Topic: An Accident

I was driving south on Route 68 somewhere outside of Xenia in small town southern Ohio on balmy late June afternoon. At the time I was a Regional Director of Clinical Operations for a group of nursing homes and I had been a nurse for over 25 years.  I was on my way to one of my facilities to meet with the management to discuss some new regulations about reducing the use of antipsychotic medications for Alzheimer's patients.  It had been a long time since I had actually done any true patient care. 
I was sipping my Diet Coke and singing along to "Don't Fear the Reaper" on the radio when I saw the oncoming car about a football field away from me veer off the road at 65mph suddenly become airborne.  In an instant the vehicle flipped completely upside down and landed in the shoulder.  I turned off the radio and said aloud, "That just happened.  That car just flipped over.  Oh. my.God."
Funny, of all the things I remember about this accident, I couldn't tell you what type of car it was-just some mid size white 4 door used car. 
There are other details that I will never forget.  No one else was around.  No other cars came by.  I didn't see any nearby houses or businesses.  I was grateful I had phone service.  I ran to the flipped vehicle scared about what I was going to see.  Would there be dead people in the car?  Would there be severely injured people?  Decapitations?  Would the person be in intolerable pain?  Was the car going to go up in flames?  Would I have to pull someone from the wreckage?
As I approached the car a mom in a minivan with a young boy and an infant in car seat stopped behind my car.  The mom told me she was afraid to go over to the car.  I was afraid too, but I confidently told her I was a nurse.  She looked at me with some skepticism as I was sporting a business suit and heels.  I told her to stay put and to call 911. 
I saw a bloody forearm first.  It was hanging out of the driver's window which had been shattered.  And then I heard a young girl screaming hysterically.  I felt relief because I knew that at least she was breathing.  "My name is Bridgid.  I'm a registered nurse.  You're going to be okay.  The paramedics are on their way. "  I had no idea if this was true.  We were out in the middle of nowhere and I didn't know if our phones even worked out here.
Her name was Tonya and she was barely 20.  She had worked a double shift and fallen asleep at the wheel.  Her biggest concern was that her car was totaled and she didn't know how she was going to get to tomorrow.  She kept screaming for me to get her out of the car, but it had flipped into a ditch so there was no way to even open the door.  I couldn't even see her face, which meant she couldn't see me.  I held her bloody hand and told her the best thing she could do was sit tight until the paramedics came.  I sat there crouched by the side of the road for what seemed like five hours trying to reassure this stranger that it was all going to be alright.  In reality it was probably five minutes. 
Once the ambulance and the police showed up, I was shooed away.  The police had me write a statement since I had witnessed the accident.  I was right.  She was going to be okay.  I watched them extricate her from the car.  She was still crying but that was better than what I had imagined I'd find when I'd watched the car flip over.  
It was a surreal 30 minute drive to the nursing home after that.  "That just happened, " I kept saying to myself.  I had blood on my suit jacket and muddy knees as I entered the conference room an hour late for my meeting. 
"What the hell happened to you?" asked the Director of Nursing. 
"I was at the scene of an accident. She's okay.  I didn't really do anything.  I just sat there with her till the ambulance came."  And then I started to cry. 

Topic: Travel

Author: Chris Dunn

I recently got back from a road trip, and already I want to go again. There’s just something about a road trip that calls to me. I think it’s that free untethered feeling, or maybe it’s a lost nostalgia of my youth, or some primal, innate calling to explore the unknown, but whatever it is it pulls me.

This most recent road trip was in answer to a nearly thirty year old seed which was planted in my brain my freshman year of college. I took my degree from Miami University where my father taught. Only a forty minute or so drive up US 27, sat a pile of red bricks which they called a “Public Ivy”. Nothing there ever really interested me, so I spent as many nights as possible back home running my games for the most dedicated group of gamers you’d ever find - ever free with a ride to and fro. We must have tread that trail a thousand times, and somewhere early on, I became aware that this highway - the same highway that had always led to the local mall – continued all the way to Florida. After that realization, I couldn’t help but stare down it and wonder what might happen if I just didn’t turn off. How hard would it be to follow all the way to the ocean? How fun? Thirty years later, I would find out.

My companion on this excursion was my oldest and dearest, Drew. He made the mistake of mentioning a similar bug once when we were eating at a local Skyline along this root, so when time and money came my way, he was roped in to ride shotgun. GPS made short work of my wonder, and the ocean came sooner than expected, still it was a blast just eating up the miles, stopping in at all the greasy spoons and marveling at the amazing lack of traffic you can find on state routes as opposed to interstates.

You’re more alive when you travel. That’s a major element to be sure. I say this because, it’s true. Think about it. Most of us rise in the morning at a set time, prep ourselves to the greet the day, the coffee drops on schedule to fuel our battle and then it’s off to the grind until we come safe home for dinner and our evenings. Weekends provide a brief respite, but most of us simply fall into a slightly different routine – one with the ratio of pleasure to work inverted. But when you travel, when you step off your beaten path, you have to open your eyes. You don’t know what over the next hill. “When’s the turn off?” “What did that sign say?” “Did you see the size of that- Oh, look! Is that a bear?” Our eyes are wide open, sucking in information, categorizing and interpreting for our education and our safety. We’re growing!

Plane travel is like a bus. Granted it gets you there so much faster, but after a few cramped coach flights, the shine is off the apple. Often on planes, I wish that they could just knock me out. A brief drop into pitch black, hyper sleep and the awake in the new land, because there’s so little in between. We read. We watch movies. Play games. Anything to pass the time. But a road trip, even one down a never ending redux of Colerain Avenue, is filled with wonders and oddities. I wound up calling it the Highway of Broken Dreams because every fifty miles or so, we came upon the shattered remains of someone’s great idea to sell fruit, curios, miniature golf, snow cones or the like, all boarded up with a faded sign hanging loose by a single chain. No other stands or attractions for miles, but these people all thought they could hunker down and feed off the life zipping by them on its way to anywhere but there.

Now I find myself drifting back to the family road trips to places like South Carolina and Michigan. We’d rent a cottage by some water – ocean, lake or river, it didn’t matter – and pile everyone in the car along with triptiks (that’s an 80s-era, analog version of GPS), bags full of snacks and a cooler full of sodas. The convenience of 24-hour roadside snack vendors had yet to be imagined. I was but a young fool then, and would spend my hours hunkered down behind my mother’s seat reading trashy novels about giant robots (which would later become fodder for those college day campaigns), never taking the time to enjoy the miles that blurred by outside my window. Later on friends would replace family, and a few turns at the wheel were required, but the miles came alive. Even a seemingly endless corn corridor through the whole of Kansas could be broken up searching for billboards declaring the largest ball of twine lay just over the bluff.

Recently, I went on my first cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii. The cruise director and crew worked tirelessly trying to entertain us, but I could’ve told them not to bother. Your dance nights and trivia quizzes hold no candle to the vastness passing by for hours on end outside our balcony. I would spend those hours just sitting marveling at how immense and serene the ocean was, reading a book in the shade with a rum cocktail while the miles rolled by beneath me. Sure we could’ve taken a plane and had more time to spend hopping islands on a tight schedule, but would that have been better, than being teleported to a theme park? I have an appreciation for just how far away our 50^th state truly is, and a respect for how huge the Pacific is, and a wonder for the technology that can carry us safely across it all with our helm tied to a star.

That’s it really. The journey. The journey’s the thing.

Topic: An Accident

Author: Chris Dunn

Do you remember sleeping over at a friend’s house? Apart from vacations and camping with the scouts, it was one of the biggest thrills in my young life. It was freedom on an unprecedented scale. There were strange foods and late nights, unusual bedding – more often than not in a sleeping bag on the floor. Hours after the parents went to sleep, you’d pass out, still buzzed on caffeine and the novel environs, sometimes midsentence as you and your friend talked for hours about everything and nothing.

It was in this spirit of expectant joy, that we set out from Mark’s house on Meis Avenue. We had asked and the parent’s had consented. Everything was set except for one minor hurdle, my flute… You see, I was in the school band. We both were, Mark and I. He played our band’s one and only baritone horn, and I was a flautist - though calling my shrill piping actual flute playing was the type of kindness often afforded to children. A’s for effort and applauses for showing up, kind of stuff. Still, we were in the band, and the band had a concert the next day. If I was going to stay over, I could get a ride with Mark’s family, but I would need my instrument. The answer was clear, we would just ride over to my house, pick up the flute and ride our bikes on back. Transporting my instrument via bicycle was far more feasible than moving Mark’s giant horn.

For those of you not familiar with the topography of my childhood hometown, North College Hill, Meis Ave descends rather sharply down to Hamilton Avenue – one of the town’s two major thoroughfares. Looking at it today, it seems rather tame. Nothing you would GoPro. Hardly an extreme sport venue, but to my ten year old eyes, it was the biggest, baddest, longest, fastest hill I knew outside of an amusement park. The first few times down it, were actually intimidating, but that was nine year old Chris, not the savvy veteran of the slope I’d become. These days I’d let loose the break and ride the coast all the way to the Northside Bank if I caught the light at Galbraith. That was the plan, of course, but this time there was a new wrinkle.

The road had recently been patched with stripes of tar over the winter cracks, turning the simple downhill into an entertaining slalom – a cycling variation on “step on a crack”. Steering my bike in an irregular sin wave, I wended my way through the impromptu labyrinth provided by the city workers. Unaware of the amusing game I had created for myself, Mark had stuck to the original plan and was disappearing down the hill. I needed to catch up! As the realization dawned and my feet engaged the pedals, my eyes beheld an anomaly. Two tar lines in close proximity. The gap in the second line was a mere foot or two to the right of the first. My eyes took in the challenge, my mind did the math and my hands turned the handlebars ninety degrees to my path.

I woke up  on the floor of Mark’s family truck. “Are you going to stick around this time?” asked Mark’s mom. Apparently, I had been in and out since my head hit the pavement. By report I had gone head first over the bars, landed hard in the road and skidded a good ten feet before coming to rest with my skull inches from a fire hydrant. I had then risen, my head bleeding, and conversed with several neighborhood do-gooders who had arrived to help. They had called Mark back, and with their help we’d carried my bike back up the hill. The machine was not severely damaged, but it was clear to all that I wouldn’t be riding anymore that day. I had talked, they told me, though the person they had conversed with was not me. To this day, I have only vague flashes of the trip back up the hill. My conscious memory skips from moment of the steering error to the floor of the truck. I did indeed “stick around” from that point as I listen to Mark’s mother explaining to him why this had to mean an end to our plans. Mark fought the good fight, arguing that since I was not dead there was no reason our plans could not go forward, but it was not to be. Adults have this thing about head injuries.

I raised my fingers to touch the bandage near my left temple, as I was haunted by a brief image of sitting in a chair while the compress was applied. There’s a sharp sting of pain as my fingers probe the wound, but honestly the disappointment hurts worse.

Topic: Touching on a Medical Procedure

Sed-a-give

One hundred. Yup. One hundred. Including dry-heaves. I'd reached the stage beyond anything remaining in my stomach. I actually tasted bile. Bile is bitter and viscous; not the best after-dinner flavor. I think that's where I became concerned. After a few days of vomiting with increased frequency, it was the bile that got to my ten-year-old brain.

Not sure if it was the number or the bile, but that night I earned a ride to the hospital. Something was odd. First, I couldn't tell if my parents believed me. For days I got the feeling they just thought I was ducking school. The next came from the intake nurse: she didn't weigh me. Not that I was svelte at 10, but it came to be important later.

Hooked up to IVs. The doctor comes in. I describe pain honestly, in the way I learned. Coming from a family that was half medical, I knew the terminology: "Pain in the right lower quadrant." The doctor's eyes narrowed. Ever see a person blink internally? That's what that was. He didn't believe it. Then came the test. I once knew the name of the response when the lower right quadrant was percussed. Intense pain, right knee comes up fast.  To his credit, I might have simply learned something and decided to lie. But I hadn't.

Blood work came back: high white blood count. The surgeon finally admitted they wanted to go in and see if anything was wrong with my appendix. Surgery scheduled.

All manners of thoughts race and whirl. Death is the most prevalent. My brothers had not been there to see me. They would not come, even after my surgery. I still don't know why. On a bed, being wheeled into pre-op. They gave me the sedative but it was taking time.  My mind focused on one thought: I didn't want to see the instruments. I'd read of the thrill executioners would take in revealing the hooks, knives, and other flencing objects to their quarries. Somehow that did not appeal. 

Shifted over to the table. I feel the doctors' concern over moving so corpulent a child. Maybe they did feel that way. That's not really what matters. I felt it.

Count backwards from...

Now we come to the importance of that weigh-in. Anesthesiologists need exact measurements in order to keep the patient under for enough time. Remove the exact, add in an approximation. Factor in some wonkiness in resistances to drugs, and, well:

Searing pain. The feeling of grogginess. Restraints... no, people holding me down. Being rolled into post op as I struggle. I must have ripped out my IV, I felt someone sticking my hand with a needle. I writhed. Eventually, after more than half a dozen tries, the needle stuck long enough for the plunger to be plunged.

Eventually they moved away from me. 

Is he out yet?

Somewhere a doctor and a nurse conversed. They were concerned or amazed the drugs had not yet kicked in. Eventually they did.

Later the surgeons told my parents that I thought I woke up during surgery. He was sporting a black eye.

For the next half a year I presented with classic PTSD symptoms. I would occasionally dream of see men in blue plastic holding someone down. I feared they were raping a shrieking girl. It was months, probably a year before I realized I was seeing me.

I've never recovered memories of the immediate moments following the sedatives wearing off. I'm pretty certain I don't want to.

Sed-a-give! Give him a sed-a-give!

Whenever Eyegore tries to solve the charades in Young Frankenstein, I'm amused for two reasons. The first is the show, of course. The second is the idea of a team of doctors and nurses trying to hold down a partially gutted 10 year old who came out swinging.

Topic: Being Found

Author: Chris Dunn

“Hello,” he had said, and language burst into her mind coloring all time with its net of meaning and structure. Suddenly, she knew many things that before she hadn’t cared about, or if she had occasion to care, she had lacked the terms to express it. Before language there was only the two: wonder-fear and pain-dislike, but this … man, he was. This man, had brought shape to her time and now she knew many things, things more concrete and certain than ever before. First and foremost in what she now knew, was that this word he had used was a greeting, a greeting that called for a response.

“Hello…”

His faced curled at the sides; a smile it was. He was happy-amused at her response, though her new knowledge of language did not explain why. She had not meant to be funny, nor did she even know how.

“Are you okay?” he asked. The thing they called a hand extended slowly towards her. She took it noting that his fingers – a part of the hand – were sheathed in steel while hers were not. In fact, his whole body was armored, a gold helmet sitting atop his gilded plate. In contrast, her diaphanous garments were insubstantial. Reflexively she stiffened her fingers as she took the offered appendage. She had fingers too! And hands, of course followed. She did not recall choosing this form or this place, and panic rose for a moment. Panic was new. It was like pain-dislike that she could not run from. Was this man a creator? Was she held within his spell? No, she knew that wasn’t correct, but he was important to her. Her mother had wanted her here, for him, and the others…

“Yes,” she said. Again the amused smile. She held his gaze trying to reason out why her answers were in some form inadequate, while at the same time searching through the dreamlike wandering that had led her here. So much to see, to take in, to comprehend. The swirling oneness of her home did not have these solid structures, these moving things which she now knew were life, separate living creatures, as she was now too. That was new too. She was solid, immutable. Though her skin could stiffen to protect itself from pain-dislike, she had lacked so much as she wandered this strange world. It was slow, hard, unyielding, full of spikes and sharp edges.

“Okay… I’ll try again.” He helped her to her feet. Though she hadn’t chose to stand, he was strong, and conforming made the most sense. She had legs too! He was controlling her, but not in the way of a creator. “What are you doing here? Are you lost?”

“No,” she said, but she saw this direct response would also be inadequate and continued. “I was walking in the woods. I like the trees.” Now he openly laughed. This stung, a bit, and she snatched her hand back.

“Easy now. I’m not going to hurt you.” It was her turn to scoff. He couldn’t hurt her. If he was not the creator of this space - as he clearly wasn’t - he was as much a subject as she was. And… something less. She knew him! From long before, when she had been so much older, she had found him lost, crying in the woods. A different woods, far away, but the same man though in a younger, smaller form. That was why she was here. To find him and the others, to learn them and then steer them. Her mother, Nyrissa commanded it. She was the creator and her name was never to be said aloud.

“You cried,” she told him. “I saw you crying in the garden when you were small.”

“What?” The man seemed a mixture of incredulous and insulted. “I don’t think that was me, lady. My name is Kelvin. I’m on an adventure with some friends. Would you like to meet them? Come on. They’re right over here.”

He reached to grab her again, but did not press the issue when she withdrew from his hands. She nodded for him to lead on, and he did. Moving to follow, she was reminded that here she could not fly. Here, she was stuck in this single form. Here, she was shut off from her true power.

“That’s it,” he coaxed. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid.” There was no need to be scared. This was where she was supposed to be. Her mother had placed her here to be found by just these people. In her mind she could already see the others, so familiar…

“Good, good. Do you have a name?”

That was a good question. Here in the static realm of the living, things – people – had names. It came to her in a flash, “Belleria.”

Topic: Gods & Monsters

I’m a Christian.

I worship Jesus.

Jesus rose from the dead.

Zombies are monsters.

Zombies rose from the dead.

So is Jesus...I mean, do I worship...oh, never mind.

Dreams

Thom Dunn

We lucked out a lot in my childhood: like that time Joel Curran chopped a substantial tree down in Hinkley Woods. Instead of falling over it shot straight down into the ground in am instant, shot down luckily where none of us had been standing.

But luck had always been with Joel.....and skill also: I watched him toss seven magnets straight into the goal, a bike tire hung in front of my refrigerator. With that of course the refrigerator shot straight into the kitchen floor, harming no one but scaring the bejeezus out of us all. With that we began to exclaim how lucky we had been and how we couldn't depend much longer on luck much longer to save our youthful hides.

No, we had to take action or "Third time's a charm" we said. Jim Dunphy suggested we take down the tall pine in the back yard. Jan Elliott rigged a chain  saw and we retired behind the tall stump across the yard. This time the tree didn't stamp the ground---it fell and I, cowering, woke, remarking the irony. My friends of course disappeared altogether, to live now only in my memory.