The Crash (Part two)

So, it's been a while.

Where was I... Oh Yeah...

Right!

There was a cop parked over in front of J.D.'s Fish & Chips. He was sitting in front of the weird geodesic dome they used for a storage shed. His headlights just happened to be pointing straight toward the spot where our car came to a stop.

Anyway, I ran straight at those headlights.

As I "ran" toward those headlights, reality seemed to stretch into a long dark tunnel. I ran as hard as I could, and the headlights seemed to be zooming away from me. Also, as I ran extreme pain was washing over me. I began limping and staggering.

Just as the pain got really bad, a cop ran up and grabbed a hold of me. He asked, "Are you alright?"

My answer was, "I think that something inside me is broken!"

The pain in my side was the worst pain that I had ever felt.

Blood was pouring out of my cheek. My face was torn wide open. Blood was also leaking out of me, from all over my body. Hundreds of tiny cuts from all of the broken glass.

He said, "Get down on the ground, so you don't fall down." So I got down on the ground on my hands and knees. As my hands hit the dirt, a huge puddle of blood had already gathered between my hands.

A local lady came running out from J.D.'s Fish & Chips too. Her name is Kathy. She was a nurse at Nadaburg School. She was also the wife of the head of our local volunteer fire department. Kathy whipped off her satin Nadaburg jacket and used it to put pressure on my ground-up cheek.

The deputy Sheriff said, "Maybe you should lay down."

I responded, "I can't. Something's broken. Need help."

Kathy and the cop, both went to work on getting me laid over on the ground, on my side. She kept one hand on the jacket, on my face.

The next thing I knew, a helicopter landed in the middle of Grand Avenue.

The paramedics came rushing out of the helicopter. They came running up and cut my goddamned clothes off, first thing, and started shooting me up with morphine. They felt up my spine and loaded me up on a stretcher. They then rolled me into the helicopter, and we were gone.

I remember being awake for the whole flight to John C. Lincoln Hospital. The ride was only a little bumpy. That little bit of bumpiness was enough to be quite painful though.

We landed on the top of the hospital building, in beautiful downtown Sunnyslope, Arizona. They had a full emergency room up on the top floor, ready to receive helicopters at any moment. The paramedics had already cut all of my clothes off, so I got rolled from the chopper to the room absolutely naked.

I hadn't been in the emergency room for thirty seconds before I was swarmed by people. The doctor started prying my eyes wide open, telling me to look at the light. At the exact same time, a nurse grabbed my "pecker" and shoved a catheter all the way into my bladder. Before I could get the words out to complain, the doctor shoved his finger up my butt, and said, "Sorry buddy. Gotta see if you're bleeding inside." And then... They finally rolled me into a private cubicle.

Here again, my luck shows. The next doctor showed up quick. One of the plastic surgeons, who normally works the nationally renowned burn unit, happened to be doing some emergency room service.

That doctor sat with me for hours. He picked and stitched and stitched and picked...

He told me that he had stopped counting at one hundred and fifty stitches, in my face. The whole time he was stitching, he would find glass in my face and flick it aside with the tip of the Novocaine needle. One hand was holding the "numbz'it" needle, and the other was holding forceps that would push and pull the suture needle.

My face was so swollen and bruised that I looked like Pumpkinhead.

Then they did a bunch of X-rays and CAT scans.

I only had one broken bone. My pelvis was broken.

They put me in my own glass cubicle and put me into a drug-induced coma. At some point, they woke me up, to turn me on my side. The nurse told me to grab the rail and pull, while she lifted on my hip. She said, "On the count of three. One. Two. Go."

She lifted and I pulled. There was a loud click. The pain was so bad that a scream flew out of my mouth. And just as quick, the darkness took me again.

When they finally let me wake up, they told me that I had been out for three days.

Anyway, I spent a week in that hospital. I got out with a brand-new pair of crutches. I was told that I would need to be on the crutches for four months, but I was too stupid to follow instructions. I put those walkin' sticks down after one week and forced myself to walk.

I am pretty sure that I made things worse for myself in the long run.

So, there'll be more to come about the consequences of my not following the directions that I had been given.

Thank you so much for giving me your time,

Keep exploring, and stay safe,

Bugzy Malone