The Worst Thing That Could Happen

There Is No Dying In The Park

(Author Note: This story contains discussion of severe injuries.)

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I'm not sure how openly I can talk about this without bringing the force of a thousand lawyers down on my head. I'm sure that by the end of this, you'll have worked out the place I'm talking about, but for my own sake, and the sake of others, I'm going to be vague.

My family has had annual passes to a certain theme park for a long time now. I've been more times than I can count. This particular theme park belongs to a corporation that occasionally gets some heat on the internet, some of it justified. I've never let that diminish my enjoyment of the place. Sure it can get a bit sappy and schmaltzy and I don't fully buy into the whole wishes and dreams thing anymore. But it's a nice escape from the rest of the world. Well, it used to be. My last visit and the aftermath shook me up and now I don't know how to feel about the place. I'm posting this in the hopes that someone can help me figure out what the hell is going on, and if it's something I should be worried about.

The whole thing really started two years ago. We had gone in for a themed weekend in one of the sub-parks. My brother and I found ourselves waiting in line to get our picture taken with a guy in a suit in the direct sunlight of an American South summer. Despite having lived there a large portion of my life, I was starting to wilt in the heat. Fortunately, my mom sprang to our rescue and got some ice waters from a nearby vendor. They were just close enough that I could hear the conversation. One line in particular stuck out to me: "You can't die in the park. It's not allowed." It was meant to be a joke, and I didn't think anything of it. Not until I had my accident a few months later.

Full disclosure: what happened was my fault and my fault alone. I had only just started drinking alcohol in the past two or three months before the trip. When me and three friends went down to the park, I forgot everything I'd learned in those alcohol safety classes they made us take at the beginning of college. We were in the sub-park with an actual variety of alcoholic drinks, and throughout the day, I had two full drinks and a few sips of a friend's margerita. There was a lot of time between drinks, but I forgot that staying hydrated and not running around in the scorching heat were just as important to not getting messed up as pacing. It was a delayed disaster; I started feeling weird after the second drink, but didn't say anything to avoid being a spoilsport. I should've said something, or listened to my body, because I collapsed the second we were out of the park's gates and in the parking lot. I was fine, more or less; I just needed fluids and a quick scan to make sure I hadn't hit my head too hard on impact. The ER guy said they saw that kind of thing all the time. I was even able to make a joke about it when I called my mom to let her know what happened.

"I guess that guy was right about people not dying in the park, huh?"

After that, the line became a running joke with my family. Whenever we went to the park, every vague inconvenience from mild dehydration to long lines to accidentally dropping an ice cream cone was met with, "It's a good thing I can't die right now" or "I wish the park would let me die." My family has kind of a messed up sense of humor. It made dealing with the aftermath of my previous medical emergency easier, but it wasn't enough to save me from what happened later.

It was a miracle I ever knew the event had happened. It was one of those things that they'd want to keep on the DL. You know how it is—something goes wrong, the Powers That Be want to keep it private so people don't get freaked out and stop having fun and spending money. It wouldn't do to have everyone in the park worrying about a woman having a stroke. At least, I think it was a stroke. That was what my dad said, and he knows more about this kind of thing than I do. He'd been the one to find her sitting outside the bathrooms in the middle of whatever medical emergency she was having. He stayed with her as the park attendees got there and started wheeling her away, presumably to an ambulance. It was hard for the rest of the family to carry on as though we hadn't seen that, but we did our best. Dad found us half an hour later. He looked shaken, but he did it well enough. It wasn't until a lot later, when my younger brother was out of earshot, that I was able to get the truth out of him.