Mid-life Crisis 1.

Martin lay on an emergency room table, bleeding profusely from a bullet wound to his lower back and going in and out of consciousness. The loss of blood was depriving his brain of oxygen and he was slowly drifting off, he just wanted the doctors to turn off the lamp above his head, he couldn’t even see through the light it was so bright. But he could hear voices.

       “He’s gone, he’s unconscious,” the nurse said.

       “Get 10 cc’s of...,” a male voice said and that’s the last thing he heard before realizing that there was no lamp above his head. This is what everyone was always talking about, he thought. The light was warm and welcoming. He could see his own bloody body on the table and wondered what happened. He was not unconscious, his consciousness just left his body, there isn’t such thing as not conscious; only unconscious behavior.

       He noticed the wind, blowing memories by his mind’s eye. There were old thoughts of his loved ones. There was nothing was new anymore, things either were or they were not. Time became a fluid in which all events were contained and it sat in a puddle before Martin. The spigot was turned off and Martin had the power to open it up again and was aware of it. He didn’t know how long he had been there but it seemed like he had always been there. He let the river of time flow by him, again, as if it mattered anymore. Time was something for the “living”. But martin had never felt more alive. His life began to pass before his eyes quickly, in slow motion. And all the moments in his life where he showed mercy were stacked against all the moments in his life were he didn’t. All the time in which he suffered with the times when he felt joy. He didn’t feel judged, but recognized, for the good and the bad.

       “Clear!” the doctor shouted and placed the paddles on Martin’s chest. They hit the button and Martin saw his limp body jump upward but he didn’t feel anything except peace.

He didn’t care if he lived or died. Most of his loved ones have already left the uncertainty of life. Although he did have a sister that he could see would need him. He could see his Mother lugging her typewriter home at night to earn more money working at home, when it was just she and Martin. He could feel her pain from raising him alone, and the solitude. He could understand what he couldn’t while living. He could feel others’ feelings and some he didn’t appreciate. Like his stepfather’s when he first met his Mother. He didn’t like Martin very much. But although Martin could feel these feelings that he didn’t like very much, he had love in his heart for him, and everything else. He had the most complete and fulfilling sense of love he had ever had.

              Then he felt himself swept away and brought into his over-indulgent 20’s. He beat himself like a dog that had just ruined the carpet, again. He saw himself obsessing over alcohol and sex, breaking the laws of the land and putting himself in harm’s way. He saw himself rub shoulders with death. He saw himself mistreating girlfriends not by cheating or beating but by lack of consideration. Then he was swept away again into his childhood, when he was a mere prisoner to his parents. He saw the abuse he endured by his stepfather and saw him having to endure the same abuse after he died. He got no gratification out of it; he only had love inside of him. He saw his Mother, lonely and loveless, until George, his stepfather came along. He felt himself slipping out of his body but wanted to hold on. He also knew, and was at peace with, having to move on from the Earthly bonds of the flesh. It was only flesh, after all.

       He felt himself, his inner self, shot out into space and was looking back on his life and it was a swirling ball in front of his eyes surrounded by the darkness of space. It wasn’t the Earth he was seeing but his world and everything he’s ever known. He could feel that he had to make a choice. Does he want back in or not? He really did. And suddenly his pulse got stronger, the doctors and nurses had worked hard to stabilize him. He had blood coming into his body, but it wasn’t his blood and he knew this. The blood had a foreign feel to it. He could feel the essence of the woman it came from and she was still happily walking the Earth. He was back in his body but in a coma. The bullet had punctured his spinal chord and he was paralyzed from the waist down. In his coma he heard doctors telling the nurse that he would never walk again. He changed his mind. He didn’t want to be back anymore. He didn’t want to live life as a paraplegic.

       His sister came and visited him in the hospital and was quite distraught.

       Through a waterfall of tears, ”Marty come back to us, this is your sister Amy, I know we moved far away and we wanted to see you more but with work and all...Goddamn it! Don’t do this, we need you...I need you!” she was pounding on his arm with her fist. “We love you very much.” and then she started crying to the point of not being able to talk. She rested her forehead on his arm, while he lay motionless. Her tears were dripping on the floor beneath his bed and Martin could hear them hit the floor like boulders from a 99^th floor window.

       Martin heard every word she said but was away in a slumber that swallowed him like a whale does plankton. He was a mere speck in a sea of nothingness. In a sinkhole with no bottom, he was freefalling and he’d never been so comfortable in life. Then he got a visit from someone he did not know,

       “I know you don’t know us but we just want to say Thank you. We hope you can hear us. What you did was heroic. Alright guys let’s go.” the voice was male but he could smell the perfume of a woman in the room. He had no idea who he was and the perfume was one he was not familiar with. And then he could feel the sensation of a tube down his throat and it irritated him. At the time Martin was single. He was an athlete and some of his buddies that were on the track team as him came by.

       “The doctor said that you can hear us, I don’t know how he knows this, he said that he’d never been in a coma. But anyway, we need you back, man. The team needs you because Josh can’t always win like you can, I mean, he does a good job trying.” Bobby said.

       “Alright, it’s my turn to talk to him, c’mon Martin, we need you to compete in your event, and we have always needed your points to win the Meet.” Thomas said

       “You guys are so insensitive,” it was Lilly, the female 100 meter hurdler who never won her event but tried her damnedest each time sometimes hitting every hurdle and falling on the last three, but she would always get up and try for the next one. “Martin, I know your Mother died and you don’t really have a Dad but,” and this part she whispered into his ear, “I have feelings for you and have never said anything because of these to lugs always being around us,” and then she stopped whispering, “ Come back Marty! I brought you some flowers.”

       “I?” Bobby interjects.

       “OK, WE brought you some flowers and they’re just beautiful.” Lilly corrects herself.

       “Yeah, we all pitched in, Marty.” Thomas said. They had never called him Marty before. Only people that love him call him, Marty, but they didn’t know that.

       “There’s also some flowers from,” Lilly fumbles with the little card attached to the bouquet, “The Dawson family. Whoever that is.”

       “But are’s are bigger” Thomas said.

       “And more colorful” Bobby added.

       “We all love you and want you to come back and not just for the points at then Meet,” Lilly looks at Thomas and makes a face saying ‘you’re a jerk’. “We just want our friend back.” and she starts to sob, as Bobby puts his arm around her.

       “Don’t cry it will scare him!” Thomas said.

       “He can hear you ya’ know” Lilly says in between sobs.

       “Shhh...he’ll be alright, you know Martin, he’s a pretty tough dude.” Bobby tries to comfort Lilly. Martin heard every word they said and never knew that Lilly had feelings for him. He wanted to wake up and hold her himself but something was blocking him from coming back. It was like a string was tied to his consciousness and attached to something in the darkness. He couldn’t break free. It was like he was swimming in an ocean of awareness and he was bobbing up and down, he could hear everything that was going on, then he was pulled down into an abyss and deep sleep. And a wave came just as Bobby tried to comfort Lilly and he was sucked under into deep sleep. Bobby, Thomas and Lilly left after Lilly broke down completely and was crying uncontrollably.

       Martin was in suspended animation, he was not dead and was aware of that but he wasn’t really eager to come back and be a paraplegic, he figured that Lilly, Bobby and Thomas didn’t know that. The doctor came in briefly and checked his chart and left. He was the nurse’s responsibility, now; there was nothing that the doctors could do for him. Lost in slumber he was transferred out of the hospital to a nursing home. The nurses greeted him as if he were alive.

       “Hello, Martin? Is it? You’ll be in room 27 and Tammy will be taking care of you, today, you are at Shady Acres nursing home.” and he was wheeled away to room 27 by the ambulance drivers, lifted off the gurney and plopped down on the bed.

       “Hi Martin. I’m Tammy.” I’ll get you situated, “I know you’ve probably been ignored because you’re in a coma, but I know you can hear me. My uncle was in a coma for five months and he told me that he heard every word I said while he was asleep.” Tammy finished.

       ‘Finally!’ Martin thought, someone who actually knew what he was going through. He did hear every word she said and would have woken to thank her but this damn string was still hanging him up. Tammy smelled good and Martin didn’t usually like women’s perfume, it was too flowery. He liked the smell of woods like Sandalwood and Cedar; about the only flower that Martin liked was Jasmine.

       Tammy made him comfortable and turned on the TV which was completely unnecessary, he would have rather heard some music but he knew that she was trying and felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for all the hard work that the people around him have done. And for his sister, Christine, She has always been there for him. She was his stepsister and 9 years younger than he. But Martin changed her diapers and loved her like his blood. He remembers having to get her ready, in the morning, to go to the babysitter. Putting on her little shoes and little jacket. He was in Junior High and getting her dressed was a chore, then, now it’s one of his most cherished memories. He was proud of Christine; she was growing into a fine young lady.

       Besides being on the High School Track team, Martin was an accomplished pianist. His teacher was David.

“The music studio hasn’t been the same without you. We need you to accompany singers auditioning for the talent show. Right now they’re relying on me and they need to audition with the person they’ll be playing with, you.” David was full of compliments for his prized student. But it wasn’t always like that.

“That’s arrogant of you to play Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth. You’re good but you don’t have to flaunt it. You should be more conservative with your choice for the recital. You don’t need to blow everyone’s mind all the time!” David told Martin.

“How about Stravinsky?” Martin asked him.

“Better, but you should be trying to play a piece that you have a firm, I mean death grip, on.” David said.

“OK, chopsticks it is!” Martin liked being a smartass.

“Uggh!” David throws up his hands and walks away.

Martin played Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” for the recital and wowed the audience but horrified David.

“Show off!” David said to Martin as he left the stage. But really he was proud of him. He was just hard on him because if he is his prized student David was going to make sure he was the best that he could possibly be.

“We really need you back, and the nurses told me that they need the room.” to that Martin smiled and David saw it.

“He smiled! he smiled!,” stepping out into the hallway, “He smiled!” David shouted down the hall, but the only thing he got was an old man trying to sleep yelling back,

“He probably just has gas! Can it, will ya’ some of us are trying to sleep.” but it was 11 in the morning.