“Such a fucking depressive—what’s wrong with you?”
He accelerated.
“I’m not going to fight with you,” she said.
“You’re the kind of person who thinks she’s always right,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
Coming into town the light was green. A narrow road, framed by hundred-year-old trees, a big white house on the left, an inn across the way, the pond where in winter ice-skaters turned pirouettes, the cemetery on the far side, the old windmill, the Episcopal church, all of it deeply picturesque.
Green light, go. Coming around the corner, he seemed to speed up rather than slow down, he seemed to press his foot harder into the gas. They turned the corner. She could tell they weren’t going to make it. She looked at him to see if he had the wheel in hand, if he had any idea what he was doing, if he thought it was a joke. And then as they picked up more speed, as they slipped off the road, between two trees, over the embankment, she looked away.
The car stopped and her body continued on.
She remembers flying as if on a magic carpet, flying the way you might dream it, flying over water—sudden, surprising, and not entirely unpleasant.
She remembers thinking she might fly forever, all the way home.
She remembers thinking to cover her head, remembers they are by a cemetery.
She remembers telling herself—This is the last time.
She remembers when they went canoeing on the pond. A swan came charging toward the boat like a torpedo, like a hovercraft, skimming the surface, gaining on them. At first they thought it was funny and then it wasn’t.
“Should I swing my paddle at him? Should I try and hit him on the head? Should I break his fucking neck? What should I do?” he kept asking, all the while leaving her at the front of the boat, paddling furiously, left, right, left, right.
Now, something is pecking at her, biting her.
There is a sharp smell like ammonia, like smelling salts.
She remembers her body not attached to anything.
“Can you hear us?”
“Can someone get the swans out of here?”
Splashing. People walking in water. A lot of commotion.
“Are you in pain?”
“Don’t try to move. Don’t move anything. Let us do all the work.”
She remembers a lot of questions, time passing very slowly. She remembers the birds, a church, the leaf of a tree, the night sky, red lights, white lights in her eyes. She thinks she screamed. She meant to scream. She doesn’t know if she can make any noise.
“What is your name?”
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Can you feel this?”
“We’re going to give you some oxygen.”
“We’re going to set up an IV, there may be a little stick.”
“Do these bites on your head hurt?”
“Follow this light with your eyes.”
“Look at me. Can you look at me?”
He turns away. “We’re going to need a medevac helicopter. We’re going to need to land on that churchyard up there. We’re going to need her stable, in a hard collar and on a board. I think we may have a broken neck.”
She thinks they are talking about a swan, a swan has been injured.
“Don’t go to sleep,” they say, pinching her awake. “Stay with us.”
And then she is flying again. She remembers nothing. She remembers only what they told her.
“You’re very lucky. You could have been decapitated or paralyzed forever.”
She is in a hospital far away.
“You have a facet dislocation, five over six—in essence, a broken neck. We’re going to put you in a halo and a jacket. You’ll be up and around in no time.”
The doctor smiles down at her. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She can’t nod. She tries to but nothing happens. “Yes,” she says. “You think I’m very lucky.”
In the operating room, the interns and residents swab four points on her head. “Have you ever done this before?” they ask each other.
“I’ve watched.”
“We’re going to logroll you,” the doctor tells her. And they do. “Get the raised part at the back of the skull and the front positioning pin lined up over the bridge of the nose, approximately seven centimeters over the eyebrows with equal distance between the head and the halo all the way around.”
“How are your fingers? Can you move your fingers?”
She can.
“Good. Now wiggle your toes.”
“You don’t want it too high, it pitches the head back so she just sees sky, and you don’t want it too low because then she’s looking at her shoes,” the doctor says. He seems to know what he is talking about.