3.
How To Go Deeply Into Debt In Just Under Two Minutes

Being in a motorcycle accident is like a waterfall. Nothing-at-all runs at Warp Factor 3. Everything else slows down. In the seconds before the accident happened, I knew that if I changed lanes I would go down. I was moving into the accident before I could respond to this information. Already my front tire was slipping on the trolley tracks running down Market Street.

The bike flipped onto its left side pinning me to the street. My left foot lodged itself up into the rear wheel fender, cocking my knee out. I slid in a long graceful swoop over the steel girder of the BART air vent, the trolley tracks, and asphalt, surrounded by loud gushes of stressed metal. When I came to I was in the middle of Market Street propping myself upon my left arm, looking down at my knee, thinking, it's blue. The bike was coughing to a halt. Some guy came over and looked down at me. "What can I do?"

We looked at each other for long dazed seconds. "Move my bike?"

He nodded and began to go for the handle bars when a siren started. A cop car lurched to a stop only a few feet from the bike. The guy started lifting the bike. I noticed two things: the keys were missing from the ignition and my foot was still stuck in the rear wheel fender.

"Wait," I said. He looked at me. "I'm still stuck." I reached down with my right hand and roughly dislodged my cowboy boot from between the wheel and the fender. He upturned the bike and ejected the kick stand.

"My keys," I said. He looked at the ignition and then at the street surrounding the bike. "There they are." When he returned the cop was looking me over. The guy handed me the keys. "Thanks," I said.

The copy asked, "Can you stand?" I stood up. The man who had helped me disappeared. "We gotta get this bike outta the street," the cop muttered. He looked at me wobbling next to the bike. It seemed to dawn on him I was a real live human being. "Are you OK? How's that knee?" He looked at it and then into my eyes. "I think you'd better go sit down, get your weight off that leg." I sat on the sidewalk. He leaned over my leg and grimaced. "You're going to have to go to the hospital." He waited, looking at me while that registered. "I'm going to call an ambulance."

"Okay," I said.

Within seconds I was surrounded by two paramedics who were ripping up the left leg of my jeans, taking off my shredded boot, cutting open my sock, murmuring to me, packing down the wound, hauling out a stretcher, lifting me on it, putting me into the ambulance and murmuring to me. From fall to paramedics in under two minutes. The prevailing circumstances were as such: the cop had been following me and likely witnessed the accident. When he hailed the ambulance on his radio they were three quarters of a block away coming from the opposite direction. In this respect my timing was great.

As I lay in the ambulance strapped to the stretcher I realized that the clock would ticking out dollar signs for every moment from then until I was discharged from the hospital.

"How many millions is this all going to cost me?" I asked the paramedic sitting with me. He looked at me in surprise and then we both started laughing.

"Don't worry about that right now," he said finally. For the first time in my life I was about to go deeply into debt.

. . . And came down in the Emergency Room. Floating on a high rolling bed in a corridor full of milling nurses, doctors and aides. I was in a TV movie. All the staff were bristling, tense, high spirited, headed towards imminent explosion. People peered down at me, introduced themselves and then gaped at my knee. Paper work was filled out as I automatically spewed pertinent information.

Wheeled to the Trauma Center. A group of five men worked together harmoniously, ripped me out of my jeans, wrestled me out of my motorcycle jacket, hooked me up to an IV unit, x-rayed my leg. At one point I sat up and looked at my knee. Skin, flesh and muscle had been ripped just above my knee and then yanked down exposing my bloody patella. "Oh my god," I muttered. One of the Trauma Team came and stood by me. "Probably not a very good idea to look right now. Why don't you lay back down?" I nodded and lowered myself. Five different people looked at the x-rays in disbelief. I had not broken any bones in my spill. There was neither fracture nor fissure. The integrity of my knee had not been compromised. What I had was a very traumatic flesh wound.

Some joker of a doctor came breezing into the Trauma Center. "Okay, what are you doing for this guy?" He asked. He had on latex gloves. He started poking my wound while I rolled around in agony. "This thing needs to be diluted," he said. "When did you last eat?" He asked, making eye contact.

"11:30." He looked at his watch.

Some pip squeak in greens and glasses came into the room. "Motorcycle accident?" I nodded. "How did it happen?" I told him. "Man, you are so lucky. You should have been wearing leather pants. It would be your pants and not your leg looking like this." He went down to the end of the rolling bed.

"I don't like the way leather pants look," I replied, petulantly.

"What kind of shoes were you wearing?"

One of the other guys answered. "He was wearing cowboy boots." The Pip Squeak looked my boots over. "Well, at least they're good ones. You should have been wearing steel toed boots. You don't know how many mangled toes I've thrown away in this room because some guy on a motorcycle was wearing athletic shoes."

"No way," I said.

"Hey, I'm dead serious."

"This guy either hates motorcyclists, or he rides," I said to the doctor at my knee.

"I ride," said Pip Squeak. "I drive to work every day. Dude, you've been very lucky."

The doctor still probing my wound said, "Dilution!" He turned to the young Middle Eastern guy who stood next to him. "Start dilution. Do a thorough job. Don't stop too soon. The solution to pollution is dilution. Chant that while you're cleaning him up." He looked at me. "What did I just say?"

I repeated: "The solution to pollution is dilution."

He smiled. "How old are you?"

"36."

"Good. That means you won't forget. If this guy starts wimping out, remind him."

I chuckled. "The solution to pollution is dilution," I said.

Everyone left but the Middle Eastern guy. He pulled nearer a rolling table with an assortment of apparatuses ending in tubes. He looked me in the eye. "This is saline solution. It's going to be cold and it's going to hurt, and I'm going to be doing it a while." I nodded my assent. He began the dilution process, murmuring to me all the while; soothing non-sequiturs and platitudes. I moaned, first at the shock of the cold and then the deep penetrating pain. My upper body began to spasm uncontrollably. He noticed but continued his work. Moments later I began sobbing, flinging my head back and forth on the pillow, moaning. Along with the pain big emotions were spilling through me. The guy stopped, came to stand by my head, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"Are you okay? Is there anything else I can do for you right now?"

I stilled my head and locked eyes with him, my vision blurred by tears, trying to stifle a moan. I tried to breathe smoothly, but it came in gasps. "No," I choked out, "you're doing it. You're helping me a lot. I'm okay, really. It must be the shock or something."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, really. I'm sorry."

"Everything's going to be okay." Just before he started diluting he said, "Here we go again . . ."

I braced myself and muttered. "The solution to pollution is dilution!" He smiled, wagged his head back and forth, letting my knee have it.

. . . And wheeled into the Operating Room, lights, camera, action! I had waited four hours for a space to open up. They had to put a catheter up me because I couldn't pee. A cop interviewed me for my version of the accident. Apologized for having to make a report since it was a solo accident and it could hardly be construed as my fault or negligent driving. All it was going to do was mess with my insurance policy. But he had no recourse. Another cop had been on the scene and I had suffered an injury. Very sorry.

The bright lights of OR, the needle to the spine. A nurse sat to the left of my head, a hand near my shoulder. The doctors put up a blinder shield at my waist.

The nurse said, "They're going to start soon."

I felt a vague probing and my head jerked involuntarily.

"Can you feel anything?" She asked.

"Sorta."

She moved to the doctors, returned some moments later. She looked at me, then at the doctors. I could feel something, maybe. "Better?" Her brows knit. I nodded. She nodded at the doctors.

It was a strange experience getting sewn up. I could feel something but it wasn't pain. My upper body sometimes reacted violently to feelings to which my brain was not privy. I would move suddenly. Moan loudly. Begin to cry, and then cut off. All the while feeling just a vague tug at my knee.

Recovery Room was hell on earth. It was a sordid affair. Crowded but organized, disheveled but sterile. There were patients in various stages of moaning. Coming out of spinal anesthesia is something I hope never to experience again. While the anesthesia slowly dissipates, making body feel so uncomfortable you think your bones are going to pop, you begin feeling the pain. Soon I joined the chorus of moans.

A woman came by and peered down at me. "Starting to feel pretty bad, huh?"

I stared at her, my mouth gaping wide, trying to formulate words. Finally I nodded.

"Well, let's get you something." She fiddled with the IV unit. "There's just a little bit of morphine in there now, to ease the pain until they move you upstairs." It didn't do much good.

Sometime later a black guy stopped and looked at a clip board at the end of my bed, studied it, then smiled at me. "Okay, you're next," he said.

I was in a darkened room with another man. I had my first real taste of morphine, straight into the blood stream by needle. I was floating on a puffy cloud playing a harmonica, looking for my halo. I could still feel the pain my knee but I didn't care about it. I was more interested in the texture of the cloud I was sitting on, the clear, ringing tones of the harmonica as I blew it, and the vague envelope of light that was being cast down over me by the halo I keep failing to glimpse.

Deep in the night the doctor who had sewn me up came by to look in on me. "How are you?" He asked.

"Good! They gave me some morphine!"

He smiled. "Great stuff, huh?" I nodded enthusiastically. "Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a look at your knee. Can I?"

"Sure, go ahead!"

He adjusted my leg, screwed up his face briefly, asked, "Can you bend just slightly?"

"I don't see why not!" I tried to raise my knee. "Hmmmn," I muttered. "Let me try again."

"Tell you what," the doctor said, "you lift, and I'll help you along just a little."

"Sounds like a deal!"

Soon he was unwrapping my knee, peering at it, prodding it gently, nodding. "I did a good job on this," he said. He wasn't boasting, he was stating a fact, "I decided while we were in OR to take my time with you and do a cosmetic job."

"Great!"

"In the morning I want you to take a look at it and we'll talk some more."

I floated through the night. As the morphine wore off the pain returned, riveting me back to reality. Near dawn the expert night nurse was replaced by the wacky, spaced out day nurse from Marin County. Even in my haze of morphine and pain I discerned that she was a space case.

My roommate. He was a compelling young man.. A talkative young black man.. Articulate, with a strong vocabulary, with not a hint of street slang. At tops he was 18, probably younger. He had been victim of a drive by shooting at the Sunnydale projects, out by the Cow Palace. The bullet had entered his right shoulder and exited through the left. He had been extraordinarily lucky, experiencing zero damage to spine or nerves. This was his fourth day and he was hoping to be released that afternoon. He spoke clearly and easily about his experience. His girlfriend arrived early. She sat on the bed and they bickered about the shooting. She spoke in a brief, guttural slang, while he continued to speak clearly and eloquently, framing his own memory of the shooting logically and precisely. Later several members of some sort of extended family arrived. The room became loud with street slang, laughing, and a bit of anger, as they all remembered the shooting. My roommate slowly began losing his elegant speech patterns as he was bombarded by street talk, but still struggled to speak clearly. Sometime after this a group of homeboys arrived with a ghetto blaster and the room was plummeted into chaos and incomprehensible gibberish. My roommate was now unable to keep a grasp on the English language. I was hardly able to understand him as he spoke. At last the point of discussion became clear to me. The homeboys knew who had perpetuated the drive by. They were urging my roommate to kill these other young men. He was fighting the idea, arguing with them, something about his mother and his girlfriend. The homies were insistent. Finally he agreed that some sort of retaliation must be exercised.

The wacky day nurse came in. Everyone hollered at her for the release of my roommate. She agreed it was time, but must first teach his girlfriend how to attend the wounds. She shooed everyone out of the room. In the quiet I heard the nurse instruct them. The wound must be sterilized, then with sterilized cotton, the wound had to be filled. The wound must not allow to heal over from the top, but must heal from the bottom up, otherwise it would probably malform and become infected. It would be a long, painful process, would take guts on both their parts. My roommate understood all of this immediately. His girlfriend was confused, or possibly just frightened. The nurse had to go over it with her three more times while my roommate interjected the instructions in a plainer English.

After this laborious instruction period the nurse left to gather supplies. The family and homies returned. The room became a riot scene once more, with Ice Cube rapping on the ghetto blaster that it was a good day, a very good day, because no one had gotten shot in the 'hood.

My roommate made everyone leave again, when the nurse returned with the supplies. He would meet them down at the Emergency Room entrance. As the nurse walked by my bed to leave I said: "I would like to leave as well."

She stood stone still for a second or two in front of my bed, almost as if she were surprised that I was there and speaking to her. Finally she looked at me. "Oh, I don't think you could possibly be released today."

"I'm sorry," I replied, "but I think so. It's not as serious as all that," I inclined my head towards my roommate who was trying to get dressed, "and besides that I can't afford it."

The nurse hesitated, confused. "Well, let me check with your doctor."

Half dressed my roommate hobbled to the bathroom, came back, completed dressing. His girlfriend helped him gather all his belongings, held his arm as they walked out. He stopped in front of my bed, told his girlfriend he'd be along in a moment.

"See you," he said. His eyes pierced me and my heart leapt straight into my throat. Both of our eyes began to water. "Get better, soonest, huh?"

"Take care," I said. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "Please be careful, OK?" It was evident to him that I understood the decision that lay before him.

He sighed and nodded. "You can count on it," he said and shuffled out of the room.

In the following month of required laying about in bed I often saw this young man's face in my mind, wondering which road he had taken, hoping he had not taken the road of retaliation and murder, but slowly had let the insinuation of his beautifully spoken language grip the rest of his life.

So I was alone now, in the hospital room. Quite literally. The pain was horrible. I needed relief. I buzzed my nurse off and on for an hour and a half with no response. My doctor checked in.

"Are you still here?" I joked. "Go home and get some sleep!"

"Yeah," he replied, smiling. "I've been here longer than you want to know about, but I did nap somewhere along the line this morning. Let's look at that knee again."

I adjusted and he unwrapped. I was astounded. The stitching made my knee look like a baseball. It looked really good. I gawked at my doctor. He smiled broadly.

"Hey, I told you I did a cosmetic job on this. It's going to look good. Scarred for life, but the girls will love it!" We both giggled.

"But," he continued, "do you play sports of any sort, or run?" I told him I did not.

"Good, good. Because if you did, you wouldn't be able to do them very well. While we were in OR I saw we had missed that the tendon just below your kneecap was shredded. Unfortunately it had to be trimmed. Things are going to tighten up in there. Normally you should be OK, but like I said, any kind of active sports will be difficult for you from now on."

I told him I could deal with that. Not a problem. "I'm a book worm," I said.

He looked at me and chuckled. "I doubt it," he murmured, while re-wrapping my leg. "Any thing else you need to know?"

"Yeah," I said, "when can I leave?"

"You can leave right now. I'll go do the paper work for release, give it to your nurse."

He left. My nurse never showed up. I buzzed several more times. Finally she came in. "Where have you been?" I asked. "I've been buzzing for almost two hours. My doctor was here. He said I could go."

"Why, I went on my break, didn't I tell you? No one came?"

"No." I replied curtly.

She offered no apology, started to leave the room.

"Wait," I told her. She stopped in her tracks. "Can I get something for the pain?"

Her face brightened. "Oh, yeah, sure!" She left, returned with a needle.

Alarmed, I asked, "What is that?"

"Morphine."

"Morphine!" I'm afraid I raised my voice. "I don't want morphine! I just want something to ease the pain! I'm getting released. I don't want to be on morphine when I get out of here! Do you have something I can swallow?"

The nurse was startled by this outburst. "That means I'm going to have to throw this out." She waved the needle at me.

"Hey, I'm sorry, but I don't want something that strong." She came back with some Tylenol with codeine. "I'd like to leave as soon as possible," I said.

"You'll need a Leg Restricter."

"Fine."

"You'll have to go to Physical Therapy."

"Okay. Whatever. I'd like to go. I'll need some pants, too. The Trauma Center ruined my jeans."

She looked at my quizzically. "That may take a while."

"Could you start on everything NOW, please?"

"Okay," she said while leaving the room. She never came back. Just as I was about to buzz again, my doctor came into the room, with a look of surprise on his face.

"Why are you still here?" He asked.

I shrugged, displayed my upturned palms, said, "My nurse . . ."

He shook his head shortly, frowning. "I'll check it out for you."

As he was leaving I said, "Hey, Doc, if I don't see you, thanks for everything." He returned to the foot of my bed. "I really enjoyed having you as a patient . . ." the sentence trailed off, and he smiled. I realized then that we liked each other. "I'll go check on the nurse for you," he said.

"Thanks again!" I called after him.

It was a battle getting released. My nurse put up every possible blockade. Each step was done one at a time and took forever. I began to wonder if I was her only patient and that was why she was trying to hold on to me.

Finally I got home. In the month I was laid up, I read a lot of history books and had a spiritual crisis. I got the bill for my accident. From the time of the accident until I came home the next day it was slightly less than twenty four hours, like about nineteen. All the bills collected together came to just about an even $7,000.

But at least I was wearing a helmet.