY too much so I erased again and wrote “Him? Who?”

“I don’t know if they know who it was. Maybe it was a ‘her’.”

That was about all I was good for. I faded out.

The next time I woke up I felt a lot worse, but the nurse who came by said that that was because they had backed off some on the happy juice. I was actually doing better, but feeling the pain more.

A couple times (days?) later, they took the tube out. That was as bad as always. My throat hurt, and they somehow managed to scratch every surface in my throat on the way out. It wasn’t pain so much as irritation. They gave me ice to suck on at first and then some cold water and that was good, but it wasn’t anywhere near as good as a Mike’s Hard Lemonade would have been.

After that I could talk. I tried to minimize it, but I could talk better than I could write with my right hand. Some friends and neighbors came by to let me know that the dog and the cat were being taken care of. The staff didn’t let them stay too long.

Howard came by a couple of times, too, bringing cards and flowers from the office. He had called my home number and my cell and I wasn’t answering either one. He said they had no idea why I wasn’t showing up to work until someone in the office Googled my name and an article about the accident came up. He’d had to go ‘round and ‘round with HR about changing my absence from ‘unexplained’ to ‘medical leave’.

I think it was the day after the tube came out that someone came to talk to me and see how my concussion was. Afterwards, I realized that they were really deciding how stable I was because soon afterwards the doctor who was keeping an eye on me came in.

“Mr. Mendoza, we need to get you into a wheelchair for a bit.”

“Sounds fun. What’s going on?”

“We want to take you to go see your wife. She isn’t doing well.”

“That’s technical for what? ‘We can’t fix her liver’?”

“We are concerned about her recovery. We want you to go see her for a few minutes, just in case.”

“Oh. She REALLY isn’t doing well.”

“We hate to give negative expectations, but she really isn’t doing well. She should have woken up two days ago, and she didn’t. We’ve been running some tests and the results are, well, discouraging.”

“Blood tests?”

“No sir. We wish it was blood tests, as we could work on that.” The doctor stopped and sighed for a bit before continuing. “We’ve been looking for mental activity and we can’t find any.”

“No mental activity.”

“No, sir.”

“So, there’s no one home anymore?”

“That’s about it. In many cases we see brain activity and we try to keep the body alive until the mind wakes up, but in this case it’s not going to happen. Her head injuries were too severe. We have her on a mechanical ventilator and her heart is beating on its own, but as you say there’s no one home.”

Chapter 1 »