How to Get Run Over by a Truck Read online

  I knew then that I was broken. My mom wasn’t home. She had been called and nothing was better. Plus, Gisele was so frightened—she couldn’t even feign calm as she left that message. I was stricken with terror, but I couldn’t give in to it. I thought that if I let myself fall into it—fall into the fear, the loneliness, the hurt—I would be lost forever. I had no cell phone, no ID, and, Jesus Christ, no underwear. If I didn’t manage to stay conscious, I would become a whorish Jane Doe who rode a bicycle. I couldn’t go out like that.

  My one job was to stay awake. I needed to stay awake.

  My brain kept whirring as I lay on that Brooklyn street: What do these people need to know? What do I need to say?

  “I can move my toes and my fingers—if I pass out, tell the paramedics I’m not paralyzed.” I spoke with the authority of someone who actually knew what they were talking about, not a theater major who could barely put on a Band-Aid. Thank God for all those TV movies I watched—you know the ones, where someone gets into an accident, and then they freak out and say, “I can’t move my legs, I CAN’T MOVE MY LEGS.” Well, I couldn’t move my legs either. But I could move my toes, and I knew that counted for something.

  “Please, can you hold my hand?” I asked Gisele. “I’m scared.” I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to be strong and funny and to let this just roll off me. I wanted to believe that this wasn’t a big deal—that I could put a Band-Aid on this one, all by myself. But after telling another person I was frightened, it became clear to me that I wasn’t tough enough to do this on my own. My mom wasn’t there, and I was surrounded by strangers. So I did what made me feel like I was close to my family: I began to pray.

  I asked Gisele, the stranger holding my hand, if she would pray with me. Without knowing if she was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim—I began to pray the Hail Mary. I prayed to Mary to not let me die. I really didn’t want to die.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” My voice usually quivered at the hour-of-death part when I said this prayer out loud—this time it felt as if the words were shaking my entire body. Was this it? Seriously? Was I going to die, here on this street in Brooklyn, because of a wrong turn on a fucking bike ride?

  I always thought I might die young. When I was a little kid, I would watch the five o’clock news, and whenever there was a news report about a young girl, with everything to live for, who had been killed in a freak accident, I would think, That’s going to be me in about ten years. Then I would think about what my news report was going to be like. I wondered what they would say about me. Would they talk about my family? My friends? Or would the focus be on my athletic accomplishments? I hoped they used good pictures. I even told my parents the song I wanted played at my funeral: “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel. Of course, they would tell me how morbid I was and how it was wrong to talk like that. I understood what they were saying, but part of me just wanted everyone to be prepared, plus that song would be killer during the procession.

  As I held desperately on to the hand of my new best friend, a man in khaki cargo shorts, a plaid short-sleeve shirt, and a New York Yankees hat stepped out of his Toyota Camry and walked toward my spot on the asphalt.

  With no hesitation he slipped his rough hand into mine, looked into my eyes, and with a Spanish accent and a confident tone said, “Listen to me, I am a pastor—I have spoken to God, and he has told me you are not going to die today. Okay?”

  I needed for him to be right. I wanted him to be my prophet. “Do you promise?” I asked, with the sincerity of a six-year-old.

  “Yes,” he promised. If I could have lifted my hand, I would have made him pinkie swear.

  He took Gisele’s hand and said, “Let us say the Lord’s Prayer,” and I said the Our Father with my new congregation of three. I realize now that I had never said the Our Father with such fear—I really prayed that God would forgive me my trespasses! I had trespassed a lot. Like the time in third grade when I broke my date to the SCA fair with Tom Fulgieri. I did it on the phone, and I let Shauna Phillips listen in on another extension. And then, while he was still on the phone, she started to laugh. I knew it was mean, but I wanted to be cool more than I wanted to be nice. I hoped God forgave me for that one. I also hoped that God didn’t put a whole lot of emphasis on underage drinking as a sin, because then I was really screwed. I didn’t truly feel bad about doing it, and I had done it a lot. I prayed for God to know that I didn’t want to die, that I didn’t want to go to hell, that I didn’t want to even go to heaven, for that matter. I just wanted out of this situation. But the fact that my legs weren’t working, and I didn’t have a flux capacitor to turn back time left me totally screwed. So I just made sure I didn’t close my eyes.

  The only thing I could control just then was my eyes. They were the only part of my body that wasn’t hurting. I kept them open for my mother, for my father, for my sister, for my brothers, for my boyfriend, for my friends—I knew if I closed them I would be giving up on ever seeing those people again, on seeing anything else in my life again. I would never see a little kid with an ice cream cone or a leaf blowing like a confused butterfly in the wind. If I closed my eyes, I would never see the way someone looks right after you hug them. If I closed my eyes, there was the possibility that I would be in darkness forever. So I stared unblinking into the sunlight, fearfully gulping up as much light as I could. Plus, if God was going to take me, I wanted to see Him coming.

  CHAPTER TWO

  More

  When the police arrived, I felt a wave of relief. They are going to take care of me, I thought. This will be okay, the police are here. After all, they did what I couldn’t do—fight bad guys, save lives, kick bad peoples’ asses. I always waved at the police. In high school I was polite when they found me doing things I shouldn’t have been doing at the town docks. And then, after 9/11, out of nowhere, I found myself hugging a policeman just to say thank you. Two of my uncles were cops. They were strong and funny, and they made me feel safe and protected whenever they were around.

  These policemen were not like my uncles—there was no warmth or kindness in their eyes. They made me feel like I wasn’t even there. When they looked at me, it wasn’t exactly disdain that crossed their faces, more like apathy. Of all of the emotions that I thought my situation would evoke, apathy was not one of them. I wanted them to like me, to care about me. I tried to fashion a joke about the fact that my ass was half exposed due to my lack of undergarments. When the officers didn’t even crack a smile, I knew I was more injured than I had thought—because jokes about exposed bottoms are really funny, and if people aren’t entertained by them, then something must be seriously wrong.

  After my awesome joke went bust, a policeman with a mustache leaned over and told me I was going to be okay. I didn’t believe him. I asked him if he had morphine; he said no. I asked him where the ambulance was; he said it was on its way. I asked if it could come any faster because I was hurting a lot. Big fat tears slid down my face. I tried not to sob, for fear that it would hurt my belly even more. Instead, I turned my head to the left and kept my arms stretched out and let the tears fall from my right eye over my nose to my left eye, then onto the pavement.

  When I heard the ambulance sirens, I freaked out because I knew that when they came and picked me up I was going to go to the hospital, and then everything was going to get real, fast. The entire time I was plastered to the street, I was in limbo, suspended between reality and some sort of video-game dream. The ambulance sirens made it clear that I was not in a video game and that this was not a dream—I was going to leave this spot on the gravel, and I needed to do what I could to save myself from dying. My biggest fear was that the ambulance was going to take me to Kings County General Hospital. It was probably one of the closer hospitals in Brooklyn, but I didn’t want close—I wanted good.

  My b
est friend Maribeth was a nurse, and she had told me that when you are in an emergency situation you are still in control of what you want to happen. They can’t make you go to a hospital that you don’t want to go to. And I did not want to go to Kings County. A friend of mine had gone there after she broke her leg, and she didn’t see a doctor for eight hours. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, exactly, but I knew that my injuries couldn’t wait that long.

  It isn’t clear to me how I got on the gurney, but I do remember them putting that neck brace thing on me, and me screaming. When I was finally secured in the ambulance, something came over me, and I started to speak in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. “Excuse me, sir, I refuse to go to Kings County. I need to go to a hospital that has a good trauma center. Will you take me there?” It was as if my brain was on autopilot—it was doing what needed to be done to keep me alive.

  The EMT said, “The best trauma hospital is Elmhurst, and yes, we can take you there because you requested it, but it will take us longer to get there than it would to get to Kings County.” What I didn’t know then was that Elmhurst wasn’t just the best trauma hospital, it was the place where the city sent people who needed hospitalization while they were incarcerated.

  I said, “Sir, I don’t care, I need to go to a place where they can fix me.”

  I realized that I sounded like a snob, but I was being honest, and if there is ever a time to be a total bitch, I think being strapped to a gurney in an ambulance with tire tracks on your body is one of those times.

  The driver and the other EMT argued about where was the best place to go for my injuries, while another guy kept asking me questions. Instead of answering, I just begged for morphine. I am not sure why I thought that every person in a uniform was carrying morphine with them, as though they had an IV drip right underneath their badge.

  He looked at me and said, “We can’t give you anything or else the medical staff won’t know how much pain you are in—they need to know.”

  “Can’t we just tell them that I am in a lot of pain? I mean, A LOT!”

  He shook his head.

  I was not liking him.

  He continued to ask me questions and tried to give me oxygen, which did nothing except irritate me. Why would one put the equivalent of plastic wrap around my face and then ask me what my address was? Every time he asked me a question, I would take off the mask to answer it, and then he would put it back on me. It would have been comical if I hadn’t felt like killing the man. I officially did not like this dude. He gave me no morphine, made me no promises of survival, and had cut off one of my favorite sorority T-shirts, the one that we made for our freshman formal. Didn’t he know that I would have voluntarily taken it off if he had just asked nicely? Despite my protests, the bastard cut the T-shirt off, and then he cut off my shorts. I contemplated giving him a breakdown on my lack of panties but deemed him unworthy.

  My sassiness dissipated once my clothes were cut off. I felt the cold air on my exposed body. I couldn’t fathom that it would be possible to feel more vulnerable and scared than I had felt just a few minutes before, but my nakedness in front of a person who didn’t love me left me as fragile as tracing paper. I didn’t realize it then, but this was only the first of what would be many, many times I would be naked in front of a total stranger.

  Mr. EMT continued to ask me questions: my address, my phone number, my parents’ names, my parents’ address, where I worked, my social security number, etc. . . . And the geniuses in the front of the ambulance not only hit every pothole in Brooklyn, but they got lost. And when I say lost, I don’t mean like a wrong turn; I mean the driver got out of the car and asked someone which way the hospital was. If it wasn’t so totally inappropriate in the moment, I am sure that I would have uttered something about wanting to kill myself.

  Killing time while we drove around in a circle, Mr. EMT asked me all the same questions again. I realized that this was a ploy to keep me awake, but I was sick of repeating my social security number, and told him point-blank that there was no way in hell I was going to fall asleep or pass out. I was way too scared to do that. I had only blinked about forty times since the accident. I had been counting.

  I remember there was a red awning over the door that led into the emergency room, which made it look more like the entrance to a catering hall than a hospital. The EMT from the front of the ambulance was the one talking to me now. He had a brown mustache. He told me I was going into the emergency room and that they were going to take care of me there. I wasn’t convinced. I had no clue where I was. I was afraid of dying, and my body ached in ways that I never knew possible. And I was not going to trust anyone. My eyes were still open.

  As soon as I was wheeled into the emergency room, there was a flurry of activity, everyone poking and prodding me and talking loudly. There had to have been at least twenty people in that room, including a nurse in what looked like themed scrubs. You know, the kind decorated with teddy bears getting their temperature taken. I felt pretty angry about it. I mean, we’re in an EMERGENCY ROOM—shouldn’t she be wearing something a little more serious? The blue scrubs would have been just fine. The kind that say, “You are in good hands. I am a professional,” and not, “Do you have a tummyache?”

  Everyone started asking me questions:

  “Are you allergic to anything, hon?”

  “No, no, I am not, ma’am.”

  “I am going to give you a shot in your arm.”

  “Okay, sir, may I have morphine?”

  “You are going to be getting an IV now, okay?”

  “Is my mom here?”

  “What is your name, sweetheart?”

  “Katharine McKenna, ma’am, but please call me Katie—what is your name?”

  “Dr. Russell.”

  “Dr. Russell, I don’t want to die, okay? Could you please check me to see if there is any internal bleeding?”

  “We will, Katie. You don’t even need to say please.”

  “Dr. Russell, can you promise that I won’t die?”

  “I can’t do that, Katie, but we will do our very best to save you—okay?”

  She couldn’t even tell me that I was going to live. Oh my God! I could really die, holy shit, I might die. She just told me this could be it. My parents, my family, my boyfriend, my friends—I don’t get to say good-bye to them??? I can’t keep my eyes open by myself forever.

  “We are going to put you under anesthesia and take you to surgery now, okay?”

  “Okay, Dr. Russell. Tell my mom and dad that I love them, and tell my brothers and my sister too. My friends, please tell my friends that I love them, okay? Please. My boyfriend, please tell my boyfriend that I am sorry about the fight and that I love him, and I am sorry. Please don’t let me die. I am so scared.”

  I felt her hand on my head. I looked at all the people around me and said thank you (at least I had my manners). There was another shot in my arm, and my mouth and nose were covered by something plastic as I said the Our Father again and begged God not to take me away. I lost my choice then. I struggled to keep my eyes open, but it wasn’t up to me anymore. I stared into the halogen light above my gurney and let my eyes close.

  Now, I look back at all the times I’ve used the words I may just die. I remember uttering those words one morning in college after four too many shots of warm tequila the night before. Or after the first time I told a boy that I loved him, and he said nothing in return—I was sure I was going to die of embarrassment. This time I closed my eyes and thought I was going to die because my body had just been broken by a huge motor vehicle. Because it turns out that people are more likely to die from a wrong turn by a truck than from the misery of a hangover or the embarrassment of unrequited love. Until this moment I had thought the two were on an equal footing. Nothing made sense. The definitions of words I had used a million times now had a different meaning, a meaning that was deeper and darker and more permanent. This was when my heart broke. I was lost.

  As the fog
of anesthesia slowly enveloped me, my mind started racing, trying to think as much as it could before my consciousness vanished. Thoughts flew through my brain like a flood of words scrolling across the bottom of a screen. I was struggling to wrap my head around what had happened. My thoughts formed around a series of questions I asked myself and then attempted to answer: There is no way this is happening, right? There is no way I can survive—there is just no way. But wait, how am I still awake? How come I was able to talk? I’m not brain damaged. How did that happen? I wasn’t wearing a helmet, and I’m not brain damaged. I could live. No, no, there is no way—no one has eight truck wheels run over their body and live. It just doesn’t happen.

  It was just so out of the realm of anything I would have imagined for myself. I should be dead, but I am not, at least not yet. Does that mean I am going to live? Or am I one of those people who goes into the hospital and dies while everyone is in the waiting room? Fuck that, I’m NOT going to die. Holy shit, I’m going to die.

  I willed myself to live and tried to accept the fact that I wouldn’t. There was no life-flashing-before-my-eyes reel playing in my head—all I could really think about was the fact that I wouldn’t get to see any more of it. I didn’t feel badly about the way I had lived. I just wanted more.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In Between

  When my mother arrived home after dropping my dad off at the train station, the red light on the answering machine was blinking. An unknown voice screamed out of the speaker: “Hello! Hello! Your daughter has been in an accident! Are you there?! The ambulance driver needs to talk to you. Please, please call me back.”

  My mom stood in the kitchen, by herself, and began horror-movie screaming.

  When she stopped screaming, she called back the woman who had left the message. Gisele said they had already taken me away in the ambulance, and the police wouldn’t tell her anything. They told her they could only disclose information to the victim’s family.