The seventh floor

The grim words whispered by the neurosurgeon sent shutters crawling down my itching skin.  Itching in the literal sense as the salt and sand dried and crisped, mixing with the stale air of the bloody emergency room.  “Paralasia.” One doesn’t have to be fluent in Portuguese to make the translation.  As the story unfolded in front of my eyes, I imagined a nightmare I used to have as a child, where a dark figure cloaked in shadow would haunt me in my sleep.  I would awake lost in panic and dripping in sweat.  I thought the nightmare was gone forever, but perhaps it lingers lost in my psyche.  Now I faced the unsavory truth.  My spine was broken, vertebrate shattered, fragments of bone violently scattered, and a shard of bone pressed against the spinal cord, leaning to take away the life I know so well.  The knife on the balloon and all the children would cry the night away.  Cherish it I heard the voice say, whispering beyond that moment in time, I exhaled rapid and uncontrolled, a smile darting to my lips and vanishing all at once.  My mind would seek to create a glimmer of hope, washed away by the terror all around that retched room.  Moans and screams, and broken bones, motorcycles wrecks scattered around my vision.  How out of place I was, my red hair and blue wetsuit, laid pinned on the bed and forgotten in the chaos.

Finally the neurosurgeons peered over, looking down on me as I could not move an inch.  They explained the reality of the situation, the fragment of bone pressed upon my medulla, the paralysis was creeping near.  The operation would need to be immediate, least I move and force the bone to cripple me for life.  The two neurosurgeons Dr. Cesar and Dr. Vinicuis, looked down upon me, no fear, no pity, only the face of concentration and determination, they had to go to work.  They explained the titanium would take a day to arrive, so I must either waste away in this emergency room filled with horror (not their words), or opt to transfer to the private hospital that cost a large sum of money.  “Just get me out of here, I will pay it, I will find a way to pay.”  I desperately said in Portuguese. Such is the privilege of a lucky American with a loving family who always has my back in tragic times and good times the same.  The neurosurgeons nodded, no sense of urgency, just purpose and duty in their eyes.  They are the best neurosurgeons in all of South Brazil, called in by my close friend Giuliano, a prolific Oncologist.   I silently thanked an ancestor of theirs that sailed across the Atlantic one-hundred and fifty years ago from Germany.

Unimed was the private hospital that waited for me and soon the emergency staff whisked me away, dressed in their accoutrements of orange and green.  Just like that I was gone from the sullen eyes and truculent words of the doctors who had watched over me at the public hospital.  Down the grey hallway, the flickering lights went dim, and curious eyes ran over my body laid out in my stretcher.  Finally into the ambulance and forever gone from the public hospital of Itajaí.

By the time I arrived at Unimed the pain sunk in.  The pain split me, divided me, its claws dragging down the back of my brain.  Leaching in I could not let it, no no, don’t let it over take me.  Using the pain as a focus for my mediation I breathed deep into it.  Letting myself feel the anterior cingulate cortex, letting the pain drip down around me.  You are not me.  The driving force of the stretcher was stone on skull and I channeled the feeling into a tormented moaning.  Letting the sounds free relieved some of the energy, but it sent Sabrina deeper down the spiral of panic and fear.  She quivered in the corner of the room, clutching her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks, terror washed across her face as she gently rocked back and forward.  The altruism she invokes grasped her and left her in a sea full of black chaotic winds and waves, washing her madly out to sea.  Her neck still hurts to this day.

Finally up the elevator to my awaiting room.  My body floated and sensations trailed to the back of my mind.  It was as if I entered another dimension – the seventh floor of the private hospital, surprisingly tranquil and still, with pieces of silence woven into the air.  I couldn’t remember the last place I had found silence like that anywhere in urban Brazil.  Everything moved slowly, dreamlike, distorted, lost from all reality.  This is reality – the voice whispered.

The smooth blonde hair laid shape to the round face of the nurse whose kind apologetic eyes welcomed me into my cloud of safety.  Her name was Cris, and her warmth transferred into me, and my heart began to beat slower still.  The sinking feeling in my stomach eased slightly.  Cris’s voice was so calm and gentle, it was almost hypnotic – she was the oasis in the barren lost desert, the bright star in the darkest night.  She carefully rolled me down the hall to my rooms.  My eyes began to move slower, and I could see the space open around me.  I couldn’t move my head of coarse, but my eyes continued to lull into smooth steady movements, sweeping around my periphery.  I could feel the lush comfort.  Into my rooms and off of the rock hard stretcher, Cris and her assistant carefully slid me onto the soft forgiving hospital bed, four arms nudged beneath my fractured spine.  The softness of that bed was a precious gift and I was immediately happy that I opted for the private hospital.

The two kind nurses cut the wetsuit free of my body and Cris wiped the sheen of sand and sweat away from my skin.  My mouth remained sticky and dry as I could not drink anything to prepare for the surgery.  Cris continued to clean my skin, her mellow smile pulling gently towards her eyes.  I fell into the soft bed, accepting the reality of that moment.

Adjacent to the bed, Sabrina curled into a large comfortable chair that I couldn’t see at the time, but from the corner of my eye I could tell she was resting.  Her altruism leads her to sadness as she absorbs the pain of the other being, animal or human, she is the mother and daughter of all.  Like a precious bird fallen from it’s nest on to the soft forest floor, she sat frozen, calm, the trepidation ceasing for just a moment and she closed her eyes to find peace within.  Her every bone and cell made of love, she shares it with the world until there is nothing left to give.  She was my anchor in a wild sea of distress.

Soon the titanium would arrive and the neurosurgeons would take me to my fate, deciding my destiny after that tragic day on Praia Brava, Itajai.  At that moment I felt no more fear, maybe I had none left, or maybe that moment in the room with Sabrina sleeping out of sight, and Cris carefully pulling the blanket over me was the only moment that mattered, the only moment that existed in all the universe.  Like fallen star dust I held that moment tight in my heart and fell into a deep restful peace.

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I walk down the stones, pushing myself further into the sparse forest and further away from obsession of man and his depredating progress.  The dry stones are laden with verdant plants, ancient in their ways, all knowing of this circular dance we ride.  I can feel the earthmoving beneath my feet, my spine strong behind my throat.  In my minds eye I am already there, and the water comes pouring down to set me free.  From up above the wise river comes cascading forward, and in its descent finds the other river, the two meeting in spectacular unison has they fall as one to the pool in the earth.  We are together again, deep within the Brazilian rocks and forest, my cells vibrate with the energy of the water.   We are one.

The calcification continues, and I patiently feed the binding of my spine with love and wisdom.  A phone call from my dad sets the cells in place.  Neurons move like the water and I know I’ll be back to the high savanna one day soon again.  Back by the river, remembering Kayla…and Lyla, and the late sun before the rain.  Titanium in me now, ‘reborn’ they tell me; The Man burns and we all begin again.