Concussion

Some events replay in memory exactly as they happened because they happened in slo-mo. He was barreling back to the Library when the chain slipped off the sprocket of the bike… He reached down to jimmy it back… then the front wheel hit a pothole, cranking the handlebars ninety degrees… Max sailed head-long over the handlebars… no helmet. He knew he was in trouble.

Max was drifting in that space between spaces that the Tibetan High Sheriffs of enlightenment call a bardo. It was vivid dreaming to him. He had been flying.  Then, frightened, he plunged back into a bag of skin or something he recognized as Max’s body. His head ached… no, it throbbed with pain. He could feel his pulse with the pain. He wanted to go back to where there was no pain. A doctor and a couple of nurses stood by.

Thud, it was over… in an instant his life changed… it changed and he became Job at the city dump. Seizures… skull cracked ear-to-ear… memory loss… a near-quack huckster for a doctor… old friends slipped away… new friends enabled… disability insurance… not enough for child support and rent… choices… self-medication… cocaine… alcohol… a miasma of suffering… anger… rage. He couldn’t imagine it…. It had to change… maybe a cause of some sort.

One of the nurses shook Max. “Wake up. It’s time to wake up!”

Annoyed, he opened his eyes. He thought he saw a custodian that looked like that old guy, Lucky, pushing a cart in the hallway outside the door off his hospital room. A doctor was talking about an X-ray, Basal Fracture. Hydrocephalus.

“What! Leave me alone.”

A doctor hovered over Max with a little flashlight checking his eyes. He spoke. The nurse scribbled on a clip board “Papilledema.”

Then to Max, “Can you tell me your name?”

“McGee. Uhhh…,” he had to think, “Max. Why?” Max was getting more annoyed. The light was like a needle in his eyes, “Get that god damned light away!”

The Doc held three fingers in front of Max’s face and asked, “How many fingers do you see?”

Max held three fingers in the Doc’s face, “How many do you see, Doc?”

“That’s good.” The Doc checked Max’s ears with the flashlight and then said to the nurse who was taking notes on a clip board, “Not good. Blood in the ears. Concussion. Order a CAT scan. Monitor CSFs.”

“What the fuck are CSFs? Talk human language, Doc.”

“Simply said, they are brain fluids. Once they start it is hard to control them without dramatic measures.”

Confused, Max didn’t remember much of what had happened. Confusion bred annoyance as the Doc continued his probe, “What is the date today.”

“Is this a joke? May…?” shit, he thought. What is the date? “No, June 15^th?”

“Year?”

“Eighty…. Uh… eighty-four… no, five?”

“Amnesia,” the Doc droned no surprise. He continued with Max, “Who is the President?”

Max thought for a minute. “What the fuck? I’ll screw around with this guy. Of course I know who the President…” He drew a blank, “was it Carter and, and, shit. Who came in after that? Yeh, it is Reagan. Ronald Reagan. My head hurts, Doc. You got something for pain?””

To the nurse, “An IV, Demerol. CT scan. We’ll monitor CSf.” He said and went out the door.

Max remembered the eight-ball. “I gotta get back to the bar. I owe my tab.”

The nurse taking notes on a chart put a hand on Max’s forehead, “You’ve had a serious concussion, Max. Relax.