Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Jackass Battles the Terror

I'm not saying I'm one in support of the validity of premonitions, but it went down today in ways I wish I had never seen coming.

What started out as a normal day, turned into a full-scale riot at the Agency and possibly ended my career as an Agent.
Things were tense on J & H units the past few days. Guests had decided to say, "Fuck that" to the whole, "do unto others" policy and the fact the mercury was hovering around 90 didn't help all that much either.
So what's a guy to do, right? He watches his back and the backs of his fellow Agents.

No matter how careful you are, evil waits to rear it's ugly head.

Several weeks ago, I awoke in a cold sweat, shaking from one of the nastiest dreams I've had since boyhood.
This really freaked me out because I don't normally remember my dreams. I was dreaming about work and about some hairy shit, (like a riot) going down...except we we're handling it.
It was a tough situation, but never at any time did Agents lose control. One of the nastiest residents I've seen in my career with the Agency, decided to take advantage of the chaos,
and attack a co-worker with her back turned. Without thinking I ran to intercept and take said resident down or out, whatever was necessary. As I was running to do so, bits and pieces
of my dream started coming back to me and frantically I tried to anticipate what was coming next.

Without thinking I locked the resident down in a hold that stopped the attack. There was too much stimuli and for a moment I had a glimpse of what it must be like to be autistic, and then there was an explosion and there was a brilliant white light in my eyes.
It felt as though Jason Varitek had taken a bat to my head and that someone else jabbed a railroad spike through my foot all at the same time.
My body accordioned and I hit the floor like I was born without a skeleton. Almost instantaneously I heard the same evil cackle from my dreams.

I saw the malevolent grin and eyes that embodied the absence of love.

I knew I was hurt bad and that I needed to move if I wanted to come out alive. Trying to shake out the cobwebs was almost impossible. I realized I had managed to save my co-worker
but in the process, taken one for the team, so to speak. Special Operations arrived after what seemed like 100 years and managed to lay the smack down on the riot scene. I writhed in pain and rolled from side to side,
not wanting to look at my foot and unable to lift my head.

I knew I was hurt by the looks on the faces of my coworkers.

I knew I was hurt by the amount of pain I was in, and yet oddly enough still conscious.

It was the kind of pain that made me want to cry for my mother and Jesus at the same time.
the kind of pain that made me want to saw off my foot and hobble around on a stump for the rest of my days.
the kind of pain that made my eyes want to roll into the back of my head and never come out.
the kind of pain that made me never want to sing, dance, smile, walk, make love or play rugby ever again.

It was the kind of pain they wanted to call the ambulance for. Looking back I probably should have taken a ride in the bus,
but making it to where I needed to go on my own steam, was reassurance enough to me that I was okay.

X-Rays all came back negative on my head. No fracture, no concussion, no nothing. It was hard to believe, but there is something to be said for the power of, "divine intervention."

My foot on the other hand was a different story. It was bad. There was nerve damage, a lot of nerve damage. Enough so that I may never again feel the summer grass under my feet or the cool waters of the Atlantic on my toes.
Enough so that I may have to look to make sure I have decent footing when getting up or walking on non-level terrain. Enough so that I need to start rehab as soon as possible so that my foot doesn't, "forget how to do it's thing."

and so I sit here, with my foot elevated almost as high as I am on some awesome pain medication. The RIPTA bus that tried to pull a drive-by on me has since been medicated away, and my other injuries may or may not improve with time.
So I have to thank the man upstairs for the head's up, thank my fellow co-workers for pulling me out of harm's way, and pray like a child-killer on death row, I make a full recovery.

I hope you all are well.

Cheers,
JJ

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Damn, B. I guess you're not down with the dumptrucks, eh?