Chapter 1: Ingressio - Beginnings

Mid-April? 1993

I remember being in small cafe in San Francisco. It was late night, we were there after a party. What were we celebrating, a birthday? Whose? I remember lots of laughing, lots of talk. Whitney Houston's voice came from the speakers, singing. "I will always love you."

There were two women sitting in a far booth with some guy. The women were hot and I was drunk. One was a redhead, the other was dark. The man I don't remember at all really. I stared at the red-head and tried to think of something clever to say. The man laughed and told me to find another party.

I don't remember what I said, but I did say something. He looked at me for a moment and then everyone stopped talking. The whole bar went really quiet. No one moved at all. I remember laughing at that, finding it really funny. The guy with the two babes looked at me surprised and he laughed with me. Then he smiled at me all weird.

Did the redhead crawl under the table and blow me? Did I imagine that part? Dream it? No one in the bar moved. At all. Did she really blow me? He watched me the whole time. He laughed again. The dark woman looked bored by what was happening. I remember asking myself how jaded you have to be to find a public blowjob in a bar to be goring. Then something weird happened and the whole world twisted up kind of sideways.

I remember being back at my table with my friends where everything was normal, I was drunk and I had imagined it all. What he absolutely had not said to the dark woman he was with was this. "How interesting, let's use him."

Wednesday May 12^th, 1993

I'd had the beginnings of a headache all day. It started in the morning with a kind of sinus pressure, not feeling great edge of your awareness headache. I assumed that it was a lack of coffee or maybe it was eye strain from the previous night in front of the computer. I took two Tylenol and headed into work.

By noon the headache was worse, and I took a couple more pills and began to wonder what the maximum safe dose was. Then something really different happened. The headache got a whole lot worse.

By mid afternoon the headache was so bad that I stopped even trying to work and told my boss Alice that I was going to have to go home and lay down. By the time I got off the phone with her though, it was so bad I was nauseous. I put my head down on my desk and hoped it would get better soon. It didn't. After a minute, I started to see white spots in my vision. Then, I went blind. Everything turned white. The pain was so bad all I could do was moan.

I fell out of my chair and onto the floor and curled up into a ball. I remember wondering if I was dying. It hurt so much. Somewhere in there I passed out.

Turns out that the guy in the cube next to mine heard me moaning and looked over the cube wall. When he saw me on the floor, I was writhing and crying. He called 911. The paramedics came and took me to San Jose Medical Center's emergency room. Alice rode with me in the ambulance. When they got me there, Alice told the ER doc that I had complained of a headache. They put me in the CAT scan (which was still kind of rare in 1993) looking for an aneurysm. They didn't find one, but I had lapsed into a coma by that time. I entered a persistent vegetative state.

I don't remember anything concrete from being in a coma, not even dreams. I have these weird half-memories, but I can't describe them to you. It's like trying to remember a song you heard once. You can remember a couple of notes but not the melody. And you certainly can't get someone else to know what you mean. There was some sense in there of being really, really far away from myself, kind of like floating over everything. It was peaceful. It was peaceful for a long time. This may sound weird, but if death is anything like that, I won't mind dying, not much. I just was, and it was good.

I remember a sense of pressure. Not pressure on my skin, pressure pushing in on who I was. You know how you have a voice in your head that talks to you? Stop and sit and listen for a minute. Just sit there a second. That voice, the one that just said to you. "What voice? What the hell is he talking about?" That's the voice. That voice is not you. That voice is your internal conversation. It's like a radio tuned to your thinking. It goes all the time, never stopping, never shutting up.

You go to the mall and that voice is on loud speaker. "Where did she get the idea she could wear spandex? Oh god those are nice tits. Hmmm, mens suits ½ off. My butt itches. Hair color not found in nature." and on it goes, forever, without stopping.

Well, somewhere in there, my little internal voice just stopped. It just stopped. What I got instead was this sense of pressure. Something out there pushing in on me. Pushing in on who I was. Except, without that voice in my head, I didn't really have anybody that I was. I was just being. It was weird but cool. The pressure wasn't cool though. It was awful. It sucked because when it pushed in on me I got lost. When it receded I came back. I hope you get the idea. If not, I don't know what else to say about it.

The pressure would come in and I'd lose myself. I'd feel lost. Then it would recede, and I'd be back. After this had happened a few times, I started to notice that my eyes were sort of open and I could see around the hospital room I was in. But it was like living in a strobe lit world. The pressure would recede and I'd see a few moments of people moving around me, or maybe a family member sitting next to me, and then it would all go away again and I'd be lost.

<... >

"Nurse, his eyes opened! Carter, are you there sweety?" My mom dressed in her navy blue church suit. My dad next to her looking over and smiling at me, concerned but hiding it.

"Carter, say something."

<... >

Colors. Shapes. Pressure. hungry.

<... >

A darkened room. The quiet ticking of a clock. A machine starts a steady beeping, it's loud. There's a bed next to me. Someone in it starts to wake up to the noise. I hear feet on a tile floor.

<... >

Pressure. Love her run for ball hope she throws it again oh yes here we go run run fast happy ball got it run yes run look there a cat don't go there run with ball look she's happy with me yummy yes happy please ball again yes please please ball yes run run get it get it there it is bad ball bite it make it squeak my ball run run run. Squirrel!

<... >

I'm in my hospital room again. I can't think of the names for the people who are here, but they love me and are scared. One of them is certain I'm dying, though I don't know why. I feel free.

<... >

Pressure. God this looks terrible on me why do they make dresses look like this why design it this way I wouldn't I wish I had lost those ten pounds I'm a fat pig and I look it it makes me want to cry I used to be so thin in college and now shit size fourteen how did I end up not being able to wear a fourteen I wouldn't do this to women I think I'll buy jeans ... and never eat at Cinnabon again

<... >

That went on for a long time, a really long time. I was in and out of the coma for over a week. There were times I was lucid for an hour or more and then I'd slip away again. Somehow I knew that my family had all gathered and relatives had flown in. No one knew what was wrong with me.