Merlin Morris
Chapter 1

Copyright© 2019 by MysteryWriter

The date was January 1st 2000. It was the morning after all computers were supposed to crash. They didn’t. Since our new police chief believed that the patrol car was the real reason people obeyed the law, I had been assigned a stupid task. According to him it was the halo effect which made people obey the traffic laws. When people saw the police car they automatically became little angels. So, more cars on the road would result in lower crime. Maybe penny ante crime did fall, but serious crime became a higher percentage of all crimes.

Since it was New Years Day, I sat in the sector patrol car alone close to a high traffic intersection waiting for a call. I was working traffic on New Year day, because I had a recent civilian complaint. I probably deserved it, since I was caught on tape telling a black man to “Drop that gun, or I will blow your black ass away.”

I was back after a thirty day suspension for unprofessional conduct. That suspension joined my three commendation in last ten years. I explained to the board of inquiry that, “I simply made sure there would be no misunderstanding as to what I meant. After all I wouldn’t want his death on my conscience for not making myself clear. The community action committee just didn’t accept that answer. The ghetto residents could talk their trash to me, using the same works, but it was a major sin if I returned the same words at them.

What happened next I never was exactly sure. A sky blue van drove into the middle of the intersection where I was staked out. I was in a parking lot on one of the corners. It took me two days to remember any of what happened next. The van levitated for a split second then it disintegrated in a fire ball. That was all I ever remembered about the incident.

I’m not sure if the fireball reached me or not, but the shock wave sure as hell did. It turned my patrol car over, or so I was told later by witnesses. I didn’t hear the metallic rain storm descend on my new Ford cruiser. According to the fire department report, the windows in my cruiser disappeared and I lost consciousness.

The next thing I remember I was laying in the dark. My arms were tied to the bed and my eyes were at least covered. Okay I wasn’t that rational at the time, so I went back to sleep.

The world was still black when I heard a female voice. I recognized it, but it had been a long time since my wife had spoken to me in a pleasant voice. “I must be dead, since Marsha is speaking to me in a calm voice,” I whispered.

“Sarcastic as ever Merl,” her voice suggested.

“So how you feeling Merl​​?” a male voice asked.

“I don’t know. So who are you?” I asked weakly.

“I’m one of your doctors,” he voice replied.

“Then how about untying my hands so I can scratch my nose. I get it that I’m all fucked up,” I admitted.

“That’s a pretty good description,” Another female voice suggested.

I felt hands working on my hands. Pretty soon I had my hands free. “I won’t remember, but what all is wrong with me?” I asked.

“Pretty much half the bones in your body were compromised. Your jaw was broken, so you are going to be on baby food for a few weeks. Most of your injuries are crush injuries from supporting the patrol car with your body. Of course before it rolled over on you all the glass blew out and did a number on your face. Mostly the damage was to your left eye. It was compromised, but we think we can fix it. So do you want to know how?”

I shook my head. I knew that I wouldn’t understand anyway. “So I assume I’ll be helpless for a while,” I said.

“Yes, for a while. We need to make sure everything works before we discharge you,” the doctor said.

“So tell me Doc, do I look like an early Frankenstein experiment?” I asked.

“Maybe a little,” he said seriously.

“Okay, I’m tired now and I’m beginning to feel uncomfortable,” I said before he shot me with something in my IV port.

The nurses woke me a couple of times a day for the next few days. I was awake for only a few minutes at a time. Just time for me to realize that I wasn’t dead. Soft ice cream was the high point of those days. It took over two weeks for me to be released from the hospital to a rehab clinic. Since I had no living family I spent a lot of time alone. The clinic did have a small TV in every room, so I was able to at least hear the fake TV lives of other people. It might have kept be sane, or drove me to the edge.

The clinic personnel taught me how to walk even though I couldn’t see. I was transferred back to the hospital after a month of physical rehabilitation. It was on Valentines day that I checked into the hospital. Since I was back in the town where I had worked, people who knew me before visited the night before the surgery. The sergeants had mentioned it during roll call, so I got visitors. I hated that it was a treat, but I did resent that no one had come to visit me during the last six weeks.

I was still wallowing in the world of ‘poor me’ for sure. I didn’t even feel guilty when the therapist came by the room and offered to meet with me. I told her no thank you. It was my desire to feel depressed for a while longer. I couldn’t get to a pistol, so nothing was going to happen to me, I assured her.

It was early on a Monday morning when I was told that I qualified for the transplant. The one that would restore vision in my left eye. The doctors were hopeful, but refused to guarantee anything.

“It went fine Merl, with a little luck you should be able to see in the next few days,” the doctor said.

“If you have a really good looking nurse have her remove the bandages please. I’ve missed looking at pretty girls most,” I admitted.

One year went by slowly. It was filled with boring physical therapy. Oh yeah the transplant wasn’t routine back then, so we worried. They ordered me to do all kinds of things, like they had me lay flat on my back for hours at a time. Even after my sight returned, I was bed ridden and on eye drops to keep down infection and irritation.

Being mostly sighted was far from the end of my problems. It was the big elephant in the room, but there were many other things as well. I had to learn to walk and all that. Even so, there I was at the end of year one chomping at the bit to get moving. I wrote first to my old department and asked for a reevaluation. I figured they owed it to me. I found out real quick that they didn’t. As far as the Greenburg PD went, their obligation ended when they arranged payment for all my expenses. They had offered me a settlement, which the police union lawyer told me was ridiculously inadequate. Since that was the case, I followed his advice and allowed him to go into binding negotiations.

I had one thing going for me. My case still received national press coverage. The local PD just wanted it and me to go away. The lawyer arranged for consultations with his daughter’s law firm in the state capitol. With all those people and the press involved, it meant that I ended up with all my medical bills paid, all my living expenses paid, and all my future medical bills paid by an insurance policy paid for by the City. I also got a large, large, cash settlement, maybe best of all I went into the state retirement system.

That settlement cost me an eye, my unlimited mobility, my good looks, and for sure my sense of humor. I pretty much lost my sense of humor the day I realized my future. After my injuries what I thought of as funny, damn sure wouldn’t make it onto the year 2001 TV sitcom shows.

My recovery began in residential care facilities in 2001. They had the least expensive physical rehabilitation program that a blind man could use. After I got my sight back I moved to a small residential complex in a different state. The whole ten acres were filled with Gimps like me. After several month of hard work, I was deemed capable of living more or less on my own. Don’t ask me what that meant, except they threw me out. I was no longer a ward of the state retirement and welfare systems.

The year was 2002 when I got back to my hometown. I decided that I had seen the insides of enough institutional apartments. They all had a disinfectant smell that cause my toes to curl and not in a good way.

I discovered, from my attorney, on my first day home that I didn’t need to work for money. I might someday, if I were very foolish, but that cold January morning 2002 was not a day I needed to work. Since my face was covered with mostly small glass injury scars, I was a bit of a monster. Well I would be if I shaved my beard. The last time I shaved had been the morning of the explosion. So the scars weren’t too visible.

I also wore large framed glasses to protect my good eye. I wore them to correct the vision in my left eye as well. I had no vision in my right eye, the eyeball there was a prosthesis. I wore it when I went out to hide the empty socket. I was still a mess, but it was nowhere near the damage visible two years before.

I had done a little research for a place to live when I first arrived back in Greenburg. I decided that even though I knew where I was planning to live, I hadn’t organized my move yet. I didn’t have much that needed moving, but I wanted a day or two in Greenburg to say my goodbyes. So I took the hospitality bus from the airport to the Holiday Inn business hotel. It wasn’t cheap, but I only planned to stay two nights max.

First thing I did was get a taxi to Walmart. I went inside the store and bought a laptop computer. True it wasn’t an IBM or Apple, but it was a computer I had heard of before. It was a high end Dell and sold for about 800 bucks. It had a ton of stars on the ratings by consumers, so I decided to take a shot at it. It also came with an internet connection kit. The provider’s cd came with a telephone number. I wasn’t new to all of that, since I had owned an HP computer desk model at the time of the accident.

I had no desire to use it for anything while I was blind, so in a fit of temper I gave it to my ex-wife for her nephew. So that afternoon I bought a replacement. I was no genius, but I remembered how to do most things. I didn’t buy a printer, since there were a great number of office stores with builtin print shops.

In addition to the computer, I had a couple of boxes of cookies. Both were for my night’s entertainment. I also bought an ice cream cone to eat while I waited for the cab. I had called it from Walmart’s pay phone. When the cab finally showed, I asked a black lady and her child who waited beside me if they wanted a ride to their home on the way. I couldn’t see any need for her to wait for a bus, but she said no thanks. Too many years of distrust, I thought. I tried to be understanding, but it did piss me off.

When I got back I struggled to get the laptop to work on the internet connection in my room. It took some work and some time, but by 10PM I was able to get on line. The service provider was called NetZero. I hooked to the net and was bouncing around till the sun came up. Well not quite, but it was almost sunup when I fell asleep.

Thanks wyden &

jantrevor

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