The Tragedy, Part 2

So where was I? I started Part 1 and then found myself clamming up again, but I am going to open up my little clammy shell with my little clammy-shell-opener-thingy. It's not an easy thing to do I'm afraid, it's a bloody tight little clammy shell, but I think it's a good thing to do, hopefully cathartic, and hopefully not too tedious for any of you reading this. It's a disjointed story, the story of The Tragedy, mostly because I've never managed to write it down or sort it into any order. Maybe because it has no order.

This bit is about the hospital, I think. I plan on it being about the hospital but you never know where it'll go. Being in hospital is just not fun. Being in hospital for three solid months is like hell on earth. I was transferred from Small Town hospital to Big Town hospital, where I spent a night, then airlifted to The City Beneath the Mountain hospital where I spent three nights and then to another hospital, which was to be my abode for the next four months, according to the doctor. I made it three months, I was determined (and if I'd stayed any longer I may well have jumped out of the fifth floor window, if I could've... the irony.)

Ok, no, the details, I need to get out the details. This may not, yet be about hospitals. I need to go back to the car, being in the car, waiting for the ambulance. Somebody gave me a sip of coke, through a straw. It was hot, remember, and we were in the middle of the Karoo, waiting as the sun got higher and higher. The woman who gave me the coke spoke to me, gently, telling me about her Tragedy - how she'd broken her neck years before, but not completely, and recovered perfectly. I wondered at the time why she was telling me that story, not for a second thinking my neck could also be broken, just there, at the back of my head.

The car had been filled to the brim with my and D's earthly belongings - four years of university life snuggly packed in the back . In the accident our lives had flown out, scattered about on the dusty red sand between the thorn trees that had also flung their arms into the car, embracing me and planting their thorns all over me (we discovered later). Two Karoo farmers on their way to play cricket in the Tiny Town a bit further down the road stopped too and I heard them trying to gather our scattered belongings, including a large plastic dinosaur, Leonard, who I'd purloined from my First Love's younger brother. They told me they'd 'put him out to pasture' on that lovely red sand (Leonard the dinosaur, not First Loves little brother).

There are so many characters in this story, people I'd not thought of, and this is still within the first two hours. This story really may take a long time. I'm glad I'm starting, I think. Those people, the nameless ones who stopped, I hope that Karma has blessed them with all sorts of good things. They were all so nice. A good reminder of the value of stopping, and helping. I'd love to be able to write them a letter, send them bunch of lillies, if I knew who they were.

The farmer whose farm we had so rudely, and without invitation, landed on, apparently took all of our wordly belongings and kept them safe until somebody (who was it, I wonder?) collected them for us. I had a mirror in there, it didn't break.

And then M, the guy from our university who I didn't know well. I think D knew him quite well. Anyway, it's beside the point. He was there, and he stayed with us, and came with us to the hospital and was, I guess, our own little angel, keeping us together as we unknowingly fell apart, because, really, I guess, I was already starting to unravel at that point, I just didn't realise. Or was I? I was still so sure of everything. Oy, this is all-over-the-place.

The ambulance arrived eventually, from Tiny Town with a fabulous paramedic man, who also, if I remember correctly, was meant to be in the cricket match (I wonder if they still had the match). I got bundled onto a hard wooden board with a neck brace and put into the back of the ambulance. Up until that point I had been obsessively superstitious about 'crossing my fingers and touching my toes hoping to never go in one of those' everytime I'd seen an ambulance... I've stopped that now.

I have to stop this now, too. This disjointed tale. I wonder if it makes any sense at all?