How to Get Run Over by a Truck by Katie McKenna

Author:Katie McKenna [McKenna, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941758984
Publisher: Inkshares
Published: 2016-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Katie’s First Steps

About ten days after the accident, when I was at Elmhurst, I dreamt I was running. The morning was chilly, and my face was pink and stinging from the cold morning air. The dew from the grass had seeped through the mesh of my sneakers, and I could feel the dampness on my socks. Grass clippings were stuck to my ankles. I wanted to take the blades of grass and touch them to my lips, but the dream ended too soon for me to bring them up to my mouth. My hand was in the gray zone between waist and face, blades of grass pinched between my fingers.

I woke up happy, still thinking that I was well, that I was back to being me, that someone or something had returned me to my real life. I desperately wanted to stay in that moment between dreaming and waking.

But that wasn’t where I lived anymore.

I lived in between white sheets that made me itchy in places I couldn’t scratch. They felt like sheets of duct tape, stiff and sweaty. I lived in a hospital room, where I had no clue what the floor looked like. Where I had already forgotten what it was like to have feeling in my legs. I had to strain to remember how it had felt to walk. Before I went to bed every night I prayed I would not dream of pretty things. I didn’t want to dream at all.

Every morning when I woke up disoriented and confused about where I was, I would have to remind myself about my situation. My conversations with myself went a little something like this:

“Good Morning, Katie. You are still in the hospital. You can’t walk yet. They think that you might be able to at some point, but you might not. Don’t cry, don’t cry, not yet, wait wait wait—it will be okay. Let’s think about something good—maybe you’ll get Frosted Flakes for breakfast. You love Frosted Flakes. I think Mom is coming at ten. You have about three hours until she comes. That means you can watch six sitcoms—Saved By the Bell is on at seven. That’s in nine minutes, and it’s on TBS. You can watch some CNN in the meantime; it will be good for conversations later. Visitors will think you’re very smart and world-savvy with your nine minutes of news.

“Katie, Saved by the Bell is great. Remember when it was on every Saturday morning after the cartoons, and you felt like such a grown-up because you were watching a show about teenagers?

“See, you just got through one half hour. You can do this. The orderly is coming in with your breakfast and—YES! It is Frosted Flakes. Smile at the orderly, Katie, smile at him. It’s not his fault you’re here. Ask him about his daughter. It will make you feel better. See? Thinking about other people is good. It’s good. You don’t have to eat all the cereal, but drink the milk . .

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