Paralysed

I’m in my car driving. It’s late and dark outside, about 2am. At least it’s Saturday tomorrow. Two bright circles appear on the side of the road. Okay, what is that. I get out of the car to see what it is. I slowly walk towards it, kinda acting like it’s a horror movie-wait that’s not helping. It moves, then looks up again, and from what I can see is a silhouette of a bunny. Huh, who would’ve thought? Alright back in the car. I drive up to an intersection. It’s so dark, it feels so quiet, like nobody’s around, but everyone’s watching. It’s a red light, and is taking forever, maybe the sense detectors aren’t working. Well since no one’s around I might as well just go acro- BANG! Airbags pop out in my face making it hard to breathe. Glass shoots everywhere cutting my skin. My lip is all torn up on the inside and tastes bloody, and my arm hurts like hell. All of a sudden I can’t see, and everything goes black.

 

My name is Amanda Levi, I am 28, I have glasses, hazel eyes and golden brown hair. I live in New York City and my parents live in Montana. I have a husband named Jason Levi and we got married about five months ago.

 

“Yeah, she hasn’t woken up yet,” I hear some voice say. Then I hear another one.

“Should we give her another shock?”

“Yeah that’s seems best” The first voice says

Shock?! I try to stop them and but I can’t seem to open my mouth. I can’t move. Then I feel a wave of electricity flow through my body, everything hurts and my stomach ties in a knot. My eyes shoot open and my face feels puffy.

“She’s awake! Give her a shot of  pain relief ” All of a sudden I feel a pinch on my arm, and start to feel dizzy, but more calm.

“Feeling ok there?” One lady on the right says, I try to talk but no words come out. Have I lost my speech?

“Hey, I said are you ok?” She says eagerly again. I try move my arm but I can’t move, I start sweating and this strange annoying beeping noise gets faster and faster.

I’m frustrated and lots of energy seems to be flowing through my head, kind of like the electric shock, but less painful. All I hear is “Just relax, just… relax…” her voice gets fuzzy and I drift off to sleep.

When I wake up I see a familiar face, it’s my husband Jason. “Hey there, Amanda” he says to me, the sight of him it makes me happy and I try to smile, but I can’t. I want to ask him what’s happened, to the car and to me. I try to move my hand towards him, but I can’t, I try so hard my muscles hurt. I try to  move but none of my muscles budge.

“I have to tell you something, the crash made you... “ he says

The crash made me what?

“It made you paralysed” He says as his voice starts to choke up.

Hot tears start to stream down my face stinging my skin a little. I should’ve figured it out by now. I can’t talk, I can’t move. I’m paralysed.

“I’m sorry, I have to go, I’ll be back soon okay? I love you” he kisses my on the cheek and walks out of the room. He doesn’t walk far, in fact I think he just is next to the door, I can hear him sobbing. After a few minutes the nurse comes into the room with some cookies and orange juice. Yum, I’ve been so hungry since I didn’t have any food last night. Jason follows her into the room, his face and eyes red.

“I don’t know if your husband Jason has told you yet, but I have some disappointing news. The car crash forced your body to move in an unnatural way, injuring your spine, and neck. You won’t be able to move anymore. You’ll be paralysed,” she says with her eyes starting to water. Why is she sad, she’s a nurse who’s probably dealt with much worse people, maybe she isn’t used to it.

“We’ll need to test your other body parts to see if you can move them, but you should get some rest because we’ll be testing you tomorrow. Here is some food, maybe your husband can help you eat.” she says.

The rest of the day was sleep, lots of sleep. The next day will be painful I know, they were talking and glancing at me, with worried faces, but I’ll make it through. I know I will.

Ugh, the dreaded day is here. They wheel me into another room which has lots of machine things that look like they could hurt me. Please don’t make me do this. I hear a scream from another room a few doors down. It’s a scream from a little girl, maybe four or five years old. They put me in this body mold thing, which feels squishy and soft. The mold moves my leg up, then down. “Can you try and move your left leg by yourself now?” says the nurse, she says the word left really cleary. I try and move it, but it doesn’t budge, I’m not giving up. Okay it’s harder than I thought, it hurts so much and nothing is even happening. My muscles work and I start to sweat. After about a minute the nurse tells me to stop. “Alright, now let’s try your other leg.” says the nurse, she has a Western-ish accent that’s kind of annoying, she pronounces the E like it’s an A and such. My right leg moves up with the mold, if we have to test if my whole body can move this is going to take forever.

After they tested my whole body they had to retest my legs, arms, and mainly needed body parts. I’m exhausted, and it did take forever. My muscles are more sore than that 5k I ran last fall. I remember that when I got home I looked up on the internet what to do to relax your muscles after a 5k, and what came up was “YOU NEED TO TRY THIS!!” so I looked at what I “needed to try” and what came up was “Ice bath” Oh no. My little cousin Mackenzie hurt her foot after a soccer game, when I was visiting my aunt Marlene and uncle James. Mackenzie’s coach recommended for her do a foot ice bath. She was screaming and trying to get away but her mother just held her there. I’m not going to try this  I thought, but my stubborn little brain had said, she was only 10, I’ll be fine! I filled our bath tub with ice and water, I jumped in, and the ice felt like it was burning and biting me. I tried and stay for five minutes but I ended up leaping out eight seconds later. I ran down the hall shut my door and got in the fuzziest clothes I owned. I remember how I wrapped maybe two or three blankets around me and turned on the heater at a really high level. When I looked in the mirror, my lips were dark purple. Tough times.

“Blah-dee blah, blah ,blah,” That’s all what the nurse said. Just stuff about not be able to cook, painkillers, medicine, and doctor stuff. I know I should be paying attention, but what good is listening to stuff about things I won’t be able to do? Or about medicines that’ll make me barf?

After the nurse leaves it feels like 5:00-5:30pm. I listen to the way the cars are crossing the roads. I hear motorcycles and busses.

“Hi” says my mom as she sits down on the bed.

I haven’t seen her since the day I moved away to live with Jason.

“How are you?” she asks me.

“Mnnm” I groan. What else do you expect me to say, I can’t talk move or do anything but blink, swallow and groan.

“I’ve brought you some mac and cheese” she says which almost makes me drool.

She feeds me like I’m two, which usually would make me annoyed, but in this situation, it was comforting.

Okay, I’ve never actually slept well in one of these cheap hospital beds, but tonight I’m going to at least attempt to. I can’t really toss and turn, so at least I won’t be able to fall off the bed. But one thing I can’t do, is sleep on my back, and I’m not going to call the nurse and ask her to move me to the side, so I’ll just lay here in silence until it’s morning.

I pull up to a intersection. The light is red, and it’s taking forever. A car goes across and the person in it looks at me with this scary clown-ish grin.

“Wake up dear, it’s past 11:00”

it says to me. I quickly open my eyes to see the nurse again. Nightmare.

I eat some more hospital food.

The nurse comes in and says “Good news! You’re healthy enough to go home today!”

Yes! I’m going home! I get to see my dog Harley, and I won’t have to eat hospital food anymore- but wait. I’ll be in a wheelchair, and I’m the one who cooks. That doesn’t matter I can teach Jason!

The doctors transfer me into a wheelchair and bring me outside. The air is warm and humid. My silver Ford awaits me with jason by the door. He opens the door and pulls out this foldout ramp. He pushes me up and into the car. He offers me some chocolate chip cookies. Well he atleast knows how to bake so that’s good I guess, I can eat pies and other baked goods… unless they’re from Kroger. The three minute ride home seems longer than usual. And I notice more things. Who knew we had a bakery across from Taco Bell, and I didn’t know that there was a fire department next to the nail salon, huh.

When we get home Harley almost knocks me out of my wheelchair. She licks my face covering it with slobber. After about two minutes of slobber Jason drags Harley off me and lets her outside.

“You hungry?” says Jason. Well hello? I can’t really talk, so…

“Oh… here I’ll make something and you just sit there and… Yeah” he says. He seems a little rushed though. I’m actually really hungry and I don’t really want a sandwich, which is about all he can make. But I can teach him to make soup, right? I doubt it’s going to be that hard. Don’t know how but...

Okay, I’ve tried. Three times, and now there are three ruined cans of chicken noodle soup in the trash can. I’ve said “mnn” for yes and “nmm” for no, but apparently he can’t tell what I’m saying. I give up. I guess I’ll just take the sandwich.

After my sandwich is made, I get wheeled to the couch. Jason turns on the TV.  He’s probably also gave up with making me soup, not only today, but forever.

“Before bed you must take your medicine” that sentence keeps on buzzing in my head. But unless he Jason remembers getting and giving me my medicine I don’t have to take it. I just wanna sleep now, it’s 4:30 PM but I think I’ll take a short nap before bed. I start to doze off when Jason says “Oh wait! Just in case let me give you your medicine. Who knows, you might sleep until morning, right?” Shoot, he remembered. Two sets of small blue pills with yellow numbers on them, and three big ones that are half blue and half pink. As I swallow the last couple pills, a piece gets caught in the groove of my molar. The piece lets out a bitter flavor to my mouth. I want to barf. But I hold it in.

When I wake up, I can’t breathe. I try to call Jason who is laying right next to me. I can’t do anything but swallow and blink so I blink and swallow and groan as loud a I can. After a couple seconds he wakes up, and screams. He rushes me to the car. Passing our mirror I see my eyes. They’re red and swollen from crying. As soon as we get to the hospital it has been about three minutes. I don’t remember too much after that. When open my eyes again, there’s a tube in my side, probably giving me air. When the nurse comes in, she says “Oh my goodness sweetheart are you ok?” this time  it’s different nurse she has a regular-ish accent, but her voice sounds sweet.

“You have impressive lungs! The average human can hold their for only two minutes. But you, you gorgeous young lady can hold your breath for a 3 minutes! Plus about 40 seconds!” she says. She sounds kind of happy that I almost died which makes me kind of uncomfortable. The rest of the day I’ll be  staying at the hospital not breathing, then breathing again. I heard the nurses talking again. They mentioned the words “Put her to sleep” am I going to die? I’m having some problems, I’m in pain, I know but are they really going to do that to me?

When Jason comes back it looks like he had been crying, for a long time.

“They have been considering letting you go” He says through pauses of sobbing.

So it is true. I have been suffering so much that they think they should actually kill me, either “put me to sleep”, “pull the plug”, or “let me go”, all of those mean the same thing, to kill me.

Jason and the nurses come in the room and explain how I won’t be able to live like this everyday, live in the hospital and sleep in the hospital with someone watching every move I make. Well this is it. I’ve had an interesting life. I’ve found someone I deeply love. I’ve done things I wanted to do, but too many things that I’ve wanted to do but have not accomplished.

The nurses sit in silence for about a minute or two then the “Western” one says

“Are you ready? One… Two…”