Concussion

Was the diagnosis even real, or just a serious word to calm me? What can I remember? I remember the first shard of pain, jolting into my temple and spreading its fingers through me until they reached out of my body, grasping at the brilliant sunlight that splintered into my face.

The doctor's hands on my breasts, not even lingering, grazing the tiny blue and white flowers on my shirt.

"Looks like you're set, Liz," he said, dropping his sturdy hands from my temples. They landed, or, rather, lit like butterflies, on my breasts and flew away just as quickly, his hollow blue eyes never leaving mine. Maybe they just got in the way, my breasts, and maybe he just wasn't paying attention, since he was busy staring into my eyes to make sure they were pointing in the right direction.

"Do you have someone to drive you home who'll check on you throughout the night?"

"My roommate." I dropped from the examining table, feeling a puff of air whoosh into the hole in my plaid canvas shoe as my feet hit the floor.

My first thought that afternoon when I hit my head:

"Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckmytempleohfuckohfuckohfuck!"

My second thought:

"I want a nap."

My third thought:

"I want lunch."

And then I didn't think anymore. I walked outside, got into my car, and went hunting for my lunch. Fragmented breaths escaping with a quiet hum, the way they do when the breather doesn't think about censoring her instinct to pant.

I ate my lunch while sitting on my bed, watching the clock and eating each ingredient of my hamburger separately - first the top bun, then the lettuce, then the tomato, then the meat, then the bottom bun. Twenty minutes of sandwich deconstruction, and then I got ready for work.

An hour later, in my car, backing out of the driveway, the sun blasted my eyes, pushing my head against the headrest, but I didn't notice it like I normally would have.

I turned the wheel left so the car would point right just as the d.j. said that the body found in Kurt Cobain's Seattle home was, indeed, his. His? His, Kurt's, or his, the d.j.'s? When I found out Kurt was dead, my first thought:

"I know."

When my mother phoned me in the middle of the night, four months ago, to tell me that my dog was dead, my first thought:

"I know."

When my dad called me to tell me that my grandmother was dead three years ago, my first thought:

When Brian told me that Chad was dead four years ago on the Sunday before the beginning of our senior year of high school, my first thought:

"I know."

When Mrs. VanHorn stopped me in the grocery store on the first day of the last decade of the millennium, to tell me that my classmate John was dead-- stuck a shotgun in his eye and pulled the trigger, my first thought:

"I know."

My second thought:

"Will they give him a glass eye for the funeral?" No horror in the initial news of death. No shock or surprise. No pain. Only numb recognition, followed by images of cancerous bile dripping out of Chad and Grandma's falling lungs onto their trembling chins. The bubble of blood and mucous popping out of my dog's nostril as her tiny, ripped lung emptied. John and Kurt's brilliant red blood exploding from the backs of their skulls onto the clean white walls behind them.

"On the day that John Wayne died I found myself on the Continental Divide Tell me where do I go from here? Think I'll drive into Leadville and have a few beers." - Jimmy Buffett, "Incommunicado"

"On the day Kurt Cobain died I couldn't focus, no matter how hard I tried. Smacked my head and I started to reel I think my doctor just tried to cop a big feel." - Liz Waters, "The Song I Wrote While Lying In Bed, Wondering If My Brain Was Bleeding."

I don't remember where I was when John Wayne died, since I was just a little kid. But I remember seeing him on a news program before he died, lying in bed in a manly, wood-panelled bedroom, tanks and tanks of life- sustaining gasses tethered to him by clear plastic tubes.

I've found myself on the Continental Divide on several occasions. When I was a kid my parents would haul me out to Colorado for a week almost every summer so I could see the foil to the flat Missouri grasslands I saw during the rest of the year. I didn't see the big deal about the Divide, since my brain was too young to comprehend why rivers flow in one direction as opposed to another. Maybe if I'd been older, and had just lost a hero, and had been old enough to buy beer in Leadville, I would have understood.

How did I get the concussion? It's stupid, really. There was a sliding glass door in the duplex I shared with three roommates, and next to the door we had a big, decorative carousel horse. My mom gave the horse to us, even though we didn't really have much use for pretty things. So it stood in a corner in the empty den, clinging to the dusty walls with spiderweb fingers.

I had an aquarium in my bedroom and I went away for a week and accidentally left the heater turned up too high. When I got home, I knew my fish were dead before I saw them. I could smell their death, like the black waves of stench that rolled off the polluted lake just south of my childhood home in early August afternoons. The water aquarium was 106 degrees, and the heat radiated off the grey water and smudged glass, hitting me as soon as I walked in. The plump silver mollies, their iridescent fins elegant and flowing when I left, had turned sooty and splayed. Strips of bloodless velvet flesh fluttered off the crescent corpses, reaching towards the push and pull of the filter. The fish curved and bloated like shrimp after they've hit the searing bottom of a cast iron skillet. The teal and black rocks on the bottom of the tank were colorless in the fog; the clear cracked antique marbles that dotted the pebbles like heavy, fractured bubbles were invisible.

I pulled the heater and filter from the edge of the tank, careful to not touch the sludge within its glass. Even though the heater was old and sick, with a silver crust of limestone scales growing on the heating element, I kept it. I should have just thrown it away, but I paid eight dollars for it three years before.

Ten gallons of water, five pounds of glass, three pounds of rocks, sitting on a shelftop that reached just between my breasts and shoulders.

I left the bedroom, gasping for air as soon as I hit the cool, fresh den. I moved the carousel horse over so I could reach the wooden safety bar, wedged at an angle between the floor and sliding glass door. I kicked it out of the way, threw the door open, and gulped the April breeze that wafted inside, almost erasing the dead fish stench that oozed from the next room. I counted my steps from the door to the aquarium - eleven short strides, easy enough when unburdened. Ten gallons of water, five pounds of glass, three pounds of rocks, and eleven steps into the afternoon.

I hugged the hot tank close to me, pressing my cheek against the glass as I eased it off the shelf, balancing with my left foot behind me so the weight of the lofty aquarium wouldn't knock me backwards into the wall, where the shattered glass of the tank would pin me, drenching me in mossy water and long-dead bodies that were still warm. I stayed mashed into the side of the tank until it was lowered from the shelf and completely in my grasp, and I slowly slid it down my front, feeling its warmth spreading down my torso until it rested on my bent knee. I loosened my embrace, partially balancing the tank on my leg while my hands caressed its sides, reaching for the glass bottom. With my hands firmly planted under the tank, I raised it off my leg, feeling my skin pull on my thigh with the suction of the moist glass. I wanted to fall backwards as I took the first steps, and then forwards. I could trip over the matted rust carpet, falling forward, smashing the glass under me, slicing through me, getting the water in my cuts and flattening the fish. I tip-toed, wishing I could see my feet through the murky water so I could make sure they were going where I wanted them to go.

I reached the open door, slightly raising my entire body as I stepped over the door's metal floor tracks. I started to lower the tank and dump it over the edge of the small slab patio, but it was too close to the house. Particularly, too close to my open bedroom window. The hill behind the house gently sloped into the bank of a deep, empty drainage ditch, surrounded by towering elms and oaks. A piece of quiet, natural solace sandwiched between matching 1960's tract ranch duplexes and crowded two-lane streets. I slowly let the tractionless soles of my old sneakers glide through the dew-dotted blades of new spring bluegrass. My knees lightly locked, steadying me on the slope as I floated to the creekbed's rim. I'd forgotten that the slope cut off before it hit the cracked mud bottom of the ditch, leaving a four-foot drop, broken by gnarled tree roots and decomposing leaves. I sucked in my breath, surprised when my toes were airborne. The stench of the aquarium forged into my nose and mouth, stampeding down my throat to my lungs and stomach. I stumbled backwards, choking as my stomach rocked and eyes watered. Every muscle in my body seized, and I clutched the tank tight enough to lose it. But I didn't. It rested on my bent knee as I released the tainted air in a burst, bringing me back to the slope, the ditch, and the funeral procession

I inched my way back to the edge, balancing the tank on my right hip so I could see my toes. I knelt, lowering the aquarium to its side. The pebbles stirred, clattering down the pane of glass, their metallic cascade muffled by the thick water and punctuated by the thud of each marble hitting the glass, one by one. The black rim of the tank stopped the flow, so I tipped it further, and the water rushed out, splashing to the dry earth below. I banged the heel of my hand against the bottom, and the last of the stuck pebbles popped loose, free-falling to the ground.

The whooshing and clattering slowed, growing silent as the pebbles hit the soft, wet ditch, the cracks in the dry mud erased by the water as it sunk into the earth. I stared at the pile of moist pebbles, glistening black and green in the afternoon sun, the marbles sending jolts of reflected white light back to me. I couldn't see any of the fish, and I couldn't remember seeing them float out of the tank. I checked the aquarium, almost expecting to see their little bodies stuck to the glass, but it was empty.

I carefully lifted the tank and walked up the gentle slope, once again stepping over the metal track in the doorway, imagining myself falling forward onto the empty aquarium. I sat it on the vacant counter and pulled the door shut.

I was almost back to my room before I realized I hadn't put the safety bar back the way I found it. So, I rushed back, quickly bending at the waist, not even bothering to push the veil of blonde hair out of my face as I set the bar and raised myself, unseeing, my head turned. I had set the bar a million times before, so many times that I could do it blind. But on the other occasions, I hadn't moved the carousel horse. And when I raised, head turned, the blunt tip of the horse's tail met my right temple, pushing the earpiece of my glasses into the boneless flesh of my head.

"Ohfuckohfuckohfuckohfuckmytempleohfuckohfuckohfuck!"

"I want a nap."

"I want lunch."

"It's a concussion!" I announced to my roommate Kathleen and everyone else in the waiting room, the same way nurses in old movies announced the sex of newborns to roomfuls of anxious relatives. Only Kathleen showed any sign of having heard me.

I had my doubts as the whether it was really a concussion or not. I wasn't in pain, I just felt a little off-kilter, like I'd had too much to drink, but not enough to make me drunk. I felt like the doctor had told me it was a concussion because he knew that's what I wanted to hear. And since he gave me what I wanted, he took what he wanted.

I plopped into the pea-green vinyl chair in the dark corner next to Kathleen. "You've got a job tonight," I said. "You have to wake me up once an hour to make sure that I know my name."

"Cool," she chuckled. "Are you ready?" She stretched as she stood, the imprint of her butt and thighs embossing the vinyl chair.

"Sure." I pulled my keys out of the pocket of my jeans. I wasn't completely honest with the doctor when I told him that I had someone to drive me home, since Kathleen didn't have her driver's license. She could probably drive in a pinch, if I passed out at the wheel.

When I got home from work earlier that night, I couldn't concentrate on anything Kathleen said to me. She was sitting in the living room on the shell-pink chenille couch, still wearing the white jersey knit miniskirt and cornflower blue T-shirt she'd worn to work that day. Her black-coffee eyes stared into the television, unblinking, buried in the images of Kurt that flashed on the screen.

"Did you hear?" Only her mouth moved when she asked.

"Yeah - on the radio." I collapsed into the wobbly mauve recliner, pulling my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them like a little girl. "I hit my head."

"When you heard he was dead?" Kathleen stared at me, and I tried to stare back, but my eyes kept veering left, to the white wall just above Kathleen's head.

"No ... before ... on the horse downstairs."

Kathleen cackled and asked if I was okay.

"I think. I didn't bleed." I rubbed the puffiness just under the earpiece of my glasses. "How was your day?"

Kathleen started telling me a story about the two deaf men who rode the same bus as her in the evenings and how they had flirted with her in sign language, and then slipped each other notes that she couldn't see, but she knew that they were about her. But I still couldn't focus on the details of her face, like I normally did when we talked. My eyes kept wandering up, flitting across the bare white wall behind her, leaping and jumping from one white patch to another white patch just like it to another to another to another. I lost track of what Kathleen was saying, buried in the softly glossed white, the music from the TV. distant, almost vacant, under her voice.

"I don't feel right," I interrupted.

"How hard did you hit your head?"

"Not very hard, but it was right on my temple."

"Maybe you should go to the emergency room."

I chuckled. "You're just looking for an excuse to hang out there." Kathleen claimed that the emergency room was the hottest spot in town. She even had a directory that listed every emergency room in the country, just in case we ever went anywhere.

"Well, it is Friday night and all. Are we going?"

I unfolded my legs, letting my long, loose skirt flow over them. "Maybe we should. Let me change my clothes." I pulled myself out of the chair, reeling slightly. Kathleen turned her attention back to the Kurt marathon, absorbing into the video. She hadn't moved at all when I returned ten minutes later, in jeans, flowered T-shirt, and plaid tennis shoes.

"Will you drive?" I asked as we walked out the door.

"Not unless you want to get more injured."

"We might end up that way if I drive." We stood at my car, Kathleen on the passenger side, me on the driver's side.

"I'm willing to take that chance." Kathleen got in the car, and I followed suit.

By the time we got home, it was well after midnight. Kathleen landed on the couch and turned the television on. The same video that was playing when we left was on again, like nothing else had aired in the three hours we were gone. The world had stopped when Kathleen turned the TV. off as we were walking out the door.

The red light on the answering machine blinked, and I knew it was my mother. Before I left for the hospital, I left a message on my mom's machine.

"I hit my head and Kathleen wants to go to the hospital." At the time I didn't think about how a mother would react to a message like that.

"Liz ... Kathleen ... anyone... If you know what's going on, please call." She didn't even say who she was.

"Hello?" Mom's voice didn't sound asleep, like it should have at 12:30 a.m.

"It's me. I'm fine. Sorry about the message." I sat down on one of the dining room chairs, propping my feet on another and watching my big toe wiggle in the hole in my shoe.

"What happened?"

"I hit my head on your carousel horse's tail and got a concussion."

Mom didn't even try to hide her laughter. "Were you giving it a prostate exam?"

"I was setting the safety bar on the sliding glass door." I didn't feel like laughing. Laughing would probably make my brain bleed.

"I'm surprised they didn't keep you overnight."

"Kathleen's supposed to wake me up once an hour to make sure I'm okay, but I don't know if I'm going to sleep."

"You should get some rest."

"Where were you when I called?"

"Your dad and I had some excitement of our own. We went for a ride in the country and hit a cow."

"With the car?"

She chuckled. "Well, yes!"

"Did you kill it?

"No. It sort of hit on the passenger side. When we stopped, I looked out my window and all I could see was cow face. She had her face pressed against the window and she left snot and eye gunk all over the glass. But she walked away. I almost got hit by a car while we were waiting for the sheriff."

ÒHow?Ó

"We were standing around, waiting, and I went across the road to look at the cow. Well, I'd no sooner gotten over there, when some junky little sports car came flat-ass flying over the hill, and he had to slam on his brakes, and he lost control and ditched his car right where I had been standing. Really shook your dad up. He kept saying, 'If you hadn't've moved, you would've been killed' over and over."

"Weird." I don't think her story was sinking in, because I was once again lost in the glossiness of the wall, trying to find a spot where the white wasn't uniform. "I think it's time to get some sleep."

"Do you want to come home until you feel better?"

"I don't know. I might. I don't know. I'll call and let you know."

"Call me. Take care of yourself."

"I will." I hung up the phone without saying "Goodbye - I love you" like I normally did. I grabbed a bag of pretzels and started to my room.

"Are you going to sleep?" Kathleen's eyes were still transfixed on the screen. The image had changed, but it contained the same people as all the images that had come before it.

"Not yet."

"Let me know when you do so I can wake you up."

In my room, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and sat cross-legged on the floor, the nap of the beige carpet making my bare skin itch. I lit a cone of sandalwood incense. The dead fish smell still clung to the room. I kept the lights dim, gently rocking back and forth, eating pretzels and watching the incense smoke waft out the window into the clear, cool April black night. The incense made my head swim, even more than it already was, and the quiet - the first solid quiet I'd heard all day - enveloped me. I could have went to sleep, rocking in the silent breeze.

But I didn't want to go to sleep. I'd always heard that if you go to sleep with a concussion, there's a chance you won't wake up. I stopped my rocking, sitting perfectly still in the dead calm of night. Without realizing it, I had grown used to the white noise of the aquarium gurgling, its motor humming without stopping to breathe. I slowed my breathing, listening to the quiet again, watching it fade into the walls and pull them closer to me, fogging the glossy white to grey where the shadows of the elms and oaks seeped in through the window and blotched the perfect white walls. The bruise on my temple throbbed for the first time since the initial impact, no longer numb. The blood that spilled below the skin in my head pulsed, thumping behind my eardrums and blanketing the silence from within, the only sound. I shuddered, shaking my head from side to side, speeding the pace and volume of the pulse until it ricochetted around my skull and down my spine. I pulled myself to my feet, grabbing the bedpost until the waves of moist, stark pain radiated down my body, dissipitating in my limbs. I drew a breath through my mouth, tasting the fish and clearing my vision. One foot in front of the other, slowly, I made my way to the door.

"Kath -"

"Yeah?" She didn't turn away from the television, still watching Kurt.

"Don't worry about waking me up. I'm not going to sleep."

"Why?"

"I just think it would be better if I didn't."

"Well, if you change your mind, tell me." She looked in my direction. "Are you okay?"

"No," I mumbled, closing the door. The pain had faded and I walked back to my spot on the floor, leaning over to put a CD in the stereo. The music started, the same song that Kathleen was listening to in the next room. I folded my legs lotus-style, closing my eyes and letting every muscle in my body sway and dance as the music filled my room.