Permanent Marker : A Memoir (9780999158111)

by Ross, Aimee

  “Do you remember anything else?” he asked.

  I described what I could from what little memory I had of the accident. I had seen lights and then felt immediate impact, harder than I’ve ever felt before. A man talked to me while he and others cut me out of the wreckage, and then I was laid flat and put into the back of a helicopter. Kenny was there.

  “Do you remember being taken to the hospital?” Brian asked.

  “You mean here? No, I just remember being put into a helicopter.”

  “They took you to Ashland first. Then they life-flighted you here,” Brian said.

  Life flight. The only people I ever heard about being life-flighted from car wrecks usually died.

  “Has anyone told you anything else?” Brian asked.

  He ducked his head and leaned in, looking at me intently. I was starting to get a little confused.

  “No, no one has told me anything. Why?”

  What else was there to know?

  “The driver of the other car was a nineteen-year-old kid. He died, Aimee.”

  I looked out the hospital room’s window to my right at the highway traffic. Time stopped, just as it had the night of the accident. Yet somehow, those distant cars, now blurry and out of focus, still crawled toward a watery Cleveland horizon. Oh no.

  Brian handed me a tissue.

  “Do I know him? Did I have him in school?” I whispered, my chin quivering.

  I had been teaching for eighteen years at the same small school; it was a distinct possibility.

  “I don’t think so,” Brian answered. “He’s not from Loudonville.” And then he said his name. “Zach Ryder?”

  He was a real person. Saliva gathered in my mouth like I might throw up. Like I knew him.

  But I didn’t. I shook my head.

  “No, I don’t know him.”

  “That night—of the wreck—I was in the waiting room of intensive care, between your room and his,” Brian said.

  He explained that upon impact, the young man had been ejected through his car’s open sunroof and onto the road.

  “He was life-flighted, also. His parents and sister were there, too,” Brian went on.

  As this settled into my consciousness, the situation grew exponentially more profound. Someone died in the same accident I was in. Someone young who had parents. And a sister. A family. Maybe even a dog.

  “I saw a doctor talking to them,” Brian continued. “It was pretty obvious that he had died, because they all started to cry. I also heard someone mention organ donation.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah,” Brian agreed, “but get this.”

  He raised his eyebrows and shook his head, preparation for what came next.

  “It couldn’t have even been five minutes later. The father and sister walked across the room to me and apologized for what had happened. They both hugged me,” Brian said. “They said they hoped you would be okay. I just couldn’t believe it. It was so sad, and all I could do was thank them.”

  I swallowed and glanced down at my left foot. I remembered seeing bones. And blood.

  And he was dead.

  I didn’t know what to say. I was horrified by the gravity of the entire situation, but I was still pissed. He did this to me, his car crushing my body, his driving putting me in a hospital bed.

  “Aimee, you need to know one more thing,” he continued. “The kid was driving a Mini-Cooper. You know what those are, right? How small they are?”

  I nodded yes.

  “If he’d have been driving anything other than that, anything, you would be dead, too. There’s no doubt about it,” he said.

  I was lucky to be alive was what Brian was saying. Then he confirmed it.

  “You’re a miracle, Aimee.”

  February 2010 | Three Nights after “I Want a Divorce”

  There is no way I’m having a heart attack.

  I’m only forty-one.

  Panic attack, maybe.

  Anxiety, I thought.

  But that didn’t explain the cement block lying across my chest or the five-ton elephant stepping on it. And it didn’t explain the softball-sized knot under my ribcage or the profuse sweating. I felt like I could throw up at any second.

  I knew someone had better take a look at me, so I drove myself to the hospital in a late winter snow storm. Alone.

  (I know, I know. Bad idea, Aimee.)

  While the ER nurse filled out admissions paperwork, I described my symptoms. An odd look crossed her face.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Forty-one.”

  “Do you smoke?”

  “No.”

  She checked off boxes.

  “Is there a history of heart disease in your family?”

  “No.”

  “There is no way you’re having a heart attack,” she said, half under her breath, half to me, while looking at the chart she’d just completed on the clipboard.

  Her words scared the hell out of me. She was a medical professional.

  “You’re way too young,” she said, shaking her head, but I didn’t know whom she was trying to convince.

  Soon, another nurse attached electrode monitors to my chest for an EKG and asked, “How old are you?”

  “Forty-one.”

  “Oh, way too young for a heart attack,” he decided.

  Worried this was all some kind of strange foreshadowing, I wasn’t convinced. And I hoped whatever tests they were running would provide some answers and fast.

  When the EKG machine spat out a strip of paper, the technician sitting with me quickly retrieved and scrutinized it. He looked up and smiled at me.

  “I’ll take this to the doctor,” he said. “Just relax.”

  His words were reassuring. Surely if he had seen something unusual, he’d have mentioned it. I breathed out slowly, trying not to worry.

  Suddenly, just like a scene out of a movie, a man in a white coat and scrubs grabbed the curtain around me, threw it back, and said, “Ms. Young, we think you’re having a heart attack. We’re sending you to Med Central as soon as you’re stabilized.”

  Wait—what? My heart wasn’t working right?

  What if it stopped? I could die.

  God, please don’t let me die.

  This couldn’t be really happening.

  Nurses surrounded me. One deposited a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue, while another inserted an IV in my arm, and still another put more monitors on my chest—all while each calmly explained procedures. After I had stabilized, an ambulance would transport me to another hospital about fifteen miles away, a heart-care facility with a reputation for being one of the best in Ohio.

  “What’s going to happen to me? Will I need open-heart surgery?”

  I pictured a huge knife cutting open my chest, my heart exposed to the world. It was terrifying. Especially now.

  “Well, let’s not get ahead of anything,” one of the nurses said. “First we have to see what’s going on in there.”

  She explained that upon arrival, I would be prepped for a heart catheterization. A tube fitted with a small camera would be inserted into an artery in my groin and threaded through vessels to look around my heart. I would not be awake for it, and once doctors understood what had happened, they could better assess treatment.

  Time seemed to crawl as I waited to stabilize, but inside my mind, thoughts raced. How had this happened? Had I caused it? Was I going to die all alone on a gurney because I had been too stubborn to let Kenny come with me?

  Kenny. Currently, he wasn’t speaking to me.

  I had just grabbed my purse and keys when he walked in the door from the garage.

  “I’m going to the hospital,” I told hi
m as I was leaving. “There’s something wrong, and I don’t know what it is.”

  “Should I go with you?” he asked.

  “No, I think it’s better that you don’t,” I’d said, but I should have said yes.

  I needed to call him.

  When he answered, he sounded angry.

  “Hull-O?”

  What do you want now? he might as well have asked in greeting.

  “Hey…uh...I’m…uh...They said I’m having a heart attack.”

  “Are you kidding?” he asked.

  “No. They’re stabilizing me, then transferring me to Mansfield for a catheterization.”

  “Okay…” there was a long pause. “Do you…uh…should I meet you there?”

  I was afraid I was going to die. And I knew that no matter what had recently passed between us, Kenny was still important to my life. We had grown up together. He was the father of my children.

  “Yes, I think you should.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he said and hung up.

  I needed to call Mom, too. I had been on the phone with her when I started feeling sick, and no wonder. Ugh.

  That phone call. The Bad Husband Litany. Anything she could ever remember—every single bad moment, including those that had slipped my mind. She wouldn’t let up, poking the dagger of Bad Husband into me over and over and over, until her reminders turned to pointed comments of contempt. She was worried he would do something to me or my things in retaliation, even though nothing like that had ever happened before. Mom watched too many TV crime dramas.

  “You don’t think he would ever hurt you, do you, Aimee?” Mom asked.

  “Like physically? No, Mom.”

  “Well, you just never know. That’s the way it always happens on my shows,” she said.

  “Mom, stop.”

  Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling well.

  “I worry about you, Aimee,” Mom said.

  I couldn’t respond. A knot had formed between my ribs, and my stomach had risen to the back of my throat like I might vomit. I was warm, so warm. And there was that huge cement block sitting across my chest, so heavy, causing pressure and shortness of breath.

  What was this feeling? Fear? No. Anxiety? Maybe.

  Something was wrong.

  “Mom.” I sucked in a breath. “I’m not feeling well.”

  Was this what it felt like to have a heart attack? No. That couldn’t be it. I was too young. But I felt so weird. I started to cry.

  “Mom, I’m going to the hospital,” I told her, promising to call when I knew what was going on.

  She and Dad would leave from Kansas by car that night and drive the twelve hours straight through. Twelve hours. Phew. I hoped they wouldn’t be too late, but I didn’t say it out loud.

  In the ER, once the nitroglycerin started to work, my chest pains stopped and the heaviness lifted. I didn’t feel sick anymore, either. EMTs thought I was stable enough to travel, so they loaded me into an ambulance, and we left in the evening darkness for Med Central.

  Kenny was waiting there for me, shoulders slumped, head down, hands in pockets. He didn’t know what to say, and neither did I.

  These were strange circumstances.

  After Dr. Pancetta, the cardiologist (an irony I couldn’t possibly have made up myself), explained the catheterization procedure, Kenny leaned down to me.

  “I love you, Aimee,” he said in an almost question.

  I was confused. What should I say? I did love him, but I wasn’t in love with him. I was having a heart attack. I could die, and I might not ever see him again. Wasn’t I obliged to respond? And yet, only three days ago I had told him I wanted a divorce. In that split second of mind chaos, our relationship and growing up together won out over the end of a marriage. I knew I probably shouldn’t say it, but I also knew this was not an ordinary moment.

  “I love you, too,” I whispered.

  The words came out before I could stop them, just like they had when I told him I wanted a divorce, but this time, they didn’t hurt. This time, they were the right thing to say.

  And then I was wheeled into a very cold operating room where I would be anesthetized for a cardiac catheterization. Doctors would be able to see—from the outside looking in—what was happening inside my heart.

  Eight to Nine Days after the Accident

  In those first few days following the accident, I’d had four surgeries in the Trauma Center: one to insert chest tubes, remove my spleen, and “pack” me with something to stop the internal bleeding; another to fix my broken foot and ankle; a third to set my broken pelvis and fractured arm; and a fourth to “unpack” my abdomen and place the wound vac.

  I couldn’t keep track of which doctor was who, and in what medical issue of mine each was interested. Some were young (too young to be doctors, I thought), and some were old. Most were all business, rarely showing emotion. But this morning was different.

  A round-faced older doctor whose nametag read Dr. Dowler told me that later I was to be prepped for surgery so they could “close me up” and take out the wound vac.

  Another surgery? No. It was too soon. It had been only a couple of days since I had come out of the ICU and off some very scary drugs. I didn’t want another surgery.

  “Of course, you don’t have to be closed up,” he explained. “You can let the wound vac stay.” His words bounced in a jovial, irritating way.

  “I can?”

  The wound vac.

  According to Dr. Dowler, it was a relatively new—in the past fifteen years—type of therapy. The vacuum, applied through a special sealed dressing, used negative pressure to heal open wounds, and in particular, those of the abdomen. As the vacuum pump drew fluids out of the wound, it also increased blood flow to the injured area.

  I had no idea what to do.

  “Well, if you return to surgery, you have a twenty percent chance of getting an infection. Not big, but still, something to consider,” he said with a smile.

  I wasn’t finding any of this funny, nor worthy of smiles. I also had no idea what an infection might mean to my recovery, since I was now without a spleen.

  “What would you do?” I asked him.

  He thought about it for barely a moment, turned his head slightly, looked skyward through his glasses, and then said, “Honestly, it’s six of one, half-dozen of the other. Either way you go is fine.”

  He made it sound so simple, like making this decision was no big deal. I almost expected him to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

  I was broken, though. And it did need to be fixed.

  I questioned him about the wound vac and how my abdomen would heal if left alone. He told me that it would take a long time, up to a couple of months, but it eventually would close up on its own from the inside out.

  Time. There it was again. An event that had taken less than a second to occur caused doctors to make a split-second decision about my insides that would now take a long time to heal, if indeed it would ever fully heal at all. Oh, the irony.

  “Just let the nurse know your decision,” Dr. Dowler said.

  And then he left.

  I was at a complete loss. On one hand, getting rid of the wound vac would mean being attached to one less machine. On the other hand, closing me up meant anesthesia and stitches or staples. Probably stronger drugs. I wasn’t even considering the possibility of infection. And I had no idea what healing from the inside out might do to my abdomen.

  Mom, who was staying in my apartment and driving almost four hours round trip to the hospital each day, arrived within minutes of the doctor leaving my room. She carried the large iced tea from Wendy’s I had requested. But not even the sight of a non-hospital treat perked me up. I cried. I explained what he had told me, and that I w
anted my abdomen closed.

  “But Mom, I’m scared. I do not want to go through another surgery.”

  “Aimee, it’s your body. It’s been through a lot in a very short time. You do what you want to do, and if that means no surgery, then no surgery,” she said.

  Validation. It was all I needed.

  When the nurse came in to prep me, I told her I was keeping the wound vac—no more surgeries. At least not when I had a say in the matter

  Mom stood at the foot of my bed, rubbing her hands together. She was not yet seated in her regular spot, the awful orange plastic chair, and now that I had calmed down, I could tell she was upset about something, or at the very least, preoccupied.

  “There’s a cross where the wreck happened,” Mom said suddenly, looking at me, waiting for my reaction. She knew Brian had told me the other driver died in the accident.

  At first, no one wanted me to know. I can only guess why not. Maybe they thought I couldn’t handle the stress. Or maybe they worried how the information might affect my recovery

  “What’s it look like?”

  “It’s a cross,” she said and shrugged. “But it looks like it’s made out of Bud Light boxes. I just don’t get how people think it’s okay to put that there while you are still here,” she said, acknowledging the hospital trauma room. “I have to drive past that spot twice a day, Aimee. It’s hard.”

  Her tone of voice was changing, her words coming faster.

  “I know.” I understood why she was upset. Bud Light boxes?

  “Well, I’ve decided something,” she said and paused. “I’m writing a letter to the editor of the Times-Gazette. It’s ridiculous and thoughtless to put that cross there, especially when people who have read about the accident seem to think you’re fine.”

  Fine? They should see me, I thought. A lost front tooth, broken pelvis, fractured sternum, punctured lungs. My abdomen still gaping open. I couldn’t move, and I was confined to a bed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The paper said you were in critical but stable condition, and when I stopped at the grocery the other day, several people asked about you. Most of their questions assumed you were up and around,” she explained. “Look at you! Up and around? You almost died!”