I entered. His long locks lay in a knotty tangle upon the pillow. Tiny flecks of glass glistened in the curls, like glitter from a celebration, remnants of the violent collision. I listened to the gentle susurration of his breath. He was attached to a complex array of apparatus; IVs, a nasal canula, a neck brace attached to a chest brace. A long tube snaked from beneath the sheets and drained his urine into a bag hanging on a bedpost. Monitors above the bed blinked and whirred and scrolled details of his vital signs. The wall clock had a soft mechanical tick with each movement of the second hand...

*****

I continued my early morning visits. I did not want him to awaken alone. The elevator in this older hospital was slow. The heaviness in my heart seemed too much for the lift. The news never improved; just another layer of apprehension atop the day’s previous until eventually you carry all that you can and the rest just sloughs off. You think you are the only one. Yet each morning a new family lay sprawled on the couches in the waiting room coping with their own heartache. Disoriented, haggard, many with tear streaked faces. I found no comfort in what we shared. For them too, something had gone terribly wrong. You want to believe that your pain is the center of the universe. But the truth was each of us was just another lonely satellite orbiting the huge sun of tragedy.

*****

I wanted to vomit the first time someone called my son a “quad”. I have since become accustomed to the term and many others that are part of the paralysis vocabulary. But that first time...it felt like a racial slur. That it came from the Social Worker who was helping us through the complicated processes of pay and future care was unfortunate.

She had an annoying smile that she used to punctuate her counsel. “You will see, you just start the process and one thing follows another.” Smile. “Medicaid will cover that.” Smile. “...As a quad he should get six weeks of rehab.” Smile. We were so out of our comfort zone there was hardly anyway she could help but come across as patronizing. Then, when she referred to my son in the third person as a “quad”, well, I wanted to punch her.

There are no soft landings with paralysis. Everything I wanted to doubt or hope against was no longer available. The realization, the admission that this may be forever, comes with a big thud. That was mine; the word quad did it.

Dad’s Folly