How to Get Run Over by a Truck Read online

  “Katie McKenna’s beautiful, wrenching memoir reduced me to actual tears—and then, slowly, left me with a broad smile and a growing sense of wonder.”

  —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She’s Not There and Stuck in the Middle with You

  “At times visceral and horrifying, at times heartbreaking and healing, and at times hilarious, McKenna’s memoir is a testament to the incredible resilience of the human spirit coming up against a crushing blow.”

  —Hilary Angus, managing editor of Momentum Mag

  “Incredibly moving and insightful . . . This book should be required reading for all professionals who work in the field of medical trauma and rehabilitation.”

  —Leo J. Shea III, PhD, clinical associate professor of rehabilitation medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center

  How to

  Get Run Over

  by a Truck

  How to

  Get Run Over

  by a Truck

  Katie McKenna

  Copyright © 2016 Katie McKenna

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. The author has tried to recreate local events and conversations from her memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances she has changed the names of individuals and places. She may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.

  Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California

  www.inkshares.com

  Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions

  www.girlfridayproductions.com

  Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

  ISBN: 9781941758984

  e-ISBN: 9781941758991

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016931481

  First edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Mom, Dad, Conor, Callie and James,

  “There are darknesses in life and there are lights,

  and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”

  —Bram Stoker

  Thank you for being my lights.

  Do not pray for an easy life,

  pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

  —Bruce Lee

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART I: GIRL MEETS TRUCK

  Chapter One: How to Get Run Over by a Truck

  Chapter Two: More

  Chapter Three: In Between

  Chapter Four: I Get Knocked Down . . . and I Stay There

  Chapter Five: “Am I Naked?” and Other Important Questions

  Chapter Six: Visitors

  Chapter Seven: You Must Be So Grateful

  Chapter Eight: Dr. Douchebag

  Chapter Nine: Happy Hour Hunger Strike

  Chapter Ten: The Record

  Chapter Eleven: Roomies

  Chapter Twelve: How to Cure Nice White Girlitis

  Chapter Thirteen: Roberto

  Chapter Fourteen: Pain Management

  Chapter Fifteen: Breaking Out

  PART II: PUTTING YOUR PIECES BACK TOGETHER

  Chapter Sixteen: Indulged

  Chapter Seventeen: Katie’s First Steps

  Chapter Eighteen: Pennies and Ring Rosaries

  Chapter Nineteen: Physical Therapy

  Chapter Twenty: Jeopardy

  Chapter Twenty-One: Mackers

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Lean On Me, When I’m Kinda Strong

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Dr. Belkin

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Heel to Toe

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Home

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Removing Your Own Catheter (A Twentysomething’s Guide)

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Giving of Thanks

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Momma

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Blame Game—Rules and Regulations

  Chapter Thirty: BFF

  Chapter Thirty-One: Jump and the Net Will Appear

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Becoming a Real Girl

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Dance Dance Dance

  Chapter Thirty-Four: First Day of Work Mix

  PART III: OLD KATIE MEETS NEW KATIE

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Miss Dependent

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Angry Little Grown-up

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Warren

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Baggage

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Now

  Epilogue: Eff the Tee

  PART I

  Girl Meets Truck

  CHAPTER ONE

  How to Get Run Over By a Truck

  So, how do you get run over by a truck? My first recommendation is to ride a bicycle. This is specifically for their fool factor—every time I saw someone riding a bicycle it seemed so innocuous. It was low-impact exercise that was good for you. Lance Armstrong rode a bicycle, and he beat like one million kinds of cancer. What could be healthier?

  Plus, I live in Brooklyn, and all the hipsters ride bicycles: they have messenger bags and wear vintage glasses, and they make riding over the Williamsburg Bridge look cool and effortless. I figured if those pasty-skinned music lovers could handle riding their bikes in Brooklyn so could I. I mean, hello! I was an all-county track champion in high school. I knew I could own that bicycle. I’m not just talking about owning it in the actual “I purchased it” kind of way—I mean own it in the frat-boy way, e.g., “We totally owned that keg last night.” That was the way I was going to own that bicycle.

  I actually did, for almost a year. I rode my bike for errands. I rode my bike to work. I rode my bike to my friends’ apartments in the neighborhood, locking it to stop signs and feeling eco-conscious and thoughtful. In the summer I even took myself on romantic bike rides—and let me tell you, that bicycle had moves. Stopping in McCarren Park at twilight made me feel like I was in a foreign film, sitting on a park bench in a black beret and a scarf, drinking wine—when in fact I was sitting on patchy brown grass, wearing sport shorts and running shoes and drinking a Bud Light tall boy in a brown paper bag.

  When I woke up early on October 2, I won’t tell you that I had a premonition or that there was a hand on my shoulder that told me not to go out that day—because that would be untrue. But I did get the feeling that someone was trying to tell me something I obviously had no interest in hearing. These were signs from God. Three, in fact: 1. My bike tires were flat; 2. I almost fell down the stairs trying to get my bike out of the apartment; and—most important—3. I decided not to wear any underwear that day.

  Most lazy twenty-four-year-olds, when faced with the fact that their bike tires were flat, would say, “Fuck it, I’m not going to bother.” Nope, not me, not Katie can-do. I thought instead, I’ll fill up my tires and get in a workout—this is going to be the best morning ever!

  Then my bike tried to attack me as I took it down the stairs. We got out of the door just fine, but as we went down the stairs the bike started to bend and fold as if it was trying to fight me back into the apartment. I should have seen it for what it was: a cry for help. Bob the Bike knew more than I did—he didn’t want to die that day either. He was trying to stop me, but I wasn’t listening. I wanted to be thin, to get that endorphin rush, and on top of that I wanted to see the sunrise—I wanted it all.

  And then there was the matter of the last sign that I shamelessly ignored. As a child I was told to always wear clean underwear. My mother’s reason was always the same: “What if you get into an accident?” This never made any sense to me, because I always assumed that if I got into an accident I would wind up peeing my pants anyway. But
because I was a good girl I wore clean underwear nonetheless. That morning I made a conscious decision to go without and, by doing so, I now believe I tempted fate; my accident was bound to happen.

  Before I continue, I need to make one point about this whole underwear thing: I had just gotten up, underwear-free, and the idea of putting on a beautifully pristine pair of undies just to get them dirty made no sense at all. I figured that on this point, God and I were on the same page. . . . I was mistaken.

  It was an unbelievably beautiful day. There was the smell of fall in the air, the sky was a deep blue, and there was no one on the streets. The morning felt like a secret; it was so dark and quiet, it gave me shivers. The few trees left on my block were beginning to change from dark green into a golden yellow. Fall has always been my favorite season, a time of new beginnings, a new year of school, a new fall jacket—a chance to start over again.

  I walked my bike one block up and over another to the Hess station on the corner of Metropolitan and Humboldt. I had a quarter tucked into my sock to pay for the air I was going to pump into Bob’s tires. By 6:15, tires fully inflated, I was riding down Metropolitan without much of a plan. I knew I wanted to ride for forty-five minutes and just explore the neighborhood.

  My roommates and I had recently moved into a new apartment in Williamsburg. In the most classic of New York real estate scams, our Mafia-esque landlords (I am talking gold chains nestled in a tuft of chest hair and velour Fila tracksuits) had told us that our old building was being sold, and that we had to be out in a month. In actuality the building was not being sold; they were just bringing in people who would pay more rent. We moved about ten blocks away, farther from the sweet Italian neighborhood that we had been living in and closer to the industrial part of Williamsburg.

  I actually liked living closer to the factories. I thought it was cool to live in a place that was a little less gentrified, a little grittier. I loved being able to see dirty New York—the New York that had frightened me as a kid. When I was little, I was so afraid of the big bad dirty city that when my mom and I came in from Long Island to see Peter Pan on Broadway, I made her leave during intermission. Now that I was a big girl, I was proud I wasn’t scared of the city anymore.

  On this particular morning I rode past the furniture outlets and the mattress factories, past the abandoned brick buildings with the painted names of past tenants chipping off their brick façades. I wanted to take it all in. I was feeling good. I was forgetting about the fight that I had with my boyfriend the night before. I was sweating off my nerves about my new job. The world felt big, and I felt wonderfully small.

  About a half hour into my ride, the sun was starting to rise over the low buildings on Vandervoort Avenue. I decided that watching the sunrise as I rode out the last fifteen minutes would be a perfect conclusion to my morning workout. I wanted to take this morning and make it mine. I wanted to see something beautiful and then be able to keep it in my pocket all day. It would be my secret to keep.

  Stopping at the light at the corner of Maspeth and Vandervoort, I looked back at the car behind me, a black Mazda sedan. I waved at the driver and pointed to the right, letting them know which way I was going to turn. The truck that was next to me didn’t have its indicator on, so I assumed the driver was going straight. Just in case he wasn’t, I waved in his side mirror anyway. I pointed to myself and then I pointed to the right. I always communicated with truck drivers via their side-view mirrors. I spent a lot of time behind trucks on Interstate 80 on my trips from college in Ohio back to my home in New York. Every one of them had a sign that specifically said, “IF YOU CAN’T SEE MY MIRRORS, I CAN’T SEE YOU.” My assumption was that the opposite was also true: “If you can see my mirrors, I can see you.” I was wrong.

  When the light turned green, I took my right turn wide and easy, without a thought about the eighteen-wheel vehicle to my left—because it wasn’t turning, and for that matter the Mazda wasn’t either. I thought I had tons of room.

  I didn’t.

  The truck driver hadn’t seen my very clear indication that I was going to turn right. He hadn’t seen me at all. He hadn’t seen my metallic blue bicycle with the red writing on it. He hadn’t seen the long-sleeve T-shirt I was wearing—the one I got from running a 5K for a fallen Army Ranger. He hadn’t seen the Denison lacrosse shorts I had owned since my senior year of college. He hadn’t seen any part of me. All he saw was a green light, and he turned.

  The last thing I remember before actually being run over was the hollow sound of my fist banging the side of the truck, and then I felt as though I was tumbling. I don’t know where my bike had gone. I knew I was on the road, and there was this moment when I thought, Am I in an action movie? This is the kind of shit that happens in action movies. What would Bruce Willis do? What can I do to stop this?!?

  The answer was nothing. There was nothing I could do.

  Before I even really realized what was happening, I felt pressure and then heard a cracking sound. The realization that the cracking was my bones shocked me. I squeezed my eyes shut, and I felt the first four wheels of the truck run over my body. I didn’t have time to process the pain. All I could think was, Sweet Jesus, please let this man stop before the second set of wheels comes for me.

  “No, no, no, please God no,” I shrieked before the second set of wheels rolled over my already crushed middle.

  This time I kept my eyes open. I watched this second set of giant wheels run over my body. I heard more cracking and felt the grooves in the tires on my skin. I heard the mud flaps thwack over me. I felt gravel in my back. I was a sparrow that had lingered too long in the road, no different from every slow bird, every irresponsible squirrel, every wayward dog that just wasn’t fast enough.

  Then there was the sound of a horn—a one-note beep that didn’t stop. This was the kind of horn-blowing you hear on the BQE during rush hour, the kind where you know the horn is being punched out of frustration. When I heard that horn, I thought to myself, Now you beep. You couldn’t have beeped before your death machine crushed my body? Hearing something meant I was still alive. I was still here and—as long as I stayed awake—I was alive. As long as my eyes were open, I was awake. So I barely blinked.

  My bike was tangled up in my legs, like a five-year-old who had just had her first spill. I remember being nine and watching my little sister, Callie, learn how to ride her bike in the street in front of our house. My dad had just removed her training wheels and was holding the seat. He was running behind her, keeping her steady, making her feel grown-up but protected. She could look back and he was there. When he thought she could do it on her own, he let go, as all parents do. She was great for about fifty feet, but then she looked back and realized he wasn’t behind her anymore. Callie lost all her confidence in that moment. She forgot that she had been doing it on her own for the last few moments, and she wobbled, screamed, and fell. As she fell, her legs kept moving. They looked like they weren’t even a part of her body, as though they were working on their own, and she was unsure if she should continue to pedal or if jumping off would save her.

  My body must have reacted the same way as it felt those wheels, trying to jump off, trying to go faster . . . trying, trying, trying. Flesh and metal had merged together. Bob the Bike was dead. I was left with bits of his shattered metal body embedded in my skin, his gearshift impaled in my stomach.

  I never saw the driver. He didn’t leave the scene of the accident, but he didn’t walk back to see if I was okay either. I guess he didn’t want to see the fruits of his recklessness. To be fair, I couldn’t look at myself either, at where the tires had made contact with my body.

  I lay there waiting for something to change, to get better or worse. I waited for a break in the silence that kept ringing in my ears. I remember looking up as the early morning sky went from that deep blue to a sunlight-pale, pale blue—the clouds looked as if they were whipped out of cotton candy.

  I screamed out for someone to call my mother. If my
mom was there, she could fix it. As soon as she was notified, all this could be undone. Because this was not reality. Reality was the fact that I had to get back to my apartment and iron my button-down shirt. Reality was that I had a big day at work, and I was nervous about getting really sweaty in my new suit. Reality was not that I was on the precipice of losing my life—that was not what was happening. I refused to close my eyes.

  As the initial shock of impact began to wear off, my body reacted with crushing pain. It was unlike anything I could have imagined. I was confused by it. I couldn’t believe there could be a sensation so horrible and intense or that it would continue to radiate out of my body—usually the pain of dropping something on your foot or running your knee into a door fades, even if just a little. This excruciating pain stayed right where it was, doing relay races up and down the length of my body. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop it. I couldn’t shake it off, or massage it, or walk to a place that I thought would somehow give me relief. I had no choice but to just lie there, trying not to drown in it.

  I remember a young woman who was about my age came over to me and said she would call my mom. She asked me if I knew her phone number. I did. I remembered it as a song that my mom had taught my siblings and me to help us learn all the numbers. This young woman, the one who was calling my mom now, had been in the black Mazda. Her boyfriend had been driving. He was directing traffic around me, around the accident scene. They were saving me.

  He put up orange cones, and flares were lit around me. Everything changed. I watched as this woman took responsibility for calling a perfect stranger’s mother to tell her that her daughter’s body had just been crushed by an eighteen-wheeler. I heard her say that her name was Gisele; she sounded scared. Her voice shook as she told my family’s answering machine that I had been in an accident and that whoever got this should call her back as soon as possible.