How am I? Let’s see, my wife left me, a drunken woman hit me head-on, my foot’s fractured, my pelvis is in pieces, my neck is broken, I can't ride my bike, I can’t walk, I can’t dance, I can’t hike, skate, ski, dive, exercise, garden, play frisbee or have sex even if there was someone to have sex with. I open a get-well card from my aunt and her first handwritten line says, “We’re so glad everything is going so well for you.” I laugh out loud, bruised ribs and all. From her perspective, since I'm not dead, everything is good. It just depends on how you look at it. Somehow I honestly feel all right. There are some problem areas, but most of my body is intact and I can wipe myself again. It’s all relative.

The carrot is dangled on Friday. Every morning a doctor or team of them visits me. This morning Dr. Trauma tells me both Dr. Ortho and Dr. Neuro have authorized my discharge, and the trauma team concurs if I get an okay from the physical therapist. I know she’ll release me and the concept of going home, though fraught with a host of challenges, is all-consuming. I imagine my own pillow, my own food and no more prodding, poking and bloodletting. Mid-afternoon I’m told my hemoglobin count is too low and I can’t get out until it’s up. Gee whiz, maybe there should have been some give as well as take in the blood department. Friends are instructed to smuggle in Geritol, beets, red food coloring and any extra hemoglobin they may have lying around the house.

It’s dead at the hospital on Saturday and Sunday. The halls are silent, a lone assistant doctor wanders by, all the other patients seem to have gone home for the weekend. Any doctor with discharge authority is undoubtedly on the golf course. The clock ticks and the hemoglobin drips. I religiously drink red grape juice, cranberry juice, water, milk, whatever. I order extra food and devour every morsel in hopes there may be a hemoglobin in it. I routinely exceed my eating quota. I do leg lifts, muscle stretches, a few sets of side turns. Although it takes about a decade, I slowly, carefully, painfully get to the bathroom on my own, trusting my walker, rolling my precious hemoglobin IV, washing and wiping myself. Any urine I save for the bottle by the bed so they can measure and record it. I must pass my urine tests. I don’t want to not get discharged for not having enough discharge.

Monday is D-Day. Discharge is the only thing on my mind. I’m up early to prepare for the doctors. It might as well be the most important job interview of my life, my dissertation defense or a crucial meeting with the prison parole board. By the time the team of four trauma doctors arrive at 10 a.m., I am sitting in the chair: bathed, hair washed, clean gown, feet up, reading “USA Today.” They’re visibly surprised. “Isn’t this the cycle guy who had the head-on a week ago?” I calmly answer all their questions. If my hemoglobin count is kosher, there’s no way they can keep me. The verdict? All systems A-OK, a final therapy lesson on crutches and stairs, and then I’m outta here! I felt lucky. From a head-on, hit-and-run to a home run in nine days.

Besides all the grand friends from NC who visit, help and cheer me on, I am sent an angel from Minnesota by the name of Jim Rains. A motorcycle aficionado and former neighbor, he’d come to NC with his VW bus and two bikes for a hedonistic, month-long, riding extravaganza. But for the next two weeks, he stays with me, drives, fetches, repairs, remodels, laughs, wonders about life and death with me and makes my transition a joy. A consummate cabinet maker and handyman, he rigs devices so I can water my outside plants, hangs an exercise bar on the porch, fashions a rolling cart complete with drink holders. We visit the scene of the crime, the dead Vulcan, meet the district attorney at the courthouse, rent videos, buy designer coffee, stock up on fresh produce at the Farmers’ Market and deliver bags of ripe peaches, corn, potatoes and melons to the folks who had promised to bring me food. To my friends, he says: “I’m just drivin’ Mr. Daisy.” To me, when it’s time to venture out, he says: “Okay, crank up the gimp machine.” I am forever grateful for his selfless help and friendship.

August 27 , one month since IMPACT. “So how are you?” Every day I’m getting better. (I’m not sure when I’ve ever been able to say that, maybe when I was four or five.) If I lie quietly in bed, first thing in the morning, sometimes I feel absolutely normal, healed, intact. The hardest moments are when I have to leave that space for the reality of pain and disability in every other space during the day. I’m off the pain pills and on every other vitamin, mineral or herb people and places I respect recommend: calcium, magnesium, silicon, spirulina, wheat grass, celery seed extract, protein powder, lecithin, condroitin, glucosamine, MSM, WD-40, eye of newt. Not only did the hospital neglect to send a nutritionist to my room, upon discharge there was no mention whatsoever of diet by any doctor, nurse or doorman, not one word, na-da, zip. At minimum I’d expected this: “Okay y’all, yer bones er made a calcium, so ya might could trade your RC Cola for a milk shake with yer Moon Pie.”

Foot Note. Before getting out of bed in the morning, Frankenfoot approaches normal size and color. During the day, he demands to be raised regularly, preferably above the heart, ideally on top of my shoulders, replacing my head. My time on crutches is limited to the amount of blood he can hold. When I’m upright too long, he turns purple and looks like an over-cooked sausage ready to explode on the grill. Once he’s gathered all the blood in my body, he begins to draw blood from people standing around me. (Perhaps he’s really Footula the Vampire.) The last few nights in bed, Frankenfoot has been possessed. Like he’s getting strong electric vibrations from space. Like tiny bugs are crawling inside around the metal. Like someone has fastened jumper cables to each pin. At minimum, the pins stay in until the end of September when I see Dr. Ortho. Life with Frankenfoot is not boring.

Breaking Story of the Pelvis. Inoperable, no pins, no damage in the weight-bearing area, wherever that is. At least everything has returned to its normal size. The left leg and hip are happy to carry the right for awhile. Fragile is the key word here. I certainly am not doing any full leg splits. I know I could do them. Once.