lucy

I don’t remember a lot from that time. Lucy fell June 22nd. I heard the impact clearly, but I didn’t see it. My reaction to the event - which sounded like a duffle bag full of books landing on padded concrete - was that I was pissed off. I sucked my teeth -What’s she doing now, fucking Lucy. Always something. Couldn’t we just have a nice visit? can’t you just be normal. I haven’t been to your house in three years. But then I couldn’t open the door because your body was blocking it. I squeezed half of myself thru and twisted to the right to see you on your back with your feet stretched out perfectly straight, resting the backs of your ankles on the second to last step. You were laying at the bottom of the narrow concrete staircase in your blue jeans and black sweatshirt. Your eyes were fixed on the ceiling - your green eyes were wide and stared straight up without blinking. I remember the moment I begged you to just “get up”, when I thought you were pulling some dramatic nonsense, as usual. But when you sat up I saw the small circular pool of blood that gathered behind your head - seeping into the carpet, and I saw it was dark blood. I remember the look in your face when you were being lifted into the ambulance, I was watching you fog up and go blurry when you looked straight at me without seeing me. I remember when they wheeled you back to our room in the ER after your first of many Cat Scans, when you were still sort of awake. I remember the repetitive way you rubbed your eyes and touched your forehead over and over again, for six hours while we waited in the ER for the next scan. When the doctors asked your name you replied with numbers. “5 - 6 - 1 - 9 - 5 - 7 - 6” and when they asked you where you were, you said you were “In the garden”.

The last thing Lucy and I had talked about were Raspberries, and how to keep them from going bad. You needed a good glass jar to keep them fresh, she said - nice and sealed to not let anything inside. An hour later she fell backwards down a flight of stairs bouncing off the wall three times before landing on the back of her head. Each time she hit the wall was a skull fracture. I would later plot the fall with my own in-shock-forensics study charting and identifying the black scuffs where I could see bits of red - and the color of her makeup and foundation which had smeared against the solid concrete walls during the fall. Lucy landed so hard she fractured a tiny a bone called the “sphenoid” which is buried deep in the middle of the sinus, and when it broke air seeped into her skull. It made me think of things falling out of buildings. It made me think of her when she was a baby, learning to walk and how we would press our faces together.

I just kept telling her she was doing a good job. Her breathing was labored and came in quick puffed exhales thru her mouth. Like blowing out little birthday candles. She moved, and shifted around - but it wasn’t my sister, it was just her body reacting to an environment. To being in pain. We had been shuffled around the hospital so many times, I stopped going outside for fear of not making it back to her room. The Neurological Intensive Care Unit is where people go when their heads explode. Traumatic brain injuries or “TBI’s” - craniotomy’s - people in full body-casts who’ve had their skulls cut open to reduce brain swelling. Bodies like machine parts - things that have failed or have been removed for failing. Bodies like meat - nurses treat the bodies like meat, they have to. There’s too many bodies. You hear moaning, and screaming at all hours of every every day. A Doctor argues with an intubated woman who can’t speak, because she’s intubated - and brain damaged. She wants the tube out because it feels like she’s choking. But she can’t understand what he’s saying because she’s brain damaged. Her son is sitting in a chair outside the room listening to the exchange, staring straight in front of him in total silence. My sister is in the room next to them.

The team of “Neurointensivists” surrounded my sister, all silent apart from the one asking the questions. They all wore face masks. Lucy’s head was wrapped in a white sock, her left arm and hand were broken from the fall - and her right hand was wrapped with what looked like a white boxing glove, to keep her from pulling the tube out of her nose that was keeping her alive. The young asian female doctor asked her the same questions in a loud sharp monotone shout - over and over again. “What’s your name Lucy? Lucy, can you tell me your name, Lucy?” while squeezing that tender part of the shoulder that makes you wince. She winced, but kept her eyes closed, and said nothing. She had multiple skull fractures, multiple brain bleeds and dangerous levels of brain swelling. All they could do was give her high quantities of salt in an attempt to reduce the swelling, which was increasingly forcing her brain against the inside of her skull. Beyond the salt? there was surgery - and I was not going to agree to that.

I was told she would likely never wake up, probably. Maybe. It’s hard to tell, they said. We can’t really say, Neurology is a new field they’d remind me - we’ll have to just wait and see, they said. During rounds at 6am they would mention “patients with similar injuries” - they’d tell me “if she does wake up, her quality of life will likely not be anywhere near what it was, and she will require 24 hour care. If she wakes up”. I just sat there waiting for something to change.

It’s hard to write about this. I’ve done a lot of work to bury this, I’m guessing. I never think about this. But when I was in the shower an hour ago, I saw a flash of Lucy’s face while putting shampoo in my hair. Maybe it’s because I touched my head. But It felt electric and I was suddenly back with her, sitting in that little room in the ICU. It was 5am and there was nothing left to hold me together. There was no family to lean on, our parents were long gone. Any relation or acquaintance I had on earth was 3500 miles or more away. I had been up for maybe three days. I was crying and spitting and hysterical - pleading with her to just, wake up. I had popped - I had no more control. I just kept asking. I just kept saying, “I need you”. That we didn’t have anyone else. That she couldn’t leave me alone like this. I felt four years old. I wanted my sister. And then suddenly, like a finger snap - her watery eyes opened and she turned to me leaning forward in her neck brace pulling the wires and tubes with her and she reached up with the broken hand and rested it against the side of my face. She just held it there. I felt my head fall into her lap, we had won. I had reached in and pulled her out. I crossed over and ran across something I can’t explain and had come back with my sister. She recognized me and looked into my eyes - she was awake, wide awake. She didn’t say anything, but for that brief last moment together she just took care of me the way she always had, and told me everything was fine.

I have nothing else to say about this, it feels like shit to do it.