Free Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

still moving very fast, but I’m experiencing the spinning like it’s happening in slow motion. And someone turned off the sound—the rain, the wipers, my heartbeat. Everything is slow and soundless, like I’m underwater.
    I hit the brakes and turn the wheel the other way, hoping to either correct the spinning or stop. The landscape bends into an unmanageable slant, and the car begins to tumble end over end. The tumbling is also slow and soundless, and my thoughts while I’m tumbling are detached and strangely calm.
    The air bag explodes. I notice that it’s white.
    I see the loose contents of my bag and the penny I found suspended in air. I think of astronauts on the moon.
    Something is choking my throat.
    My car is going to be totaled.
    Something hits my head.
    I’m going to be late for work.
    Then suddenly the tumbling stops, and the car is still.
    I want to get out of the car, but I can’t move. I feel a sudden crushing and unbearable pain on the top of my head. It occurs to me for the first time that I might’ve wrecked more than my car.
    I’m sorry, Bob.
    The dark morning gets darker and goes blank. I don’t feel the pain in my head. There is no sight and no feeling. I wonder if I’m dead.
    Please don’t let me die.
    I decide I’m not dead because I can hear the sound of the rain hitting the roof of the car. I’m alive because I’m listening to the rain, and the rain becomes the hand of God strumming his fingers on the roof, deciding what to do.
    I strain to listen.
    Keep listening.
    Listen.
    But the sound fades, and the rain is gone.



CHAPTER   7

    The hazy bright whiteness above me focuses into a fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling. Someone is saying something over and over. As I study the brightness and shape of the light, I come to realize that someone is saying something over and over to me.
    “Sarah, can you take a deep breath for me?”
    I assume that I can, but as I do, my entire throat grips around something rigid, and I gag. I’m sure that I’ve stopped inhaling, but my lungs fill with air anyway. My throat feels bone dry. I want to lick my lips and swallow some saliva, but something inside my mouth won’t let me. I want to ask, “What’s happening?” but I can’t gather the reins of my breathing, lips, or tongue. My eyes fill with panic.
    “Don’t try to talk. You have a tube in your mouth to help you breathe.”
    There is a fluorescent light on the ceiling above my head, a tube inside my mouth to help me breathe, and a woman’s voice.
    “Can you squeeze my hand?” asks the woman’s voice.
    I squeeze, but I don’t feel a hand in my hand.
    “Can you squeeze your other hand?”
    I don’t understand the question.
    “Can you show me two fingers?”
    I spread my index and middle finger.
    Scissors.
    I won the shoot. The shoot, the rain, the car. The crash. I remember. I hear electronic beeps and the whirring of mechanical equipment. The fluorescent light, the tube, the woman’s voice. I’m in a hospital. Oh my God, what’s happened to me? I try to think past the crash, but a searing pain slices through the top of my head, and I can’t.
    “Good, Sarah. Okay, that’s enough for today. We’re going to put you back to sleep so you can rest.”
    Wait! The shoot, the car, the rain, the crash, and then what? What happened? Am I okay?
    The fluorescent light on the ceiling grows brighter. The edges of the light dissolve. Everything blurs white.
    “O KAY , S ARAH , B REATHE OUT as hard as you can.”
    I blow as a nurse yanks the breathing tube out of me, and it
    Feels like she’s dragging a sandpaper-coated speculum up the tender lining of my throat. There’s nothing delicate or hesitant about her approach to this procedure. The removal is ruthless, and the relief I feel when she’s done borders on euphoria, a bit like giving birth. I’m good and ready to hate this woman, but then she tips a Dixie cup of melting ice chips to my lips, and she’s my angel of mercy.
    After