falling off the bike in the middle of the night

I remember the sound when our bikes crashed into each other; almost like a driven engine mixed with a noise of breaking metal, squeaking like tofu getting too hot in the pan, only 100 times louder. It’s kinda funny how the time shifts magically when you’re falling. Everything seems to happen in slow-mo & double speed all at once, your consciousness so bright that you feel every move twice and still you’re not able to save yourself.

It’s different having control on how you fall but if it happens on impulse, your body decides for you or rather your primal instincts. I lost control over the steering wheel, felt my body shift and lose balance, the handlebar getting stopped by my upper right leg, both my hands somehow trying to prop my body, pushing on something like hard aluminium.

To that point I didn’t even realize that my legs were twisted in the bike frames while my whole upper body was sliding forward with immense speed toward the ground, heard my bike hitting then and one second later my chin getting smashed on the rough tarmac.

Emergency rooms are atrocious. The doctors there are either tired or apathetic. From all the emergency rooms I’ve seen so far, there was only one doctor I completely felt preserved and secure and whom I trusted from the first second on.

The man in white that rushed in that night radiated coldness and subliminal stress. When he asked me some questions about the accident, he almost seemed bored. With a simple statement and some hand grips, he told me he had to stich up my laceration on the chin otherwise I would get an ugly scar.

You got to know I am terrified of needles and everything, whether it’s for good or bad. I just very dislike the feeling of somebody inserting a tiny metal pin into my vein. My fear of lying down for any sort of surgery is more huge; my legs start shaking and I cry, I get cold, want to hold somebody’s hand and would want to leave that place. Handing over control of your body and consciousness to someone totally foreign is such a scary thing, don’t you find? I mean, they can do anything with you.

So how do I compensate those moments at the doctor I am so scared of? Well, I imagine myself running at a white beach. A beach with palms, blue water and a clear sky, not a beach I’ve seen before. It’s an endless beach so as long as the surgery takes, I keep running down that beach. Sometimes I can even hear the waves in my head rushing in and out. It calms me down and reminds of the fact that every moment, even the scariest one, is temporary and will pass.

Strangely blood doesn’t feel warm or soft on your skin, more like a cold, thick spurt running down. When it dries, it gets damn sticky like you put too much clue on your fingers but still leaves a trace when you touch something. Smelling it is even worse although tasting it on your tongue is familiar.

After surgery they had to set a needle again, for infusion. They send me up on STATION 7 CASUALTY DEPARTMENT into a room with two very old ladies starting a snoring competition as soon as the nurse has left the room. After two hours, I recognized my infusion was empty and asked for some Ohropax. I tried to sleep then for a couple of hours, more dozing then actually resting.

So as I woke up in the morning when breakfast came for us, I was done. I called my mum then and talked to some friends and explained what happened. It’s not so much the actual accident or pain you’re having that hurts, it’s the experience and shock you go through. I’ve had a lot of these situations as I lost control over my body and consciousness. And everytime it gets scary and I feel like a goddamn little, left kid. It was a tiny, big step for me going through what happened that night, I think. It will get better the next day.