As promised, today’s post moves the peg—which is me—on the game board of LIFE, two steps forward, one back as we advance toward Part 4 of the story at hand, indicating that extraneous phraseology, which had cluttered up our connection to clarity in Part 3 has been reorganized or erased to the best of my ability, so without further ado, let’s see what fate has in store for yours truly once the well trained team of paramedics has ever so gently transferred five injured accident victims, three of whom are unconscious, from car and truck to stretchers so as to transport us, sirens wailing, again, to various hospitals throughout the valley.
Within seconds of being transferred from the ambulance stretcher onto a gurney, still in an unconscious state, I was wheeled into the hospital only to be re-awakened by nurses, who had need to uncurl, undress and prep my pain-wracked body to be examined by a doctor, whose professional diagnosis had determined my internal injuries as critical and in need of surgery, STAT, while I, writhing on the bed within a curtained cubicle in the ER (where Will had admitted many patients before performing countless complex surgical procedures in the OR) heard myself plead, irrationally, repeatedly: Pleeeze don’t touch me ... while Will, hearing my voice, weak as it proved to be, experienced a rush of relief course through his body though the curtain, separating my bed from his, blocking our need to lay eyes on each other. Even so, hearing my husband call out my name felt momentarily reassuring before the ER staff’s attempts to keep my pain-wracked body uncoiled saw me slip back into oblivion not to reawaken until the next morning in a heavily drugged state, wired up to several monitors in intensive care, sporting a brand new abdominal zipper, which, due to the depth of my Demerol-induced lethargy, I did not yet know was there, and—with no crystal ball to call my own—upon stirring from within that medicated fog at least enough to become aware of that zipper, I had no way of intuiting that it was destined to be unzipped, again and again, due to the fact that the severity of my internal injuries would literally wind my bowel around itself so as to knot up, like a ball of yarn in need of untangling if anything of lasting value was to be knitted together so as to ease the obstructed flow of my digestive system, which was destined to continue to be in need of surgical repair over the next two years. In short, the general surgeon and I were destined to meet in the ER way too often if you asked me.
Within seconds of being transferred from the ambulance stretcher onto a gurney, still in an unconscious state, I was wheeled into the hospital only to be re-awakened by nurses, who had need to uncurl, undress and prep my pain-wracked body to be examined by a doctor, whose professional diagnosis had determined my internal injuries as critical and in need of surgery, STAT, while I, writhing on the bed within a curtained cubicle in the ER (where Will had admitted many patients before performing countless complex surgical procedures in the OR) heard myself plead, irrationally, repeatedly: Pleeeze don’t touch me ... while Will, hearing my voice, weak as it proved to be, experienced a rush of relief course through his body though the curtain, separating my bed from his, blocking our need to lay eyes on each other. Even so, hearing my husband call out my name felt momentarily reassuring before the ER staff’s attempts to keep my pain-wracked body uncoiled saw me slip back into oblivion not to reawaken until the next morning in a heavily drugged state, wired up to several monitors in intensive care, sporting a brand new abdominal zipper, which, due to the depth of my Demerol-induced lethargy, I did not yet know was there, and—with no crystal ball to call my own—upon stirring from within that medicated fog at least enough to become aware of that zipper, I had no way of intuiting that it was destined to be unzipped, again and again, due to the fact that the severity of my internal injuries would literally wind my bowel around itself so as to knot up, like a ball of yarn in need of untangling if anything of lasting value was to be knitted together so as to ease the obstructed flow of my digestive system, which was destined to continue to be in need of surgical repair over the next two years. In short, the general surgeon and I were destined to meet in the ER way too often if you asked me.
My first memory, upon feeling my eyes flutter open briefly on the morning after my first emergency surgery, which led toward several agonizing recoveries yet to come, offered up a foggy sense of another dear friend’s tear-stained face bending over my own right before she'd planted a tender kiss upon my cheek followed by making her way out of my ICU's curtained cubicle, freeing my dope-dizzied eyes to wander toward envisioning the slow-mo advance of my parents, who (having been alarmingly awakened by the shrill ring of their bedside phone in the still of the night) had listened intently as Will's voice made them intensely aware of the serious nature of my injuries as soon as his gurney had been wheeled from the ER into a private room on 'his' orthopedic floor of 'his' primary hospital.
With hindsight as my guide, I imagine my now-harried parents leaping out of bed, throwing on their clothes, packing as quickly as possible, and calling a taxi to drive their deeply worried state of being to the airport so as to board the first non-stop flight available from the Midwest to our Southwestern desert community so anxious had they been to stand watch over their severely injured daughter, whose blurred vision welcomed them with love. As for my first semi-conscious, Demerol-fueled thought, I'd taken note that each time my eyes opened, another tear stained face or trembling lip was seen staring down at me unless a nurse was taking my vitals.
With hindsight as my guide, I imagine my now-harried parents leaping out of bed, throwing on their clothes, packing as quickly as possible, and calling a taxi to drive their deeply worried state of being to the airport so as to board the first non-stop flight available from the Midwest to our Southwestern desert community so anxious had they been to stand watch over their severely injured daughter, whose blurred vision welcomed them with love. As for my first semi-conscious, Demerol-fueled thought, I'd taken note that each time my eyes opened, another tear stained face or trembling lip was seen staring down at me unless a nurse was taking my vitals.
Each time I'd awaken to find that my cubicle’s curtain had been left open, my eyes would momentarily land on beds situated on either side of mine, occupied by elderly patients, whose frail bodies had been hooked up to as many wires as proved true of mine, causing me to envision the darkened Spector of Death, standing at the foot of our beds, scythe in hand, black hooded head swinging this way and that as though deciding which of his prey proved prime to levitate in hypnotic readiness to follow his scythe's pointed lead toward that final resting place, which was literally out of this world—so when I envisioned Death’s eye landing on me, lying there feeling nothing but too fragile in my drugged-out state to negotiate a deal, the strength of my maternal instinct's will to thrive wilted upon staring into the penetrating nature of Death’s impartial eyes, causing me to feel so humanly vulnerable as to fearfully surmise: Oh my God—This can’t be good—someone wake me before this horrendous nightmare swallows the rest of my life whole!
As a self-contradictory aside ...
I, who professed to be agnostic, then as now, hear myself thanking God or Mother Nature or The Universal Spirit or whatever works for you for investing the brains of higher beings with a subconscious storehouse, where knowledge absorbed and personal memories experienced remain compressed and repressed deep within the caverns of our minds until readiness to courageously confront terrifying moments in time release and reveal insight-laden intuitive powers, which, upon flashing like bolts of lightening through your sixth sense and mine, enlighten our conscious awareness of all that had been experienced and felt and misconstrued during years past, serving to spotlight our need to encourage oneself to strive, ever more brightly, toward identifying and conscientiously acknowledging personal vulnerabilities to which we’d defensively been blind so as to inspire ourselves to offer up our best character traits to everyone we encounter as life on earth continues to unfold in a highly surprising manner, one day at a time ...
As a self-contradictory aside ...
I, who professed to be agnostic, then as now, hear myself thanking God or Mother Nature or The Universal Spirit or whatever works for you for investing the brains of higher beings with a subconscious storehouse, where knowledge absorbed and personal memories experienced remain compressed and repressed deep within the caverns of our minds until readiness to courageously confront terrifying moments in time release and reveal insight-laden intuitive powers, which, upon flashing like bolts of lightening through your sixth sense and mine, enlighten our conscious awareness of all that had been experienced and felt and misconstrued during years past, serving to spotlight our need to encourage oneself to strive, ever more brightly, toward identifying and conscientiously acknowledging personal vulnerabilities to which we’d defensively been blind so as to inspire ourselves to offer up our best character traits to everyone we encounter as life on earth continues to unfold in a highly surprising manner, one day at a time ...
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