Days And Nights of The Scarlet Sponge

At work today, I could see sunlight coming through the skylight at around 2:30 PM, a neat way to not the lengthening of daylight, the passing of winter into spring. Not so at Holy Cross Hospital, my room had a window that faced the back end of the credit union on Lithuania Avenue, and for many days I could not even look at the bricks without the entire window moving like a metronome in my eyesight. Every day, Dr. Shaefer would check the three contusions above my right eye, there were countless MRIs, each proving my brain was still a scarlet sponge (my final breath, my sins expunge)and my arm could not be reattached. The bones, you know what I mean. I might bleed out on the operating table, a joke almost a decade later when my letterhead decreed I WILL FLATLINE BEFORE I GO ONLINE! I learned to dial the phone with my tongue between my teeth, and you really don't want to know how I improvised my pissing. No hands, big head. The throbbing in my head sounded like a washing machine full of sneakers. The photo of me in bed, ice around my arm to ease the burning, was taken on day 22. Mid-April, people on the outside scurrying to finish their taxes. I was on being fed Tylenol#3 every half hour and Demoral shots in my ass every two hours. I still regret to this day, that being so out of it, I never even knew the show COP ROCK had been on and cancelled within a few episodes. Many months later, I still bled at odd times, as the second photo shows (I always have disposable cameras at my, well, disposal, and had been taking photos for possible insurance purposes). I eventually had laser surgery into my brain, but that was later. This is sill Spring 1989. Finally, plates were put into my arm, those later broke, this will be in a future entry, and there was my first look at my withered arm, as they changed casts on day 65, before I went home. Page 243 rolled out of my Smith-Corona like an ancient scroll, the dust motes in the sunbeams like a plague.

Stepping Into The Twilight Zone With Dr. Richard Kimble

Back in 1989, the sign in the first photo read GAGE PARK FINER FOODS, and I marveled as I read the words from impossible angles. The break in the traffic in the second photo shows where I was standing, on the yellow line. It was 11:11 AM. When I hit the ground, everything in my mind split open and outward; the best that I can explain this is by thinking of a wet handful of sand hitting cement. I was unconscious for 20 minutes, and when I woke up, the first thing I heard was the Pakistani grocer calling out "Not to touch! Not to touch!" I could not see my arm, my head was bleeding, and in some only-Wayne-could-do-that way, after my arm broke, my own fist knocked four teeth out from behind my left jaw. While I was gone, because I to this day KNOW I was no longer part of this life, I was in a grey fog, like the false dawn an hour before the sun rises. I recall looking around, shrugging, and walking forward. There was no light, no flashing neon, no wisps of blackness swirling around my ankles. I walked for awhile before he came into view. I swear on the Polish Bible on my shelf, I came face to face with David Janssen, Dr. Richard Kimble, THE FUGITIVE himself. Dead at the age of 49, on Valentines Day, 1980. Kimble was always on the run, looking for the one-armed man who killed his wife. My subconscious was still functioning, trying to tell me I had one arm now, at least for the next 68 days. Kimble had this quirky smile, he'd use it when someone like Ed Asner or Terry Savalas said that he looked familiar. He stood before me and I could not pass him. He gave me that smile, somewhere between Elvis's sneer and Etain's smirk, and said that it wasn't time yet. Nothing about my Creator, my Higher Power. There was nothing around us, no deserted streets, maybe it was false dawn because The Fugitive was filmed in glorious black & white. I am sitting here, my chin in my palm, recalling the image. He put his hand on my shoulder and patted it, as if he knew I was going to make it. The television doctor, my emissary. And then he was gone, I was staring at gravel in my eye and listening to the Pakistani man. Not to touch. Not to touch.

The Clues Were There

March 18th 1989, the anniversary coming soon enough, I already have the heebie-jeebies, the restlessness of recalling being very close to my Creator. The night before, I had watched DOA, that Saturday morning, a rainy, icy, pitiless day, I left home for my doctor's appointment with page 243 of my novel in my Smith-Corona. I saw the dust on that page 68 days later. Another clue, besides the Edmund O'Brien movie, was that I had been rereading Nelson Algren's NEVER COME MORNING. I left the office and 30 seconds later the nurse at the front desk saw me flip up into the air. My first real memory of that day, I recalled earlier moments later during my recovery, was of the EMT cutting open the sleeve of my new and expensive suede jacket sleeve. I asked him not to and he told me, quite matter-of-factly, that it really didn't matter because both bones in my left forearm were sticking through the other sleeve. Above are the photo of me on Day 2, my hand like a sausage, useless as my right hand because the bones took on lives of their own just below my elbow. The other photo, again forgive my glasses and overall scary face look as my hairline receded, shows the torn jacket. I kept it until the tenth anniversary and then I burnt it.