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All Human They move my feet, turn my ankles, tap my soles, and I can feel it: no major head or spinal. The most important things the mind cannot or will not see or remember. Moment of impact: subject on bicycle. Vehicle to bicycle. Everything goes freeze-frame. I saw the vehicle take a left. It sets off an alarm in my mind and I think, "She saw me. She saw me - right?" Three stills of turning car approaching. Black reflective rectangles. Rhombus elides to square. Square of blue sky. Frames of black. Impact causes subject to loft into path of vehicle, landing on North Avenue perpendicular to the axle, facing north. Next sight: subject under the chassis, screaming. The subject - 29 year-old Caucasian female, college-educated, blue-eyed - drug between underside of vehicle and street. She hears her helmet skid and bounce three times. She thinks: "I should be dead. I should be dead. I should be dead." Subject can hear the driver - nineteen year-old Latina, uninsured - sob, calling 911 on her cell phone. Subject's head is cradled in the foam bowl of the silver helmet: its rim dents her cheek. Men instruct the driver on how to put the vehicle in neutral, push it back. Hands reach toward the subject. "Don't move her! Don't move her!" someone says. They move her. Sirens. Cops arrive. EMTs arrive. She is placed on a stretcher. She classifies one of the EMTs as 'short, but attractive' and decides she's going to be OK. "I think I broke my clavicle," she says to him. "Are you a doctor? Or a nurse?" he responds, and tucks her watch into her cut-off's pocket. She hears a cop say, "Yeah, that guy over there said that he knows her and will take her bicycle to her house." She'd laugh if she could. They don't miss a trick in the neighborhood. She'd paid fifty bucks for the bike five years previous, anyway. It's her 'beater' - a Maxwell Street special. "Is there anyone you'd like us to call?" She does a file search. Her estranged husband moved out two months previous and she hasn't bothered to commit his phone number to memory. Whose phone number does she give? Best friend. And new neighbor friend. The sun is still up, just two months past the solstice. The sky has too much purple. The trees are on the cusp between green and becoming dark gray silhouettes of trees. The ambulance doors swing open. They hoist and shove her in. A cop found her missing tennis shoe in the gutter and tosses it in. One of the medics closes the door.
Ambulance to hospital. Subject screams when bumps are taken too quickly. "Sorry, I know," the driver says. Attempts to inventory the interior of the vehicle are too exhausting. Subject closes eyes, but the EMT tries to keep her talking. The subject lifts her head to answer: "120 over 80. Do I get a discount?" She'd overheard a medic on the site, has a vague memory -- how long ago was it? - of a cuff wrapped around her left arm: her right arm was missing skin. A bearded male nurse makes a 'presenting' gesture, both hands turned in direction of subject. I am mere meat, horizontal on a rolling table, under lights, immobile, one or two tubes and needles taped into me. Probably one. Saline or some drug. I haven't lost much blood. Clothes cut away. A blanket. Left alone between folding partitions. The world of Mt. Sinai ER is antiseptic and comes in four colors: taupe old linoleum floor, green scrubs and partitions, beige foam ceiling and cabinets, glittery silver and glass trim of bottles, jars, and implements. The workers are quiet and efficient. No one comes in my cubicle, and I perceive this as positive. I am doubtless in shock, but stable. One of the scrubs asks how I'm doing, and I request another blanket, just to assert myself, just to need something. He unfolds it and drapes it over me. I am disproportionately grateful for the gesture, choosing to interpret duty as kindness. I hear the woman in the next space, on the other side of a partition. She moans. Snippets enter my ears like bits of an encryption, a telegraph. A man. A car. A woman. A broken leg. From her moans and comments, I picture her as skinny and black. I check out. When I resurface, people stand over me at intervals. Only one or two at a time. My best friend appears. "You're my best friend, ever," she says, and kisses me on the cheek. I thank her for coming. Throughout ER, I feel like an ill-equipped hostess without much of an inclination to chat. "Why, hello. Nice of you to make it. I'd like to offer you some tea, but… So, what's new with you?" Despite the heavy cloud, the fog, the pain, the shock, I know enough to know that I am incredibly lucky. I do not know the probability, the statistics, regarding bicycle collisions and casualties, accident fatalities, proportions of injuries producing para- or quadriplegics, but I know that I am alive, that I will have a couple of scars, or minor disfigurement, that I might have some time with a sling or crutch or bandaged rib, and that's just fine. If I could chortle despite the haze, I would. If I could stand up and dance, I would. My neighbor, Esther, materializes out of the fog. She assures me that she'll feed the dog. Old friends, good friends, two couples who have known me for over a decade, appear. They look at me, very serious. I have no idea how mauled I am, or not. One assures me that I'm going to be OK. My parents appear. They are entirely central casting, grave parental concern, always impeccable and composed. There's not much I can say to anyone, other than to croak, "Hey." I am glad that I have the extra blanket.
Erika Mikkalo
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