When I Got Hit By A Car

This will be about the time I got hit by a car.

What day was it...? Saturday....August.......1st.

I had just gotten comfortable biking in the city. The day before, I rode Jesse's fixed gear down the whole lakeshore path, and then all the way back. I remember thinking, Oh, yea, I've got this all figured out. Nothing to be scared of.

I was biking from the South Side Ballroom back to Jesse's house. His downstair's neighbor's porker of a mountain bike. Biking north on Ashland, through Pilsen.

A cop car opened a door right in front of me. I didn't even have time to think "shit, i'm gonna hit that door." I just remember trying to maintain balance, screaming, thinking "i'm going down," and trying to keep my head from hitting the ground.

I didn't pass out right away. I remember squirming on the ground, people from blocks around stopping and staring. The cop slowly got out of the car, frowned, and asked me if I could get up out of the street to the sidewalk. Then I passed out.

Woke up on the ground. Waking up is always really hard to figure out. It's the sensation of your brain working really really hard to regain ground. It scrambles, producing images from the most hidden pockets of subconsciousness, a million a second, like scrolling cherries on a slot machine.

Coffeesaturnpineapplecasinopinetreecaketruckmountaingermangrassflosssmoothie--

Did I OD on something? That's the only reason my brain would be working like this right now...

bloodoceanseahorsesofanylonrunwayairplanebottlecapssagesaltydancingfeettoenailsrotten--
Oh, but, why is that cop standing there?

blueballsbasketwovenlakeseaweedalgaevomitwindtirepressuresanfranciscolouisaweezer--
Oh yea....I passed out
Why did that happen again...?
Fuck, my arm hurts.

My arm just lifted itself to say something. People yelling at me to stay on the ground.

Ambulance, where are you from? what's your name? We're putting in an IV, don't move your head or neck, did I break my neck?! did i break my fucking neck am i paralyzed?!

What's your name, where do you live? You're not from here, who do we call?

The next 8 hours were muddy. In and out, pain and asleep, vomit, headache headache headache.

Stopped understanding English. Like everyone around me was all of a sudden speaking French, and I'd taken 1 semester of French 5 years ago. The words sounded very familiar, and if I could just remember them long enough to think hard about it, I might remember what they mean. I remember trying to speak to the nurses, and seeing their confused faces, and getting ashamed and yelling What?! Afterwards, they told me I was speaking gibberish, or else just repeating everything that was said to me.

God my head fucking hurts. And my arm hurts. Something feels very wrong.

I peed a lot. Because my nurse put in my catheter wrong. She kept yelling at me, telling me I had to stop.

I asked her to lift my bed up because I was going to throw up.

"Can't you just wait a second?" She stood across the room for two hours, talking to her friend. I got someone else to help me.

For a long time I couldn't tell if I was awake or asleep, if people were talking to me, where I was.

All of a sudden there are a numbers crowding my head. Like they are pushing my skull wider from the inside.

I started babbling numbers to try to get them out. Someone nearby, not my fuckass nurse, had the presence of mind to write them down.

A phone number, they noticed. Jesse's phone number.

At 8 in the morning, he and Mia picked me up. They tried to track down the bike, track down whatever paperwork needed to be taken care of.

The police did not report the incident. The only record of the event is a traffic report on a piece of paper, with all of the cop's information whited out.