Chapter One: The Motor Vehicle Accident
The Santa Fe sky could not have been painted any bluer by one of the many famous
artists geographically inspired to live there. I felt as I did when gazing into Van Gogh’s golden, sunny fields of wheat, undulating trees and ethereal clouds. The landscape unfettered my imagination allowing entrance to a fantasy world, so much better than the harsh reality of medicine. The rolling mountain roads offered a retreat from the broken bones of beaten children, the suicidal mask of hopelessness on the faces of the aging, or the decaying smell of slicing into an abscess and seeing the bloody, green pus flow forth - seemingly unafraid of the light.
The mountain scenery shimmered hypnotically through the heat that seared off the
elevated, black two-lane road I was following. In the immenseness of the high desert, the car
didn’t seem to move even when going the top lawful speed. I was lulled into dreaming of my just completed honeymoon, when suddenly the odd shapes moving slowly a half mile or so down the road, rattled me awake. I made out the back of a banged up, older model Ford-pickup packed with a ridiculous amount of stacked hay. The bales extended ten feet into the air above the cab.
The bundles were tied all together creating a watch-tower, that in the fever of rippling heatwaves resembled some kind of blurry Ogre reaching out to grab the innocent - careless enough to venture too close. I automatically switched to the faster left lane before getting closer, and then noticed how the hay resembled an imposing barrier warning me away. Not fully understanding the danger, I saw the first stack hit the ground and continued to watch another fall from the top, wondering if some magical pitchfork was pushing them outward into the air.
As the bundles hit, they exploded.
Bindings ripped, and dry straw popped in all directions covering the entire road. Two slid
together intact into the middle of the highway, forming large yellow boxes that deliberately
blocked my passage. Nearer, I saw the truck had stopped, the driver having gotten out looking a his cargo. Even at a distance I could tell he was upset.
Turning, I asked my wife, “What’s all this about?” I thought lethargically while spotting
the farmer. He was attempting to move hay, which was haphazardly strapped together into large boxes, three to four feet across. He must have been bringing them from one pasture to another in these high mountain fields.
“That’s crazy. This is an elevated pass. Dangerous as Hell. Slow down, Daniel!” She had
an edge to her voice that only registered distantly. I seemed to be numb and insensible from the high altitude of the Santa Fe hills, and was already in the left-lane, not sure where to go. She added more with a panicked voice, “Hey, slow down, now!” In my bucolic inertia, I did not heed the warning fast enough, and could not fully brake the car.
My brain, quickened by adrenaline, ordered my arms around spastically. I swerved
impulsively, inexplicably afraid of the bundles. Still braking, I pulled too hard to the left, a
maneuver that barely permitted the car to rush past the hay barriers. But, they seemed angry for not being able to stop me, as the scratchy, box-shapes vented by sounding a barking, scraping scream all down the car’s side. I thought the vehicle had gotten past the danger, until I saw the yellow straw spread out before me like a golden oil slick. The tires spun on the slippery hay squealing high-pitched, excited warnings before growing louder into full throated screams from the car.
When confronted with impending calamity, the present slides into eternity; time becomes
a slow freeze-frame dance. In that eternal instant, I watched as my evasive turn transformed into a long, drawn out fishtail. The vehicle continued to carve out a winding, snake-like pattern in the asphalt hardtop, slithering toward the edge of the elevated road. I then realized we were going to go over the unguarded highway edge. The rims of the front wheels were grabbed by the soft long grass reaching up from its intersection of the asphalt. It deliberately flipped the car down the steep embankment - over and over for about seventy feet.
The soothing familiar rhythm of the road I’d felt through the seat, disappeared as we went
flying into the sky, and roared into heaven. My body, instantly going into shock, served me a
neurological cocktail (a shot of dopamine) that propelled me outside of time, giving a small
promise of paradise. All that followed seemed an illusion, and as the seconds ticked by there was no need to worry about what to do next. I simply enjoyed the pleasant, hormonally-induced peacefulness of an unhurried day looking over at my new wife.
Theresa was so full of details. Her long, blond hair was still shining from the morning
conditioning ritual she had performed. A few strands still damp, stained the fibers of her pink
linen shirt, while orange gloss sat atop her lips accenting their pillow fullness. They were slightly parted to show what I considered her best feature: those dazzling white teeth. People often found her too perfect smile off-putting, that is, until they noticed a slight chip on one of the lower incisors. And now, her relaxed face was only marred by the smallest of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The pink softness of the blouse, draped around her delicate neck, was held by a real pearl button. Yes, my bride was as beautiful, as always. “Angelic,” I thought.
Only one detail told me something was amiss. It was the smallest puzzle-piece mislaid;
so, I really had to look to figure out what was wrong with the portrait in front of me. Her eyes,
the same blue of Santa Fe skies, were retracted to only a small rim surrounding marbles of black.
The classic defensive-response to intense fear brought on by adrenalin. Dilated eyes gather in as much information as possible – better to see any present threat.
Floating and turning in space, we were caught between heaven and earth, until gravity
pulled the car back to the real world of the hard, the sharp, and the crushing.
The illusion came to a jarring halt. The world outside the window had turned over and over and over. My ears flooded with noise. My skin prickled with maximum sensation. My entire body twisted and turned like a shaken rag-doll. Then nothing happened at all, as I floated away, simply vanishing into blackness.
The light came back quietly and slowly, as I could see it through my eyelids. My
thoughts, confused and hesitant, tried to explain what was happening. My head hung out the window, which had apparently been broken out by my left arm. The hand was scratched with long, red marks punctuated by miniature icebergs of glass shards. I could tell most pieces were imbedded deep under the skin. Looking in the cracked side-view mirror, I felt detached. Who was the meaty, dark red lump? There was no pain, only the steely taste of red blood cells filling my mouth. My irritated buccal mucosa spat them out, adding to the red color of my shirt.Yhe pattern flamed across my chest.
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Blood for women has a special personal significance. Covered in the red, sticky syrup, I
understood the connection, and imagined how frightening it would be to have a bloody wound visit monthly. It ticked off the cycles till death. To those in the medical profession, blood is the marker of someone else’s tragedy when they are "gurneyed" into the Emergency Room -- slick and stained crimson.
It could also mark my own emergency. When under the bright lights of the surgical suite, a pristine, body cavity pools-crimson from the slightest slip of my scalped-hand. I would panic and struggle to find the opened artery and hold back the tide.
Here, now, was an unusual case -- as both the tragedy and the emergency were mine. I
was both the patient and the non-performing professional. With this mix of feelings, I sat in the driver’s seat passively watching the high, spurting red arches leaping somewhere out of me. Increasinglly rapid cycles seemed to be marking the timing of my own demise. The arc of drops spat on the odometer. In fact, directly on to the number sixty-five. Which was the speed I had pushed the car to before the crash. My own fluids seemed tpo indicte me.
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Blood is usually seen a little at a time. Its bright alarming color says, “Yes, this stuff is
precious - don’t lose any.” It is not a polite reminder! Thus, when you look around to see what seems like gallons, at first you can’t imagine what you’re visualizing. It’s like suddenly finding diamonds filling pint-size containers. When the ruby liquid is your own, the illusion is not just a clever trick. Just your own realization brings the heart beating more forcefully, thus sending the blood arcs higher. Little fountains of yourself are squirting away.
A ringing voice went off, the harsh alarm clock of Theresa’s voice. “His head? Emanating from the passenger side, my wife was frantically beseeching someone to find whatever was above my shoulders.
The excitement slowly roused me to bubble-up from under the surface of the warm, pooled red-wetness I lay in. Lifting my head slightly, I could not see her. The entire roof-canopy had been crushed down between us like a dividing screen. As I opened my eyes further, they were stung with what my nose recognized as gasoline. Real animal fear of being seared by fire woke me. I instantly knew the reason wild creatures didn’t approach camp fires. Flame could be so painful, and it scarred so comic-book ugly.
Now frantically turning my neck to look for a way out, through my smashed driver’s side window I saw the rancher-truck driver. Panicked he ran full out at me. My passive eyes viewed his face registering increasing amounts of fright the nearer he came. We stared at each other for a split second, just long enough for me to see his lips curl upward beginning a shocked disgusted look. In spite of this, he hugged me. Wrapping his arms around me to pull my body through, he yanked though an aperture crushed only large enough to allow my limp torso passage.
From the outside cradled in his arms, I could see the car.The Nissan Compact had lost two of the four doors we rented it with. Not a single surface was intact. The severity of bruises, dents and fracturesmatched my own body. It had become a mauled-metal coffin.
The Good Samaritan hauled the bloody lump, I had become, twenty feet from the car. Not
able to speak, I silently registered events drifting in and out of consciousness. I was aware
enough to hear my wife’s delight in finding my head. She tentatively touched my scalp, face, and pulled a little on my ears, as if for proof. Then she embraced me affectionately: like something she had lost was found. Her hands held my face lovingly, but were bloody when pulled away.
“Oh, God. I can’t see your eyes. Too much blood,” she said. Her fear emanated towards me.
I slurred, “I see you Theresa, but you have red on your face. Is that lipstick?” Through
the crimson smears, it was impossible to tell my blood from hers. Agitated, she let me go, and went for a white towel fetched from torn luggage. Her fingers trembled, as the cotton rag pushed gently against my face applying the feeling of baby blankets: safekeeping and comfort. I reste for only an instant. Then these warm securities fell away with the towel.
“What was it I was seeing? A red Rorschach?” That is the test with those black inkblots
on folded paper. The images are completely without meaning, but the patient interprets them b free-association - saying anything that comes to mind, which gives the doctors insights into th unexpressed-unconscious. Incidentally, always say you see animals or flowers, never sa anything about sex. You don’t want to seem crazy.
My eyes gazed back and forth trying understand the patterns of crimson on the white
cloth, slowly giving way to known shapes. “A forehead, eye sockets? Yes, those must be teeth mprints. A blot for an ear. That’s right. Oh . . . a face. Oh, my face. And above it many red flames where it draped the scalp.”
I had no need for a mirror.
A red, painted portrait perfumed the air not with linseed oil, but the coppery, ferrous smell of blood. My nose informed me this depiction had been made from my very own self.
The numbness of shock was pushed back by the hyperactivity of horror. “What was this
thing?” I asked repeatedly, and each time a new more fearful answer came jumbled and rambling in my thoughts. I softly spoke to myself, as I do when overwhelmed. "Talking it out" with myself always helped. Words have ordered my world. I started moving my mouth.
“Broken orbital bone, eye damage, hair on the top gone. The scalp bleeds heavily, even when the cuts are small. Maybe not so bad . . . No. Too much red. Too much blood! Grave injury . . . real damage, scars, cosmetic surgery. Shit. No. Not a picture -- this is a shroud.”
I started the fade-out into unconsciousness, but the last bits of my awareness rolled
through the images of a scene . . . I was pulling up a hospital sheet over the face of a middle-aged man who I had just pronounced dead. His mouth had the sign of "O". The lips forming the letter, as if he had just expelled his very last breath.
But God had not completely forsaken me. If there really were such a Power. By chance,
the shrill cry of a siren added itself to the chaos in my head. An ambulance was returning from a hospital run, and slowed at seeing fresh skid marks. They came to me. I heard the two of them speaking the familiar language of medicine, in that specific dialect of Emergency Medical Technician. Their speech was accented with the grave tones usually reserved for the near dead.
The med-techs were both husky, tall men wearing uniforms of light blue short sleeved shirts and navy pants. They talked into compact walkie-talkies, which squawked back every so often.
“Base we have an MVA, with one male sustaining multiple head lacerations in a
coronal pattern . . . Possible cerebral bleeding . . . There are multiple contusions scattered
profusely over entire body, but concentrated to upper extremities, and deep puncture wounds to hands bilaterally . . . Right lateral rib cage has been impaled . . . Breathing is within normal limits bilaterally . . . No obvious fractures . . . Possible acute cervical fracture determined from angle of neck . . . patient dazed and moderately unresponsive . . . Onset of shock imminent, with blood pressure dropping.”