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Home / Stories / Fiction / The Accident

The Accident

Written by Sean on Sunday, June 1, 1997

Please note that the following story differ from what you might expect. I thought that it might be an idea to give a deglorified aspect of transableism/wannabeism and paraplegia. I welcome any comments and criticism you might have. All flames will be ignored.

The pain is awful. The pain shooting through my back will drive me insane. I call the nurse for some more painkillers. But she won’t give them to me, I have already exhausted my ration. I lay in my bed and wish I could revert the events that led me here. My mind starts wandering.

I clean up my apartment. Make sure everything is in order. Get rid of old papers, and different stuff I know might get me in trouble. I transfer a lot of computer files to disks that I put aside and want to trash them, but can’t really get rid of so many writings and readings of mine. So many letters exchanged. The sun is shining outside and the weather is warming up. I can smell the fresh mown grass….

Another smell brings me back to reality. The foul smell of urine. I explore the bed with my hand and am relieved to not get it wet. It must be my neighbour leaked. It is 4 in the morning and I can’t sleep. There are a few moans here and there. My neighbour is fast asleep, or rather comatose from the 10cc of morphine they gave him.

The guy arrived yesterday. He still doesn’t know what is happening. I know that he only knows one thing: that his back is killing him. Maybe also some fear. Fear and incomprehension. He is in a frame that they can fold on him so they flip him every two hours. Flip, flop. One hour on your back. Flip, flop. One hour on your belly. Flip, flop. One hour on your back and the Flip, flopping goes on eternally.

That is what I only knew when I first arrived here, oh so long ago. But it wasn’t really that long ago that I got here; it just seems that way. Only five weeks. I used to start counting the holes in the roof tiles, since I could not look anywhere else than up, but invariably as I reached about 5000 holes, they would flip me on my belly. 38 days of intense suffering and despair. If I had only known how much pain.

I take the time to write a will. I want to make sure that when they come into my things, looking for a possible explanation they will find none pertaining to my real motivations. I am so lonely. I feel so screwed up. I want to disappear, crawl in a little hole and never have to worry about my fucked up desires. I look at the disks I just made and once more am tempted to get rid of them. But something stops me. Perhaps it is knowing that someday, somewhere they might help someone going through the same situation I am going through.

I am awakened by a hand shaking me by the shoulder. "Wake up lazy head. Time for your bath". Bath before breakfast. The most anticipated thing all week. The most pleasurable thing of them all. A bath/shower. You never know how much pleasure you can get out of something like that. They put me on a transfer board and wheel me into a different room. I then am placed on a stainless steel table with little edges and they start showering me. One of those showers like at the hairdresser. Ouuhhhhh. The hot water flowing down my back almost relaxes me enough to forget the pain.

*Someone in the room screams.

Another one screams obscenities to get him to shut up. I put on my headphones and crank the music up so loud I cannot hear them anymore. Always the same music. Mozart’s Requiem. Soothing, beautiful. The real beauty of things. Beautiful as a sunrise; as a rose bed in the light; as the fireworks of a thunderstorm in the night; as young teenagers bathing in a quiet creek. Beautiful and tragic at once. So tragic there is hope. Always liked that, always will. Allows me to release tears. Tears of anger and of self pity. Allows me to flush those destructive feelings. Close your eyes and travel with the music, travel your emotions, take a journey to your inner-self.

I sold my wheelchair and the braces and crutches I owned. I don’t want to embarrass my friends or family that will have to clean up. I am going to hurt them enough as it is, I want them to remember me as they knew me, not with all my desires and strange interests. I have never told them of my want to be paralysed. Of my attraction for braces and other orthopaedic apparatus. Of the deep loneliness that comes out of it. I can’t bear to feel this lonely anymore.

It now has been almost five months since I arrived at the Centre de Ré-education George-Vannier. The therapy hospital where they sent me directly after my "accident". I worked with physical therapists, occupational therapists, mental therapists and how many more? They say I am ready to go back to the real world. I am afraid once more. The real world pushed me where I am now, why would I want to go back to it?

I don’t know what to think anymore. I used to wish dearly for what I have now, however, I resent it now. I resent my old desires and my present state. I look at my wheelchair and think that it is a nicer chair than the one I had, though not much nicer. I look at the braces and crutches beside the bed and don’t see anymore an object of desire and lust but what they actually are, some bits of metal and plastic and leather put together so I can sadly mimic my old self in a semblance of walk.

Loneliness lead me to jump off a cliff. I thought I was going to solve the problems like that. You know, get rid of the source and then you won’t have problems anymore. Only I didn’t get what I was thinking. I got what I wished for. Be careful what you wish for, you might get it… The mind is a powerful tool that will sometimes bring you to do things you don’t really want.

Now I am paralysed. I remember the diagnostic the young intern gave me under the supervision of his teacher. "You received a partial spinal cord injury at T-10. You will probably never walk again. You will probably never feel anything again." He seemed so abrupt. One would think that when you announce something like that to a patient, you want to be gentle, ease him into it, but no, over the five months I spent in this room, I have heard it six times. Once for me and once for each of my room mates. And everytime you hear the intern, or the doctor pronounce the verdict behind the flimsy curtain, you hear the bloke on the bed burst out in tears. Doesn’t matter if he’s a biker or a lawyer, we all cried.

Now I am "legit" to use my wheelchair in public. Now I don’t have to fear a wheelchair user finding me out. I am one of them now. But I don’t want to anymore. It isn’t anywhere near as glorious as I thought it would be. I used to see only one side of the picture. I used to notice the stares and thrive on it. Now I read more in those stares. I read pity and contempt. I need sympathy, not pity.

In looking for death, I found paraplegia. And I found that I feel even more guilty now for once having wanted it, than I ever felt for desiring it. And I fear that I will remain lonely for the rest of my life. I know my friends now. I have none. All my so-called friends never came even once to visit me. My Mum and my Dad came, but my Dad would not look at me and my Mum would not stop crying.

Where is the nearest cliff?