- My Turn

It was almost thirty years later and I never even saw the car that almost killed me.

A few minutes before, I had finished topping off the teardrop-shaped tank of my beloved black and chrome Harley Davidson, glinting in the afternoon sun. I loved my hog. Dad, when I told him of my new toy, wasn’t too happy about it of course. He had spent a significant portion of our childhood slamming on the idea of motorcycles. He always had said that the only good thing about them was they kept the world supplied with healthy and young organs for transplants.

Even now, I must say that I don’t completely agree with this. I know many riders who have spent years on the back of their bikes with nary a scrape. When I began to ride, I was determined to be one of them. I was careful, and as long as I was in control, I’d be fine.

I never thought about the moments that were out of my control as I replaced the gas nozzle into the fuel pump then threw my leg over the leather saddle, pulling the bike upright and turning the key in the ignition. I watched the indicator lights blink on and popped the shifter into neutral, then depressed the chrome starter button on the handlebar with my gloved thumb. The engine kicked over and sprang to life with a sharp roar, and for a moment I enjoyed its throaty growl as it pulsated powerfully under me. The vibration resonated through my body as I settled into the saddle. The feeling was amplified as I gunned the engine a couple of times, just to feel it.

It felt good.

I popped the clutch into first gear with a clunk, rolled the throttle a touch, and eased forward; pulling out of the gas station and making a right turn across Knott Avenue toward the intersection at Lampson just to the north. I entered the left turn lane for Lampson and stopped at the red light short of the crosswalk.

I waited at the light, enjoying the feel of the fine tuned engine rumbling smoothly beneath me like an old friend, strong and true and never failing. Its loud growl announced to all that I was coming and made me feel invincible as it undulated below me.

Through my visor I stared at the light, waiting for my chance to thunder on. In a flash, the green arrow popped up and I and eased the bike into the intersection to begin my turn.

The imaginary Director in my head suddenly yelled: “Cut!” and everything disappeared.

Witnesses said that I sprung up off of the bike in an apparent attempt to get clear, but was impeded by the windshield of the rushing SUV which had blown the light from the from my blind spot. It impacted hard, knocking my bike out from under me and bouncing me off it’s windshield and over a smooth arc through the air before I landed back on the rough asphalt in a crumpled heap. My helmet smashed forward into the ground, thrusting my face into the visor which opened a large gash my forehead and erupted my nose in a crimson gush. My limbs spun out from under me in all directions, and I flopped across the street on my belly in an unnatural, rag-doll type of way.

I lay immobilized as bystanders ran to the scene and swarmed around, blood spilling out of me from my nose, my mouth, my head…I stared sideways at the scene in front of me through the red smeared visor, now cracked and askew, eye-level with the asphalt. I found much to my distress that I was unable to move or talk or even breathe. I don’t remember any pain but I knew I was hurt.

That hardly mattered now. Darkness began to envelop me and very gradually, against the fight I put up in my spinning brain, I faded out - as did the sounds of the commotion around me, leaving me with the feeling like I was slowly sinking backwards, falling in slow motion deeper and deeper.

It was like entering a dream; suddenly to my surprise I felt warm and good. A rushing sound surged through my head like water through a semi-kinked hose and was pleasant and somewhat comforting. It blocked out the panic I had felt closing in on me scant second before, as well as the pain I was sure was coming once my brain sorted it out. The dream wrapped itself warmly around me, and I found myself suspended in a sort of bubble. Outside of it, I was only vaguely aware of bright, painful light and chaos as people rushed about around me. But in here it was safe and calm.

It was nice.

I was all ready to stay put right there, but then I became distinctly aware of a familiar, foreboding, and bad feeling.

From some corner of my battered mind the ethereal image of Staff Sergeant Phillips, my most feared and loathed Drill Instructor, materialized and burst into the fabric of my dream - just like he had entered our squadbay so many times back at the Marine Recruit Depot during boot camp all those years ago. He came, as he always did, from out of nowhere and was now standing over me as I cowered, that familiar menacing grimace on his face; a combination of rage, loathing and disgust. The image of him towering there over me made me suddenly very afraid.

“What are you doing down there, you worthless maggot?!” He bellowed at me from the periphery of my scrambled brain in his thick Trinidad accent.

The words echoed as if spoken in a large cave and tore through the haze that separated me from the reality of my pathetic and disfigured form, still sprawled on the asphalt of the road. My bubble began to quiver.

“What kind of Marine lies down on the friggin ground like a gol-darn Raggedy Ann dolly??!” he bellowed.

“Is that what you are?? A gol-darn Raggedy Ann dolly?! You better get up! Open your eyes, maggot!!” he screamed mercilessly and unconcerned about whether or not I thought I was going to die. He hadn’t told me I could die, after all.

“OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!”

With a soundless pop, the bubble disappeared, and I was thrust back into the world.

The director in my head: “Fade in – AMBULANCE…”

I opened my fluttering eyelids very slowly and the painful light pierced throbbing into my raggedy brain.

“…what happened?” I sputtered through puffy and swollen lips, but as the world resolved itself before me I already knew. Out of my field of vision the attendants tried to calm me, sounding slightly surprised. I could not move. I was strapped down and immobilized on the stretcher and my neck was in a plastic collar. I could taste the iron of my blood. It oozed down the back of my raw throat. It was disgusting.

“You got hit, man,” one of the attendants said. He sounded like a kid. “You got hit on your motorcycle.”

I could not grasp it. Hit on my motorcycle? Not possible. I just didn’t get it. I was totally confused. I was wanting so desperately to cast off the hazy weight that held me fast to the thin foam of the stretcher mattress and emerge into a different reality, but was unable to muster the strength. So I just lay there baffled.

After an eternity of listening to the undulating whirl of the siren, the ambulance slowed and we pulled into a hospital emergency entrance. They jerked me out of the vehicle gurney and all and I was rushed into a brightly lit emergency room, which turned out was at the University of California Irvine Medical Center. I was under the care of one of the best hospitals in the world, and ironically the entity where my own father had learned medicine long before any of this. Of course, at the time I could have cared less.

My best friend in the world was now a husky and friendly young man with a neatly trimmed goatee and purple scrub suit named Danny. He struck me as the kind of guy whose friends probably refer to him as a big old teddy bear when they describe him. I trusted him completely. He must have felt bad for me, for he was near me at all times. He told me calmly and with an appropriate level of sympathy that it appeared that my hip and shoulder on my right side had been dislocated, and were probably also fractured, that my neck might have been broken, and that I most likely had suffered some level of head injury.

He did something to my IV and a rush of cold liquid flowed into my arm. They had removed my helmet at the scene and had cut off my beloved leather jacket. Now the detached tickle of scissors made there way up my legs and side as the rest of my clothes were cut away, exposing me completely and utterly helpless.

Danny determined immediately that there was no need for me to be intubated with a breathing tube as my trachea was uninjured and seemed to work, but they did fit me with a catheter, which was not very comfortable. When I threatened to throw up, they jammed a suction tube up my nose and into my throat, so I wouldn’t aspirate anything. On my bare chest, they placed small pads that were hooked up to an EKG machine. My bodily functions became summarized by small red and green blips leading various solid lines across a screen.

They rapidly assessed my immediate injuries in the emergency room, but a cat scan would still be necessary, so off I went. I spent what seemed like a very long time in the cramped tube, listening to the bored and monotone sounding voice of the technician on his microphone in the control room telling me not to breath or that I could breathe again while the machine beeped and whirred around me.

We stopped in another room where they took some x-rays of me and then I ended up back in the emergency room. Terri had finally made it to the hospital and was being briefed as I rolled in. She came to my side and grabbed my hand. I was glad to see her. She stood beside me, looking down at me on the gurney with a brave but worried look. I tried to look tough for her benefit, but at that point pulling it off would have been quite a trick. I don’t think she would have bought the act anyway.

Danny appeared again and patted her hand, then enthusiastically announced that he was going to reduce my shoulder and hip - meaning he was about to pop them back into place. I still wore the uncomfortable neck brace which held my throbbing head perfectly still, and the only thing I could see was the water stained white acoustical ceiling tiles occupying my immediate field of view.

“This might hurt a little at first,” Danny said, as he poked his head into my field of vision to look at me and began to work his hands around my shoulder. “So tell me if you feel too much pain and I’ll give you something.”

He must have felt the tension in my muscles as a bolt of fire sprang toward my finger tips, because he relaxed and looked at my eyes to see if I was about to scream.

I was.

I gurgled, trying my best negotiation voice. Anyway, I knew from long experience what phases like ‘this might hurt a little’ meant.

“Tell you what,” I rasped. “Give me something now, and you can torque those joints around as much as you want.”

“My man!” he said with a smile. I imagine that my attitude made his life a little easier. He went away and returned a few moments later.

“This will do it,” he said out of my view.

A few seconds later I felt a warm feeling rush into my arm through the IV tube protruding out of it. A peaceful, floating sensation embraced my body and I suddenly felt incredibly happy and pleasantly stoned.

“Whoa…” I exclaimed, as my head begin to spin and I began to feel more and more giddy. “That’s…the good…stuff…”

“Sure is!” Danny said with an edge of humor in his voice. “Now relax and let me do my thing.”

I drifted slowly away, probably humming the Partridge Family theme, on a soft white fluffy cloud while squeezing my wife’s hand as the valium worked its way quickly into my system. On the other side, Danny worked my twisted limbs back into place. I came to a few seconds later to his smiling face. He looked quite proud. I found out later from Terri that only a few seconds earlier he had been raising his voice at me, reminding me to continue to breathe before I re-emerged once again and took that responsibility back on for myself. She has never talked about that moment again.

“All done!” Danny said cheerily. I cracked a lame smile and thanked him for the good work.

But then I felt sorry for myself. I was pretty sure that if I were going to die now, he’d be a little more serious. Still I knew life as I had known it was probably over. Danny saw this in my face. He gently patted my newly replaced shoulder.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said. Then he turned away to tend to another task somewhere in the big emergency room. Someone somewhere was hollering in anguish. Nearby, a small child was crying. It was a busy day.

Numbness held me limp and I looked at my wife through glassy and bloodshot eyes and tried to smile weakly. I could see she wasn’t having a good time with this either. I was now thoroughly exhausted and drifted off into sleep.

At some point, my dad came to see me. I was fully expecting some version of I Told You So, but he didn’t bother. Still, I knew what he was thinking and I was embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, pop,” was all I could think to say. He smiled softly and looked at me with a sympathy I don’t think I had ever seen from him before.

“That’s okay, son,” he said. I could still see the scar etched in his own forehead. “I crashed an airplane once…”

And I finally got to experience ATLS for myself.