part 9

6

I finally figured out that the patient to my left is also a man. His relatives have come by to visit him. They speak Russian. He is old, and apparently fell outside and hurt himself from what I gather by listening into their conversation. I begin to speak to them in Russian and they begin to come over to my side of the room.

It’s the next day and my parents meet them. My parents feel at ease speaking the mother tongue and not forcing themselves to communicate in broken English.

My father explains to them what happened. That I have become a police officer’s murder attempt. They shake their heads in disgust. They tell us they are sorry. The relative that the Russian speaking people visit stays silent. I don’t know if I ever even hear him speak.

The older man located in front of me is obviously not well in the head. He will on a daily basis insist on taking off his hospital gown and walking around naked... or just lie in bed naked. Whichever he feels like. I cannot physically close my own curtains. They are always open. I will have them closed by a nurse, then I would fall asleep. I would wake up and find them open again and experience a free show.

I look over at the other patient. He is a young man, and he always seems to mumble. Whenever my curtains are drawn back (which is almost always) the young man looks into my eyes and begins speaking to me in a language I do not understand. He looks like he is attempting to tell me something very important. I don’t know what it is. I call a nurse to come into the room and just close the damn curtains. She comes in and is taken aback to find the other male patient standing and looking out the window. He is completely naked. Naturally.

I begin to feel a different type of pain. My intestines begin to feel like they are on fire, and seemto hurt, constantly. After voicing my concerns, it is determined that I am most likely constipated. After all, I have been requesting so much pain relief medication... a direct result of it is constipation, of course, even though I had no problem using the washroom, figuratively speaking. But it is constipation and that is that. The nurses who present me with this finding, obviously blame it on me.

"Well, you have been taking all that pain medication. You’ve been told it can cause constipation, and yet you still kept complaining that you were in a lot of pain, and regular pain medication wasn’t doing anything for you." The solution to this problem is to put a laxative pill right up my butt. The result of this is extremely unpleasant. I think I could pass out from the pain. I wish I would. I’ll save you the details, but the pain I begin to feel, is actually worse then the pain I felt from my broken limbs.

The young man in front of me must be constipated as well, because the nurses are spending a great deal of time, rolling him on his side, and inserting a tube into his anus. I can see all of this, because someone keeps insisting on drawing the curtains back everyday, while I am sleeping and am unable to make a complaint.

I can see exactly what is happening with him. The nurses insert a large clear tube into his bottom. Because it is clear I can see, what is obviously his excrement begin to flow through it. I can actually smell this, and I have a great deal of trouble smelling anything now. This procedure is done to him often. It is the next day, and the nurses do this again. The day after that, this is done as well and I can no longer keep track of how long they have been at this. I do notice that this is always done at the same time every day. I know the time, because the patients are brought lunch to eat. A tray of mashed up food it brought to me, since I cannot chew, and my neighbor’s butt is cleaned out all at the same time. Several days in a row.

My parents just happen to come visit me one day, at exactly this moment.They sitbesideme, pureed food is delivered. The nurses come by and begin to work on my neighbor. They are relatively speedy with him now, and the long clear tube goes right up his butt.

"What is going on?!" My mother asks, and I explain to her that this is done every day because I assume his bowels need to be cleaned out or something along those lines. I dunno. I’m not a Doctor, but he seems to be constipated from what I gather.

"What!? Now they have to be cleaned out, when your food is brought to you?"

"What a lovely way to entertain you. There’s no TV in this room after all." My father adds sarcastically.

"Oh God! It smells!" My mother gags and quickly reaches for the curtains, so at least we would be spared this spectacle.

"I don’t understand this. They bring your food and clean out his a*s all at the same time?"

"Yeah, they’ve been at it for a few days now. That seems to be the schedule."

"Who’s logic is behind this? They’ve been complaining to your mother and I that your appetite is bad. They wanted to see if we can get you to eat more, because you leave a lot of food remaining on your plate. Oh! I wonder why. Someone is unable to put two and two together. And why is this curtain not closed when they do it? You physically can’t pull it back yourself."

"I don't know. The curtain is always open. They seem to think it’s important that I witness the procedure that’s done."

The smell continues to stay in the room long after the nurses finish up. Every curtain is drawn back, so that I am not the only witness to this. My other 2 neighbors can get a good look as well.

I don’t understand the logic behind this, but I know I will forever keep that memory. Crap flowing through a tube. Curtains that remain open, and I unfortunately cannot close them on my own. I have to ask the nurses to close the curtains as soon as they come in, because I know if I wait, the nurses will not bother closing them once they have began the procedure. I’ve learned this the hard way.

In a way it’s good that this young man is obviously not present. I know if that was done to me in front of 3 strangers (or not strangers), one of them being a person of the opposite sex, I may actually physically die from embarrassment.

 

 

7

The day finally arrives and it is time to remove the wires from my jaw. I feel excited about this, although I’m more sleepy than anything. I have been anticipating it. I want to be able to speak like a normal person. Like I once used to. I actually don’t know what happened to my jaw. My parents tell me that pretty much all of my teeth had fallen out, and had to be screwed back in. It will be several months later, that I finally find out what happened to my mouth, when Gwen explains it to me.

"Your jaw broke in 6 places. You originally lost all of your teeth except for two. The teeth were collected. You’re lower jaw broke away from your upper jaw." As always Gwen will look over at me to see if I am following her okay. I am. My parents told me all of my teeth but 2 were lost. But I had all of my teeth in the beginning when I woke up from a coma, so I can not wrap my head around the fact that at some point I no longer had them. Gwen will continue,

"Now the next thing... I actually had to look this one up. It’s an extremely rare injury. Have you noticed that when you open your mouth your jaw cracks?"

"Yes. Always."

She’ll nod, "Basically most of your jaw is made up of metal now. Your jaw became completely separated from your skull, and metal was used to attach it back. As a result it will most likely crack when you open your mouth."

When the wire is removed from my mouth it does not cause any pain. But my teeth do no feel right. They are all a little lose, and the upper jaw dose not come together with the lower jaw like it used to. I am sure that in time it will get back to normal. I just now try to avoid eating solid food, as I cannot bite into anything or chew. All of my front teeth rock back and forth.

I begin to speak convinced that I will sound like I used to, now that the wire is not holding my mouth shut, but find myself surprised. I sound absolutely horrible. I’m slurring everything as if I’m drunk. Severely. I should be devastated, I know, but somehow I don’t really care. Then again I don’t know the extent of my injuries, and after all, ignorance is bliss. I’ll hold on to this ignorance for a while. I don’t have much. I am convinced that I just need a bit more time, and I’ll get up and walk right out of the hospital. Just need more rest and sleep, and get these casts off my legs and arm...along with this neck brace... No one has told me about the extent of my injuries. I’ll find out months later when Gwen comes into my life, but right now I do not know much.

The day after the wire from my jaw is removed, it is time for the casts to come off of my right foot and left arm.

The cast from my right foot is cut off. My right foot looks very different. To begin with, it looks a lot thinner. There are two small pieces of metal pins sticking out from it. Those two pins are pulled out and it does not hurt. The man who is doing this tells me that I will now need a new cast applied to it. More healing needs to be done. He asks me what color I want, "pink, purple or white?" I think. The cast that has just been removed was purple. The white cast would get dirty fast. I therefore settle on pink by process of elimination. I also don’t understand why the color choice is so poor, and why they didn’t have a color like blue or red. What if a cast needs to be applied to a young man. Most boys wouldn’t want a pink or purple cast, so they would have to settle for the white? Hmm. That would get so dirty. Stupid. But I am content with the pink. So a pink cast is now applied to my right foot and I don’t move around as I wait for the thing to dry.

Months from now Gwen will explain to me,

"Your right foot experienced severe fractures. Several of them. Now the two bones attached to your smallest toe and the toe beside it were broken, and they disintegrated. So they had to be replaced with metal." I would be surprised again. No one bothered to tell me anything. I'll wonder where the hell these bones disintegrated off to. Gwen would continue,

"Basically if this happened on the other side of your foot, to the bones attached to your big toe, you would no longer have balance on your body’s right side." This is comforting.

Soon after the cast is removed from my foot, and a new one is applied, the person who did this moves on to removing the cast from my left arm and hand. It actually covers some of my shoulder as well. It is removed, and my left arm hurts with the slightest movement. Especially at the elbow. I have faith it will get better. The person taking care of my casts begins to pack his tools away. I tell him I would like a purple cast this time.

"Oh... you don’t need a cast."

"I thought I did. You removed the one from my foot, only to apply a new one, so I assumed you were going to do the same thing with my arm."

"Oh. No. Your arm is fine. I just had to remove the pins from your foot, and I needed to take the cast off to get to them. You just need the cast for your foot. It hasn’t healed yet."

Gwen will explain months later.

"You broke your left arm in a very unfortunate way. The nerves by your elbow were torn and damaged badly. The result of this is that it would cause you to lose feeling in your left thumb and index finger... and movement." I will sit stunned.

"Do you find this causes problems?" She would ask me sympathetically.

"No. That hasn’t happened at all. I can move them all just fine."

"Oh... that’s something. Well that’s good."

I will sit motionless. I was never told that this would even be an option. I’m left handed and I like to write every single day. On top of everything that was taken away from me, this could have been one of those things. I would have to learn to be right handed. I actually attempted this before because being left handed had been looked down on by some. This could lead to a list of problems later on in life. From an early age I would practice right handed writing. Despite my effort, it did not work. To this day I’m a lefty. I do not care to change this. Some great artists have been and are left handed, so I did no understand why this was looked down on by some.

It was only in my last year of university that I took a psychology course. One day the professor’s assistant quickly touched upon the differences between right handed and left handed people. This is what I took away from what the TA told us:

* right handed people tend to gravitate towards careers such as lawyers, Doctors etc... while lefties are drawn to being artists, musicians, poets etc...

* Right handed people tend to use more logic when making decisions, while left handed people base their actions more on emotions.

This was completely true for me. It explained a lot about me, and why I was the way I was, and did things that my parents really did not understand the logic behind. To this day when I make decisions I think; My logic is telling me this is a bad decision. I know I will pay for it later. But my heart wants what it wants... It’s not that I don’t posses logic. Technically I do. I just tend to always do what my heart wants. All of a sudden I remembered dating Markus. He was a fellow lefty. What I mostly remember him doing is drawing, writing poetry, and getting emotional about silly things. He was good at it. He was really good at all three things. I then was able to see why some looked down on left handed people. Beingoverly sensitive, writing and drawing are great traits and everything, but not exactly productive. My father had accepted my left handedness, "after all Paul McCartney from the Beatles was a left handed bass player. He did pretty well for himself."

When I think about losing my ability to use my left hand, I begin to remember the cop again. His young face. I would feel an all new hate for him. I develop a strong desire to break both of his arms, so he would not have the ability to punch anyone in the face anymore. At least for a few weeks.

 

 

8

It is September 2010 now. The cast is off my left arm and hand and I try to stretch it and move it constantly. I just want it back to the way it was before. The pain is excruciating. It is constant when my arm moves. Narcotic pain relief pills are given to me religiously. This time they are given to me in pill form because my jaw is no longer wired and I’m able to put them in my mouth. This is soon followed by a nurse informing me that I am now constipated. I am surprised by this. I had no idea, but apparently she knows. It seems that constipation is a dominant theme in this hospital. She tells me that it needs to be taken care of right away. I feel sleepy and sedated, so I tell her if something needs to be done, then fine. She leaves and returns with a pill and tells me I have to take it. The pill looks pretty large so I tell her she might need to crush that thing up or I will choke on it.

"Oh, no. There’s no need for that. You don’t swallow this pill. It is inserted into your anus."

"What?!" Ooohhh... I think I remember this.

She seems to be persistent. I’m suffering from a problem that WILL become worse if it is not taken care of immediately .

It is only moments after the ‘butt pill’ is given to me, an official looking man comes into my room and tells me that this will be my last day here. I will now be transported to the Green Meadows Hospital in Mississauga. This is located very close to home, so I feel happy.

Now, I had always suffered from motion sickness, but I realized that it has become less bearable. I’m guessing this is because I bashed my head so hard falling from the 7th floor. I’m loaded up into an ambulance. My parents come with me. As we begin to drive, my head begins to spin. I hadn’t had too much to eat so I know there’s nothing to throw up. I do experience dry heaves. But that’s not all. Because the nurse showed a pill right up my butt, to fix some sort of ‘constipation’, about an hour into our road trip I start to feel pain. My parents look at me with sympathy unable to do anything, and the young man driving the ambulance asks them if he’s going the right way. I tell my parents what has been done to me to relieve ‘constipation', that I had no idea I even had. My father says,

"That’s actually really cruel. Did she not know you had to be relocated? How do you do that to someone?" The pain becomes intense. It literally begins to feel as if someone is pulling my intestines right out of my a*s. On top of motion sickness. This would be an excellent way to torture someone.

Almost two hours pass since we left St. Frances that we arrive at the Green Meadows Hospital. I am now in the same city as my parents. Despite the pain I feel, I feel happy about this.

We arrive and I am told I will be situated in a room with one other person. I ask the nurse if this other person will be a male or female.

"A female of course." She probably thinks I asked a stupid question because of my brain damage, so I reply,

"Well, in St Frances I shared a room with three men." She looks very surprised.

"Really? Three men? No... they shouldn’t do that. Here women are kept with women."

Well they sure as hell were not in St. Frances. I begin to wonder why this was done. Why I was kept in a room with men. Was it because my hair was chopped off and I looked like I could pass for a boy? I do not know what the logic was behind it. Maybe space was limited.

So in Green Meadows I am taken to my room, and I now have a female neighbor. The curtains are drawn so I do not see her at first. But we begin to talk. She had fainted and fallen, and hurt herself. She is 71. I tell her my story and she gives me all the sympathy she can muster . I can tell she likes me, and I like her a lot. I slur and lisp, but she understands me. To everything I say, she responds. For the first time in weeks, I now have a neighbor I can speak to. Even though I find myself sleeping a lot, I feel that I am becoming more and more aware of what is happening around me.

My parents come by and I introduce them to my neighbor Sheena.

"She’s a very lovely black lady," my father tells me as I have not seen her yet. I smile. I am not ready to pull the curtains back. I’m worried about what she may think of me.

My father is still unable to go back to work, so my parents come by every day. I know he is not emotionally stable. I tell my parents to look in my closet in my room at home. I had saved up some money. A few thousand dollars to help pay off that student loan. I tell my parents and they nod.

A few days later my parents come by to visit, and tell me they found a case with money in it, in my closet. They are surprised by this, and that it actually existed and was located exactly where I said it would be.

"I know it was there. I physically put it there."

My mom says,

"So what were you saving the money for? For a moment like this?"

"No mother. I was saving it to pay off the 40 thousand dollar student loan that I got so I could attend that university. You remember? The one I never wanted to go to. But you insisted, so I went against my will and sunk into thousands of dollars in dept. Do you remember that? Maybe a little?" I’m being a b***h now, and my mother doesn’t care to reply to this. I am happy my neighbor doesn’t speak Russian and is unable to understand what I am saying.

 

 

9

Loupe comes by to visit. Apparently she had come to visit me before, but I have no recollection of this. At the Green Meadows Hospital this is the first time I think she has come to see me. My parents tell me that before, I was in a secluded room and only family members were allowed in. I don’t know this. I remember the tubes showed down my throat to "clean" my lungs. That is all I remember.

Today she has come by with her mother.

"Oh Kary!" She is chocked up already and begins to cry. I can’t remember ever seeing her do this, so I know the situation is bad. She sits on my bed and I sit up and try to wipe her tears away. They are coming fast, and even though my left hand feels a little better and I can move it with less pain, I’m having a hard time wiping away the tears fast enough. I try to fill the silence.

"I know I have a long road ahead of me. He punched me in the face and threw me off the balcony."

"I know he did Kary. That was such a horrible day." She begins to choke up again, and her mother looks at me with sympathy.

"I’m so glad you can talk now."

"I know I sound pretty s****y."

"It’s okay. It will get better."

"Loupe... tell me what you remember from that night. That moment. Did you see anything? Did you see him go after me?"

"Oh yes." She takes a deep breath and blows her nose.

"I saw you walk to the balcony, and I asked that young cop why he was letting you go have a smoke, and he wouldn’t even let me go check up on my son. He right away began to follow you. I saw him with my own eyes. He went out on the balcony. Then I didn’t see anything. The curtains were drawn." She stops and sobs a little. I can see this is hard for her. She continues,

"I don’t know how much time passed of him being outside. It was sometime later he came back in. He was just so calm. And he..." She breaks down. "He says so calmly, ‘she jumped.’ He shrugged. My world fell apart. I ran right to the balcony. I didn’t want to believe it. But he grabbed me. He wouldn’t let me go. I fought. He had a hard time holding on to me so he called for assistance from one of the other police a******s. They ran into the room and grabbed me. They got me down on the floor. With all the strength I had I started to crawl to the balcony. So one cop went right ahead and sat on me. I think it was him. I couldn’t move. I was so upset. It took two of them to handcuff me. They picked me up and basically carried me to their car. I kept yelling ‘murder’ as much as I could. They got me outside but I could not see you." She stops to take a deep breath and the tears keep running, but are no longer coming as fast. I give up trying to wipe them away. I’m not exactly useful. I ask her if she heard any of them call an ambulance.

"I don't know. Oh. Kar..." She shakes her head. " If you would have died. I couldn’t go on." I’m taken aback. My father had said the same thing to me. I guess if there is a God he is intent on keeping me around for some reason.

A few days later James comes by to see me. He tells me hecan’t imagine what life would be like without me. He doesn't want to imagine it. It’s nice to hear. Just like with Loupe, it is not his first time visiting me at the hospital, but I have no previous memory of seeing him. I also ask him what recollection he has of that night.

"I didn’t even get to see you go out on the balcony. They kept us all in the hallway, and I was further down so I didn’t really see to the front door. They needed to ‘defuse’ the situation, and didn’t want us in the way. Raul was doing pretty bad. He was so sleepy and in pain. He just had surgery. And the cops wouldn’t let him lie down."

I can see it is not easy for him to recollect everything that happened on that dreadful evening.

"Then I heard a scream. It was Loupe. It was piercing. A cop who was with me ran into the apartment so I followed. I saw the cops restraining Loupe. I was so confused. I didn’t understand what was happening. I realized then you were not in the room. Maybe you had gone to the washroom. But why was Loupe this upset? One cop went ahead and sat on her because she was putting up a good fight. She saw me and tried to tell me what happened, but she wasn’t making sense." He stops and takes a deep breath.

"I then asked where you went. The police officer sitting on Loupe was the one who responded out of breath, ‘She jumped.’ Everything stopped. I knew what he said, but I just didn’t understand. It did not register. They then handcuffed Loupe and picked her up off the floor. We were told that we would be taken to the police station. We needed to be questioned. I asked to go to the balcony to see what happened, but they forbid me. They said that none of us were allowed to go. They didn’t want us to go jump as well I guess."

"Oh, how thoughtful of them."

"They didn’t handcuff me like they did with Loupe, but I was escorted downstairs into their car. I didn’t get to see you."

"Did you hear anyone call the ambulance. I want to know which one called."

"Actually no ... I didn’t hear any of them call. The thing is there is a lady who lives on the ground floor. She happens to be my mother’s friend. It was late and she was getting ready for bed, she told me. Then she heard a loud thump. It was pretty load. So she got out of bed and went out to see what the sound was." He looks upset and stops to gather his thoughts. "I think it would be best to hear a first hand account from her. But I’ll let you know what she told me, until you get the chance to speak to her yourself. She said she went out and saw your body. She was in complete shock. You looked completely lifeless. Your chin was sliced open. Your right leg looked like it was lying away from the body. It looked like it wasn’t attached. Blood began to appear and she ran back inside and called for an ambulance.

"So she was the one who called?"

"I dunno if the police officers called. I never heard them. I know she did though, as soon as she saw you."

"I didn’t jump you know? A cop did this to me."

"I believe you. I believe what you are saying is true, but I’m having an impossible time believing a cop did this. I do remember this one officer. He was the youngest one there, about our age. He wouldn’t stop swearing. He was beyond rude. You know... just taking things above and beyond when there was absolutely no need."

The pieces are coming together.

Soon after my parents come to visit, so I tell them what James told me.

"I really doubt the cops called. They very proudly claim to be a family, so they stand by each other at all costs. If one’s a killer, they will cover his a*s. I see all 4 of them as guilty."

My mother continues.

"They told us one cop ran downstairs to give you CPR. Some of your blood got on him so he freaked out. We had to allow the hospital to take more of your blood to do a test and confirm that you don’t have AIDS for his piece of mind."

"We told them you did not have aids. I told them there wasn’t anywhere you would have gotten aids from. You do not live a risky lifestyle that would expose you to any diseases. But despite the fact that your mother and I felt very uncomfortable with them taking even more blood from you, we felt pressured to agree. After all you were not breathing. You were attached to a machine that did this for you. We were afraid that if we pissed off the police officer, he could simply come into your room and unplug the machine. Just finish the job that was started. They probably thought that in the worst case scenario, if you did manage to stay alive, you’d most likely be brain dead. You wouldn’t be able to testify anything. If they did call an ambulance they probably put it off for as long as they could. The CPR was most likely all for show, and you had the audacity to get your blood on him, so he was kicking himself. If one’s guilty, they are all guilty."

My father then tells me that soon after this happened to me, he went by to look at the place were I fell. The blood was still there, although most of it had dripped into the sewer. It will take several months for me to realize that my blood wasn’t the only thing that dripped into that sewer. Along with it went my life.