Don't Forget to Write

Rude Awakening

There was silence and darkness for a long time. At least, it felt long. It could have been anywhere between a couple of minutes and a couple of years. I was aware of the darkness and the silence, just unaware of what it meant. It seemed like those were the only things to ever exist – silence and darkness. I was a floating blob of semi-consciousness in the era of Nix and Chaos, in the time before time. Before genesis. Before God said let there be light. Before the big bang. Before whatever it is that happened on that fateful moment before all of time and space was created.

Then there was a beeping, and I remembered that there were sounds. I remembered I had a body, with legs and arms. I had eyelids, too, so I opened those and saw the welcoming white walls and linoleum floor of what I remembered to be a hospital. I wasn't floating around in space, I was just fucked up on some hospital-grade painkillers back here on miserable planet earth. My human body was weak, and my head hurt like all hell. Then I remembered the soccer match, and the blow to my head, and I wasn't sure how much time had passed since then. After a few minutes a young doctor came in. "Hey, I'm Doctor Lawson, you awake for good this time?"

It took me a few seconds to understand the words. "...What?"

"You've been fading in and out for 36 hours."

"... Have I? That's a long time"

"Yes, but it's perfectly normal. You had some serious head trauma," he spoke slowly and clearly, "which is why you're having some trouble understanding what I'm saying, and why it's taking a while for your brain to respond."

There was a couple seconds of processing, then "...Oh, shit."

"Don't worry. You haven't lost your memory or anything too traumatic. You've just picked up a pretty bad concussion, which is affecting your cognition. So, things might be a bit foggy for a while."

"... So... what, I'm dumb now?"

"That depends, do you think you were smart before?" he laughed. I laughed. I liked this Lawson guy. "No, you will not be 'dumb'. At least not any dumber than you might have previously been. We believe the effects of this injury will be short term as long as you take care of it. But if you hit your head too hard while you're recovering, the consequences will be much worse, and potentially permanent. So, no more activity for you."

"...For how long?"

"A couple months at least."

"... A couple months?!"

"Yes. If you're lucky you'll be able to jog sometime in November."

"...There goes my season."

"At least you still have your head."

"Yeah," I reached up and felt the bandages around my skull. "...Am I gonna have to wear a helmet or anything?"

"No, no, just the bandages. You have a minor skull fracture but it will heal itself."

"Right... and class?"

"We suggest you take a bit of time off from class, but you should be able to read and do other mind-challenging tasks within a week or two."

"... Well... when can I get out of here?"

"Soon. We would like to keep you for one more night to make sure everything is normal. If all goes well you can be out of here tomorrow morning. Oh, and happy birthday!"

My head was starting to hurt from trying to process all of these words and sentences. "...Birthday?"

"Yeah, says your date of birth here on my sheet, and it was yesterday. Not the best way to spend it, but all the best to you anyway."

"Thanks, Doc."

He left and a short, fat nurse with bags under her eyes and gray streaks through her blond hair walked in with a tray of food for me. "Here ya go sweetie, I gave you a lil extra carrot cake for ya birthday." She put a finger up to her mouth "Don't go tellin' the other patients."

"Thanks ma'am."

"Oh shoot. Don't go calling me ma'am, I ain't that old am I?"

"... You don't look a day over 21."

"Ha! Oh honey, there ya go makin' an old lady blush. Alright hon, enjoy ya food."

The food wasn't terrible. Chewing did cause some pain in my temple, though. The bone that connects the jaw to the skull (is that the zygomatic bone, I thought to myself, trying to recall my tenth-grade anatomy, yeah yeah, zygomatic bone. Or something like that. This concussion is nothing) felt like it was digging into the side of my brain. They said it would take some time to get over that. But as for the rest of it, I didn't feel so terrible. A little nauseous and, of course, a constant headache. But I still remembered my name and address, knew where I was, and I even knew who the president was. They ran a few cognition tests on me and everything went alright, I hadn't forgotten my times tables or my shapes and colors, and I could still understand English fairly well. As I was watching the hospital T.V. over my bed I realized that my thoughts and my grasp of what was going on in the movie were foggy, I couldn't quite place plot lines and following the dialogue was difficult. It would take a few seconds after a sentence was said for me to understand what was meant. The doctor said that would go away soon, but part of me feared I would be like this forever.