Wednesday May 8, 2019 - Nightmare World

9:00 am

Today is May 8th. I came home from the hospital yesterday. We were ambushed on April 13th. It’s been almost a month since the shooting, but I can only remember the last week. The rest is a black fog, a nightmare world. I’m writing this to try and reclaim some of those days, to separate the reality from the nightmare.

I remember my mind and body were trapped in a fog. I couldn’t extricate myself. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t open my eyes. I didn’t know if I was awake or in an endless nightmare. I vaguely remember a girl’s voice, like Max’s, but softer. Then the feeling of being moved and an explosion followed by many frantic voices. Then I was back at the car with Sophy in my arms and a bullet ripping into my back. Sonrisa’s man was ripping Sophy away from me and shooting her and Lauren in the head. Then he was turning his gun on me. A searing pain overtook my body and sent me back into the darkness.

I awoke an eternity later, suffocating in a sea of blackness. I couldn’t see or feel or breathe. For a moment, I could hear the whisper of voices "attempt on his life...security...extra guards". I flashed back to the car again, watching Peter crumple under a hail of bullets, and the pain hit me again.

I woke up again in blackness to hear more whispered voices. A woman’s, "He’s unresponsive…needs constant stimulation…we don’t have the resources." And a man’s, "I’ll assign someone." Then I was descending into another round of nightmares and another wave of pain. The nightmare cycle would repeat over and over again.

I awoke with a start. Out of nowhere, there was a hand holding mine. It was strong and callused. It couldn’t be a dream. It was too real, too alive. I gripped that hand with all my desperation. There was a strong voice accompanying the hand. It seemed to cut through the fog.

He said his name was Bling, that he could feel me squeezing his hand. He said I was having trouble waking up, but he was there to help me. He told me I wasn’t dreaming. He was real. He told me to reach out for him when I felt lost or confused, when I wasn’t sure if what I was seeing was real or not. He told me to just reach for his hand and listen for his voice, that they were real.

He said he would be reading to me and playing music, that I should try to focus on these things, that they would help me escape the nightmares. Far in the distance, I could hear music playing. I struggled to focus on it. I held on to the music and Bling’s voice and his hand, for dear life. But the fog was still so thick around me. Eventually, the effort became too much and I was back in the nightmare world. Sonrisa was laughing at me, throwing Sophy’s bloodied corpse at my feet as bullets were shooting like fiery darts through my body.

I needed to hear the music again, to hear Bling’s voice again. The fog continued to engulf me, but I fought hard to find Bling through the drone of voices around me. His voice became my beacon, talking to me, reading to me and asking me questions. It took all my effort to listen to what he was saying.

"Open your eyes, Logan." I’d try to push my eyes open to peer through the fog, to distinguish the blur of faces before me.

"Logan, I’m putting a ball in your hand. I want you to hold on to it." I’d feel a hand wrapping my fingers around a ball. I’d focus with all my energy to keep my grip on it, but the moment the hand let go, I could feel it roll away. Then I would be engulfed in the fog again and everything would fade away.

Bling’s voice was my constant. Sometimes it was far away and sometimes it was clear and right beside me. He read from an endless stream of books and had music constantly playing in the background. I don’t remember much about the books or what the music was. I just remember that it was there. That it was something to focus on. I drifted in and out of consciousness and nightmares, but I always came back to Bling’s voice and the music.

Eventually, the voices and the faces became clearer. There was a dark face, Bling’s face. It belonged to his voice, the voice that talked and read to me, the voice that asked me to open my eyes. There was another face, lighter with dark hair and sad, gentle eyes, saying he was my surgeon. Then many other faces, nurses I think, coming in and out. Then Max telling me not to take stupid risks. Then gunmen in masks, shooting through the windshield of the car, another nightmare of death and agony.

I awoke later to hear Bling talking about basketball. He said he was reading the History of Basketball. Basketball? Now that was a subject that could always grab my attention. The historical development of the game is one of the most engrossing things I could ever get into. I have always appreciated its athleticism, skill and sophisticated teamwork. Bling kept up a running commentary while he was reading. He also kept asking me questions. Which was the all-time best basketball team? Who was the best forward? Who was the best guard? Bling would just answer his own questions and continue. But when he suggested that Wilt Chamberlain was the greatest player of all time, I couldn’t let him get away with that.

"Michael Jordan," I whispered. I could barely get the words out of my mouth.

Bling stopped talking in mid sentence. I think he was shocked that I responded to him.

"No way. It’s got to be Wilt Chamberlain." There was a tone of surprise and amusement in his voice.

"It’s Michael Jordan, no question." My throat was so dry. My voice felt rough and unnatural. I opened my eyes and tried to focus through the fog on this guy who knew nothing about basketball.

"Chamberlain," he insisted.

"Jordan." I stared in the direction of the voice and, through the fog, his face came slowly into focus. He looked at me for an intense moment, then broke into a huge grin.

"Let me introduce myself. My name is Bling. Welcome back, man!" He knew I could see him. He held a straw to my lips so I could take a sip of water. I sucked back the water, then with determination, I returned to the topic at hand.

"I know who you are. Don’t change the subject. It’s definitely Michael Jordan." Bling stared at me in shock, then broke into a raucous laugh.

"It’s a pleasure meeting the guy who’s been chewing my ear off," I said sarcastically. It was so good having a real conversation, instead of trying to communicate through the fog, that I couldn’t help laughing as well.

I wanted to talk to Bling for hours, but an intense exhaustion overtook me and I fell into the first truly restful sleep since the shooting. I didn’t know then about the new reality I was about to face.

When I woke up, there was something wrong. My head felt relatively clear, but my legs were still stuck in the fog. I couldn’t move them. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist. I kept trying to make the connection, but the fog was too thick and my lower body was totally unresponsive. I looked frantically around for Bling.

"I’m here, Logan." He was at my side in an instant. "Your Doc will be here in a minute to explain to you what is going on." He understood my unspoken question. "You might remember him. He’s been around a lot. Let’s get you sitting up. It will be easier for you two to talk."

As Bling raised my bed, the man with the lighter face and dark hair walked in. My surgeon? He lowered the rail and sat down on the bed beside me. His gentle eyes seemed filled with sadness.

He said his name was Dr. Carr, but that I should call him Sam. He said there were a few things I needed to know and asked me if I remembered being in a shooting.

I nodded my head. That was the one thing that was clear in my mind, the ambush and losing Sophy. God! Everyone was dead.

"Logan?" His voice brought me back to the present. He told me I had been shot in the back and that he had performed surgery to remove the bullet fragments. He assured me that, even though I was currently experiencing a lot of pain, it would ease as I recovered from the surgery. He said there was an additional bullet fragment lodged close to my spinal cord, but that it appeared to be stable and should not cause me any trouble. He didn’t remove it because he didn’t want to risk further damage to my spinal cord.

"What do you mean further damage?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer to that question.

"One of the fragments severed your spinal cord in the mid-thorasic region, your middle back. Logan, you have paraplegia. That’s why you haven’t been able to move your legs. I’m so sorry." There was so much sadness in his eyes as he told me this.

I just stared at him. Severed cord? Paraplegia?

"Logan, do you understand?" There was an intense look of concern in his eyes, which I didn’t understand.

"Paraplegia, loss of motor control in lower extremities due to spinal cord injury. I know what it is." I answered him mechanically, but I didn’t believe him. I just kept staring at him. It wasn’t paraplegia. It was just the fog. It hadn’t lifted yet. A while ago, I couldn’t even hold a ball in my hand. Now I could. It was just the effects of the fog. I just needed to feel the floor under my feet and I would be fine.

Sam sat quietly with me until his pager went off. Then he left with another concerned look my way. I would be fine. Didn’t he know that?

"Logan, I’ll be back in a while so we can talk." I nodded my head, but we didn’t really need to talk. I just needed to feel the floor under my feet.

Sam and Bling moved out into the hall to have a whispered conference. I couldn’t understand why everyone was whispering around me with those worried looks. Didn’t they know I was fine? Sam himself said that the pain would eventually ease. I could endure it for a while. No problem. I just needed to feel the floor under my feet. I was already sitting up, so I pushed my legs over the side of the bed and let myself slide off. But I couldn’t find the floor. I couldn’t feel the floor. I couldn’t feel the floor!

"It’s okay, Logan. I’ve got you." Bling caught me in mid-fall. I tried to push him away and explain that I just needed to feel the floor under my feet. I don’t know how many times I repeated it before I blacked out.

When I woke up, both Bling and Sam were hovering worriedly over me.

"Logan, I’m so sorry." Bling’s voice was full of sorrow. As I looked into Bling’s and Sam’s eyes, I knew it was true.

Why didn’t they let me die with the others? Why did they have to wake me up from one nightmare world, only to place me in another? I couldn’t even get lost in the fog any more. I had nothing to say. I stared at them in silence. Sam and Bling sat quietly with me. All they could offer me was their presence. They were out of words. They knew nothing they could say would change things.

I couldn’t relax and let myself sleep. I didn’t want to fall asleep and forget about this, only to wake up and be reminded again. I fought sleep and exhaustion until my body refused to stay awake. Then the nightmares started again. Despite my exhaustion, I was awake again twenty minutes later, gasping for air.

The final week in the hospital was the worst. I hate hospitals. I couldn’t sleep at night. The nightmares constantly woke me up. I couldn’t sleep during the day. The noise and the smell overwhelmed me. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t relax for a moment, as a stream of medical staff performed an endless battery of tests. I spent most of my days anticipating, enduring and recovering from procedure after procedure. After last week, I’ll be happy if I never see another needle again in my life.

A couple of times each day, Bling would sit me in a chair for a few minutes to start developing my sitting tolerance. The first time we tried it, it was all I could do to keep myself from passing out from the pain. I just sat there with my eyes squeezed shut, trying not to breathe as tears streamed down my face and searing pain consumed my body. Thankfully, after a minute that felt like an eternity, Bling lifted me back into bed. I’m glad we began when we did, though. Otherwise I would never have been able to tolerate the ride home yesterday. Even with the time Bling put into preparing me, I still barely hung on by a thread. If that wasn’t enough, I also had the nursing staff with their endless cycle of turnings to look forward to.

"Mr. Cale, your body can no longer tell your brain when you’ve been in a position too long. If we don’t turn you regularly, you could develop severe pressure sores. Unchecked, the wounds could easily progress as deep as the bone, precipitating a life threatening situation. We must do everything we can to prevent that." Nurse after nurse gave me the same story, reminding me of how absolutely useless I had become. So every two hours, day and night, asleep or awake they changed my position. Alternately propping me on my left side, then on my right side, and finally on my back, in an endless, torturous cycle. Pressure relief, they called it, though I wouldn’t define it as that.

The thing I hated the most, though, was the daily round of catheterizations. Every four hours like clockwork, 2pm, 6pm, 10pm, 2am, 6am, 10am, a nurse snaked a tube inside me to prevent my bladder from exploding and killing me. I shouldn’t feel it, they said. Well I didn’t need to ‘feel’ it to feel completely invaded. And it didn’t make me ‘feel’ any better to learn that I would probably have to live with those catheters the rest of my life. Each time that tube enters my body, a piece of me dies. If nothing else worked, I could always count on the 2:00 am cathing to pull me out of any nightmares and place me firmly back into the nightmare of my new reality.

Needless to say, Bling kept looking at me with increasing concern. After a couple of days of this, I could see he was desperate to get me out of there. He started a search for rehab beds, but couldn’t find anything. I strained to hear him on the phone in the hall, explaining my situation.

"I understand that you’re not an acute care facility. That’s why I called you. We’re looking for a less institutional environment." Then there was a long pause. "Thanks anyway." Then Bling would hang up and try another number.

"I know that resources are tight right now. I can provide any additional nursing support that might be needed. Please, could you could just make this one exception?" With each call, Bling’s voice became increasingly tense.

"I know you have a waiting list. But he can’t wait another month. He could be dead by then!" Dead? Did he really mean that? I didn’t want to die in that place. I just wanted to go home. Bling walked in, trying to appear hopeful, but I could see the concern in his eyes.

"Logan, I’ve tried several places, but the standard wait for a rehab bed is at least a month. I even tried to call in a few favors for you, but they were really concerned that you haven’t even recovered from the surgery yet. I’ve still got a few more on my list. Maybe one of them can find a space for you. I promise, no matter what, we will get you out of here in a few days. You shouldn’t have to endure this place any longer than necessary. I’ll do whatever it takes."

"Could I please just go home?" I asked, voicing the only thing that I wanted.

"Home?" There was a long pause. I could tell that he was ready to consider almost anything at that point. "Let me check out your place and I’ll get back to you."

That afternoon, Bling returned with a thoughtful look on his face. "Your apartment isn’t bad. Everything is on one floor and you have elevator accessibility. With a few adaptations, I think it could work for you. My only concern is that you’re going home so early. Most people spend at least one month in the hospital and several months in rehab. You’re going to need twenty-four hour support for a long time. It can be hard to find."

"I’ll go along with whatever you say as long as I can get out of here," I said with determination. If I stayed in that hospital much longer, I knew I would die, and I didn’t want to die in that place. If I was going to die, I wanted to do it at home.

"Sounds good. I’ll see who I can find." He gave me an encouraging smile and turned to walk out.

I called him back, but then I hesitated. I wanted to ask him if he would be willing to stay with me. I knew that home care wasn’t his job, but I felt like he was the only reason why I had made it so far. I wanted to tell him how desperately I needed him, but I didn’t know how to ask.

"Logan, do you want me to go home with you?" There was a compassion and understanding in his eyes as he asked me. When I nodded my assent, he gave me another encouraging smile.

"Okay." He said simply.

I don’t know why Bling was willing to sacrifice his other work for me, but I am grateful that he is here with me now. I’ve had lots of good people in my life before, loving parents, knowledgeable teachers, inspiring mentors, but no one has ever exhibited the kindness and dedication that Bling has been giving me.

Yesterday, I was gripped by the worst back spasm I have ever endured. I was trying to do some writing when it hit. I can’t even remember what I was writing about. The pain was so intense that it blocked everything out. I had back spasms regularly in the hospital, brought on by stress and immobility, but this one was the worst. It was probably a result of the exertion from the move home. I thought that I was going to die from the pain. But the moment it hit, Bling was at my side. I pleaded with him not to move me, the pain was so bad, but he somehow got me out of the chair and lying down. He worked on my back until the spasms eased and I was able to breathe again.

There is something about Bling’s presence that puts me at ease. After the spasm, I was exhausted, but I wouldn’t allow myself to sleep. I couldn’t face another round of nightmares. Bling helped me get comfortable, then promised he would sit beside me while I slept. I don’t know why having Bling near me helps me feel safe. Maybe it’s because he’s the one who pulled me out of that nightmare world. I feel like a small child who needs his parent to stay with him to keep the bad dreams away. I haven’t needed anyone to do that for me since I was three years old. Yet I’m grateful for the sense of security I feel when I know Bling is nearby. With him beside me, I was finally able to relax enough to sleep. And boy did I sleep, three hours in the afternoon and then the whole night. It was ten hours all together. Ten hours!

I know that nothing has really changed. I can’t sit up by myself. I can’t lie down by myself. I can’t even turn myself over in bed. I don’t have the strength to do anything more than sit here and write in this book. I’m still trapped in an endless routine of turnings, cathings, and sitting tolerance. Bling is as diligent about these ‘essentials’ as the nurses were. Yet somehow, being at home has made it easier. I even slept through the 2:00am cathing last night, though Bling told me that even in my sleep, I tried to bat the catheter away.

"Might be time for a change in program," he said thoughtfully this morning, giving me the first good news I’ve had since I woke up in that hospital bed. I would do anything to reduce my reliance on those catheters. That would be a miracle in itself.

This morning, I don’t feel quite so exhausted. I’m sitting by the window again, waiting for Bling to get us some breakfast and watching the sunrise. I think the sun is the only beautiful thing left in this world and I’m glad to be able to see it again. Today, I feel like I might make it, that I might live. I’m not sure if I want to yet, if I can face this life, but at least today I feel like it might be physically possible. For now, I’m just grateful to be home.