a story to tell..."the accident"

I have a story to tell. It's one that I've put off for a while because some thought that it was better to suppress it and move on. It is not better to suppress it. It's better to assess and deal with it.

This story is simply referred to as "the accident." The accident happened in July. It is an event that tainted the rest of the year. Somehow, I ended up agreeing to go on a cruise with a man about whom I knew very little. I had just recently met him. We'll call him Hugh. It's not his real name but it allows me to claim that the story is fictional. We'd hung out a few times. He was funny and charismatic. He loved to laugh and had a positive outlook on life. He was very emotional and had just recently come out of a relationship. He was ready to play the field--or so he thought. I definitely wasn't looking for anything serious.

His girlfriend and he had broken up a couple of months before the cruise. Now, he had an available ticket. The reason for the cruise was that a couple of Hugh's friends from college where getting married. The wedding was on the ship while the ship was in dock. Each invitee had the option of attending the wedding and debarking before the cruise left or they could attend the cruise for the 4 days. Hugh had opted to go on the cruise. After all, he'd never been out of the country. The Bahamas sounded like a decent destination to start off with.

I told him early on that we would either get along very well or we would have an extremely volatile relationship. Our first fight was just a few weeks in to hanging out. It was over the cruise. I was hesitant about going on a cruise for many reasons. One, I didn't know Hugh all that well. Two, the thought of being on a massive ship with a bunch of people and not being able to get off was petrifying. Hugh was not happy that I was so hesitant. He immediately got upset. Much more upset than I expected. The situation was resolved by me saying that I would go on the cruise.

The day finally came. We got on the ship and attended the wedding. It was very nice and small. The reception had great food. The first night on the boat was pretty good. We had dinner with all the other wedding party. The ship swayed gently side-to-side. I was taking Dramamine, just in case. The thought of puking for a few days straight wasn't all that appealing. We went and hung out a couple of the bars on the boat. Hugh did karaoke. The crowd loved him. He was quite the entertainer singing 'Brown Eyed Girl'. We went dancing and had a good time trying to balance and dance at the same time. We woke up the next morning to a still ship. We were docked in Freeport. We got off the boat to do some sight-seeing.

The island was beautiful. The water was a clear greenish blue color. We saw mopeds for rent at the dock and decided that it would be fun to have one of those to ride around the island. In hindsight, this thought was ridiculous. Riding around on a moped on an island that we are unfamiliar with and we have to drive on the left side of the road. When we got to the rental place, they had me sign all the paperwork and off we went. I ran over the grassy area as we started off. We laughed and I got the hang of it and off we went. I drove us to the shopping area. We got there and were proud that we made it there safely.

Some of Hugh's friends were at the shopping center. We met up with them and walked around. We slipped into a hotel pool to cool down a bit. It was a good time. We left early to head back to the ship because we knew we needed some time to get back to the port. I asked Hugh if he wanted to drive us back. I second-thought that offer but then I thought that he deserved to have a chance to drive. We got halfway back to the port and it happened.

It's all very blurry really. I remember telling him to slow down. The curve was pretty sharp. He was in the far left lane (the slow lane) and slowly coasted into the right lane. I'm still yelling for him to slow down. He doesn't. We keep drifting and hit the curb. We both are airborne. I hit the ground and it knocked the breath out of me. I'd flown further than he had. I get up and go towards him. The traffic has come to a halt on the streets. Both of use had landed in the median. I went over to him and was pissed. Then I see him, just laying there. His eyes were closed and his mouth had blood in it. He'd chipped his front tooth. I wanted to shake him. I keep pushing on his shoulders until a woman came and grabbed me and told me not to move him. She was a nurse from the U.S. He had landed next to a tree. I wasn't sure if he'd hit it but his face was all scratched up. The nurse asked me how bad my knee was. It was only then that I realized that my knee was bleeding pretty badly. I took a towel and wrapped it around my knee. I was awake. I wasn't concerned with me. I had Hugh who wasn't awake. The nurse asks him what his name is and he tells her his last name. By now, the ambulance has arrived. The police follow soon afterwards. The ambulance stabilizes his neck and gets him into the bus. The policeman asks me questions and I can't think straight. The cop interrogates me as the EMT is putting alcohol and peroxide on my knee. I'm cursing at this point. My knee is gnarly and hurts as the EMT is trying to clean it. The cop assumes that I'm cursing at him although I'm obviously clutching my leg and crying. I have to limp over to the officer and apologize. He writes down the police report wrong--which I only find out a few weeks afterwards. I get in the ambulance and ride to the hospital.

At the hospital, I try desperately to contact the cruise ship to tell them about the accident. They finally find a member of the wedding party and tell them. At this point, I have no idea if Hugh is going to wake up. The CAT scan and MRI reveal something--but there's no neurologist, much less a neurosurgeon if there is a real problem. The doctor tells me that he's not sure what's wrong. I decide to go back to the ship to gather our stuff. It doesn't look like we are going to be back on the boat in the next 24 hours.

I get to the ship and Hugh's best friend is giving me lists of people to contact: Hugh's parents, etc. I unable to walk at this point. My knee is throbbing and I've just gotten the minimal treatment by the ambulance. I hadn't been seen at all at the hospital. I'm in a wheelchair on the cruise ship. I get to the room and the bride and groom and some others help me pack. I have to pack quickly. It was 7pm and the boat was supposed to be pulling out of the dock at that time. I was holding up the whole ship. As I'm getting off the boat with all the suitcases, Hugh's best friend (we'll call him Tom) continues giving me instructions. He can see that I'm totally overwhelmed and scared. At the last minute, he gets off the boat with me.

We go back to the hospital and Tom starts contacting Hugh's parents and others. He calls to find out if Hugh has insurance. We can't find an insurance card in his wallet. I wait for hours to be seen by a doctor. I finally get in and the doctor puts a stitch in my knee and cleans up the wound. It was quite painful. I tell him that I don't need pain meds cause I have to be coherent for this whole ordeal. At 10pm, Hugh is still out. Well, in and out. At certain points he wakes up and yells at the nurses. "Take this shit out of my fucking arms! Take it out!" It's heartbreaking and difficult to watch. They keep kicking me out of the room. About an hour later, I beg for pain meds for my knee. The doctor gives me a shot in the butt. I have to say-- I prefer pills. By midnight or so, the decision has been made that Hugh needs to be life flighted back to the U.S.A. The doctor's assessment was that there was bleeding in the brain. Although, this diagnosis later proved to be inaccurate, we had no choice but to go back to the States to get better health care.

Tom and I debate on who should go back with Hugh. The airplane can only take the patient and one guest. Tom says that since I'm hurt, I should go. The ambulance shows up at the hospital to transport us to the airport. The airplane is waiting. They get him into the plane and tears stream down my face. It's 2am and I'm exhausted. I sleep a bit until we land in an airport to go through customs. I have to take my passport and Hugh's birth certificate through customs and immigration. They gave me a talk for Hugh not having a passport but it was a indisputable point with Hugh semi-conscious and it being the middle of the night.

We finally got back home around 6am and were immediately taken in an ambulance to the local trauma 1 hospital. I had to meet his parents for the first time at the hospital emergency room with their son semi-conscious. What a hell of a way to meet the parents. Hugh was still not awake. He was re-examined. The neurologist said that he had two bruises in his brain. Frontal lobe. He finally woke up that evening. He even recognized me. He fell back asleep soon afterwards. He was in the hospital for about 4 days. Everyday, I tested his memory. It was spotty. He could barely remember 2 hours before. After a while, he got frustrated with the fact that he couldn't remember. The best part was that I could tell him the same stories or jokes time after time and it was all new to him every time. A captive audience. He got progressively better. He had lots of visitors. I had to wake him up by pushing on his sternum. They let him out of the hospital and he spent the next week living at his parents' home. From day to day, his memory got better.

I was in physical therapy by now. I was walking with a cane initially. Soon, I took to the limping without a cane. The pain was present everyday. I had some pain meds from the hospital at home where I was re-examined. I could barely bend my knee at all. I had to keep it straight sitting at my desk at work. It took about 5 months for me to be able to bend it like I could my other knee. Still, it gets sore and stiff every once and a while. There are days that I wake up with it super stiff. I feel like an old lady who can tell the weather depending my knee soreness. It's moderately amusing.

There were lots of ups and downs after the accident. Hugh needed more reassurance than before. I'd taken care of him every single day since the accident. I finally spent one evening alone and he forgets that I was there the whole week. The next day at work, I have to get him to call his father to come take care of him. Hugh just went off the deep end. It's common in head injuries but not something that I commonly have to deal with. He was readmitted to the hospital following a psych evaluation. He got out of the hospital after a few days. Things looked up from there. And there the fighting ensued.

He'd said some horrible things to me during the time that he doesn't remember. He had intense times of being very angry. I cried way too often. By the time he started feeling better, I needed a break from it all. I couldn't be a constant caretaker anymore. I needed a breather. It'd been two months. Hugh didn't understand that. He wanted me to try harder on our relationship. But he'd had no idea how much I'd done in the past two months. After all, he had no memory of it.

The downward spiral continued. He wanted to "get back to how it was before 'the accident'". I told him that it was not possible to do that. You can't just erase experiences that you've had and revert to a previous existence. We seemed to disagree more often than not. He kept in all of his thoughts and emotions though and I only heard what he really thought when he already was angry. I don't receive being yelled at well when the same thing could have been communicated more effectively however many weeks ago that it was that it occurred to him. He'd complain that I wasn't caring enough. That I wasn't like I was before 'the accident'. And he was right, I wasn't.

Ultimately, my initial assessment was right. We would get along well--like we did in the beginning--or we'd be extremely volatile. Post-accident was volatile. But that's the story of the accident. One hell of a story with one hell of a scar that reminds me of it everyday.