The doctor’s face loomed above me.
“Okay now, Miss Nyland. Can you blink once if you can hear and understand me?”
It seemed to take more effort than I ever would have thought such a movement could possibly take, but I did manage to blink once.
“Do you know where you are?”
I blinked again.
“Do you remember the accident?”
I held my features steady.
“You were in a cab. The cab was hit. You’re the only survivor.”
Quick flashes of memory began to assault my brain… tires screeching, horns blaring, a deep masculine voice swearing, me screaming…
“Do you remember anything now?”
I looked into the doctor’s azure eyes and blinked once.
He gave me a nod and a small smile of satisfaction, now knowing that we could at least communicate somewhat.
I tried to speak, but again it just came out as a cross between a grunt and a moan.
“You will probably get your memory back little by little, though relatively quickly. As for your physical state, I’m afraid the prognosis is a bit grim. We can’t say for sure how much mobility you will regain in the future or how long it will take. You seem to have what’s known as Locked-In Syndrome. This is where a patient loses all mobility except for some facial movement. Are you following me so far?”
I blinked again, though not without a tear escaping the corner of my eye this time. How I wished I could tell him about Melissa! She scared me almost as much as my condition.
“We’re not a hundred percent sure what condition you have, but there is a good chance that you might regain some mobility. I’m so sorry to break this kind of news to you, Miss Nyland, but we never want to give our patients any false hope either. You’ll likely be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of your life, I’m sorry to say.”
When I heard this, I just wanted to die so badly. Being in a wheelchair was no way to live. At least not for me. I just wasn’t strong enough emotionally to handle such a thing. I wished for death so badly at that moment. Why couldn’t my mind be just as useless as my body?
I had absolutely nobody to help me. It wasn’t that no one cared, but more that no one I trusted was in a position to help me in any way. They were either too busy or they had their own issues to deal with. There was no way they could take on what would basically be a vegetable on wheels.
I had an ex-husband who had cheated on me religiously. I had a sister with serious health issues in another state. I had friends that weren’t really friends. I had friends that were friends but didn’t have the time or resources to deal with me. Last but not least, I had a counselor who seemed to be a lot angrier than I would have imagined my letter would make her.
Was there something else going on I didn’t know about?
ns216.73.216.133da2
and then Add to home screen.