Skatedino

"OK, I need you lie perfectly still while we do this. Do you know where you're at?"

I wake up naked and I can hear the loud whirring of a machine overhead. My vision is blurry and stained red. I'm facing the ceiling, and I realize that I'm tied to a moving platform.

"We're taking some scans of your brain. We think you might have suffered severe head trauma."

The magnitude of this statement doesn't really hit.

Little dream like visions start popping into my head.

I was riding home from a show in Linda Vista...

Then my mind flashes to lying in the street surrounded by people. My memory colored with the primary colors of the emergency lights. Lifted up into the back of an ambulance and then whirring off to a destination unknown. I'm trying to stand up and rip off my straps saying, "I don't need this! I'm fine! I don't have fucking health insurance!"

Black.

"Ok. Do you remember why you're here at all?"
"No. I think I crashed my bike."
"Yes, that's correct."
"Why am I here?"

("He has no short term memory. Looks like severe trauma to the head. He might have severed his spinal column."?

"What! Severed my spinal column!? WHERE AM I!?"

Tears start to well up and I flash back again.

I'm being pushed into the emergency room. That familiar shot of wheeling through the double doors looking up at unfamiliar faces with concern in their eyes. I'm naked on a gurney and I shout, "I have to throw up!"

I lean my head over, vomit into a plastic bowl, I'm dizzier than I've ever been. They force my head back down and strap it to the table. I hear on of the doctors murmur, "Make sure he can't move his head like that. I don't know what's going on with his spine." I black out again.

"OK. All done. You're doing great."

I finally wake up after all is calm in intensive care. A doctor is trying to explain to me the severity of the situation to deaf ears. I can hear what she's saying, but my mind wont comprehend anything...