BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

(Continued from 4369.44 Joules – But That’s Only An Approximate Calculation… )

And so, there I was, sprawled out on the asphalt, screaming my fool head off, spewing every curse word I knew – all in between labored gasps for air, mostly because the pain was causing me to scream my fool head off (see earlier statement) – AND, I was being shushed by a pre-school teacher. (full disclosure on the asphalt – it was covered with playground tiles, but not the soft rubber kind your mind conjures when you hear playground tiles. These things are about an inch thick, HARD plastic waffle kinda things to allow for drainage. Trust me when I tell you I wouldn’t want my kid falling down on them, because they are just as hard as the asphalt beneath them. But then, I’m a child of the 60’s. Our playground tiles were tons of sharp edged gravel spread beneath non-OSHA approved monkey bar/jungle gyms, so I guess hard ass plastic on top of asphalt is a shade better.)

The temperature was around 40 or so and the sun was shining. Why is that important? Mostly because on impact my glasses – complete with clip on sun shades – had come unglued and were no longer attached to my face. Next time I’ll use Krazy Glue instead of Elmer’s. Also, asphalt can be hot, and it can be cold. Guess which one this asphalt was?

Now, for a period of time that seemed like forever, but likely lasted less than two minutes, I continued to scream. Why? I was in pain, duh. Being over the age of 50 my adrenal gland takes frequent breaks. I mean, come on, it has earned them. Truth is, given my history, it is probably ready for early retirement. My point here is that said gland was out getting coffee and had to be paged. To its credit, instead of hiding in the break room, it answered – a bit sluggishly at first, but then it fell right into the groove the way a veteran adrenal gland with a shit-ton of work experience will do. However, given that it hadn’t been called into action for a good period of time, it had to start off by loading a cartridge and firing it with the ignition set to off in order to clear the cylinders (see Coffman Starter, Flight of the Phoenix). During that brief period I was starting to do a mental inventory. I know, right? What was I thinking doing an inventory? I mean, there I was on the ground with a pain level of 28 on the scale of 1-10 and I was thinking. What was I thinking to be thinking at a time like that? Well, I don’t know what to tell you. That’s just me. At any rate, my inventory sort of ticked off as follows:

1. You’re still alive, asshole.
2. Are you really sure you WANT to be alive right now given the amount of pain you are in?
3. What the fuck? I can still move my legs, that’s probably a good thing.
4. You’re still alive, asshole.
5. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.
6. Why is everything a big fucking blur?
7. Will someone please turn out that big ass light? It’s shining right in my eyes.
8. HOLY SHIT, this hurts.
9. I wonder if I damaged the ladder or the building wall on the way down?
10. Fuck the ladder.
11. Fuck the building.
12. Why in the holy hell is this woman still shushing me?

Yeah… Number 12 was kind of a kicker. She had gone from shushing, to gasping, right back to shushing. In her defense, I guess her primary concern was for the children at the pre-school, and the delicate sensibilities of the parents picking them up. I mean, they had probably never heard the word fuck before, so I am guessing a mess of parents had to do a lot of fast explaining. On that note, however, I can be proud that I taught a mess of 4 and 5 year olds some brand new vocabulary words that will serve them well in the future. Also in the teacher’s defense, she would randomly apologize for shushing me – then shush me again. I’m guessing this was her first major emergency where someone was injured, so I have to cut her some slack.

HOWEVER…

You knew that was coming, right?

In the moment, as I was lying there writhing around and expressing my displeasure with the level of pain I was experiencing, the shushing thing became a bit of an issue for me. When I managed to catch my breath for a second I channeled my inner Joe Pesci and replaced my expletive ridden stream of consciousness bellowing with, “IN A LOT OF PAIN HERE!”

She said, “I know, I’m sorry.” Then she shushed me again and said, “Should I call 9-1-1?”

Now… Those of you who know me know that I am “that guy.” When I say “that guy” I mean I am that guy who gets the shit knocked out of him in some sort of accident, puts a piece of duct tape on it, walks it off, then just goes right on back to what he was doing. Seriously. I also have a ridiculously high pain threshold. I can give you references who will attest to the veracity of that statement. There are too many stories to tell. So… What did I say in answer to her query?

“I don’t know.”

Well, actually I didn’t so much say it as I yelled it. Why? Because in that brief span I was thinking I should just get up, walk it off, then get back on the damn ladder and get back to work. So, I tried to sit up, but my sitting up sub-routine had been disabled by the currently running “You’re Totally Fucked, Man” utility, as the latter pretty much takes over all of your system resources. Therefore, a half-second after saying – nay, yelling – I don’t know, I yelled, “Yes!”

Probably a good thing. I’m not entirely sure this lady would have called them if I hadn’t told her it was okay, because she was pretty much stuck in “shush” mode. Again, in her defense, I am pretty sure she was in a state of shock. It’s not every day you hear a bunch of cursing and come out the door to find a guy who should probably be dead flopping around on the playground after falling off a roof. So, I really am cutting her some slack. I’m not angry or upset with her at all. I’m just relaying the story and the utter comedy – dark though it may be – of it all.

And so, she called 9-1-1.

And so, my adrenal gland fired the Coffman Starter with the ignition off and cleared the pipes.

And then, my adrenal gland fired the Coffman with the ignition ON, and an entire 55 gallon drum of Adrenalin (hence the odd name of the gland) dumped directly into my system and said, “WENDY, I’M HOME!”

My heart rate – that HAD been slowing back down a bit – leaped up to 942 beats per second and my pain level dropped from 28 to about 6. Logically, I knew that it was a false 6, but at that moment I was all good with a 6. Even with my high tolerance for pain, 28 had been just a bit too much.

Now, here’s an interesting thing about an Adrenalin dump. As a rule it will put you into fight or flight, but here’s the thing – I’d already fought the ladder and the ladder won (although, it was knocked out in the end) and in my current physical condition, flight was sort of out of the question. I mean, I am pretty sure if the building had been on fire, or if a loved one was in danger, my happy ass would have crawled its way to wherever it needed to be to deal with the situation, but none of that was happening. It was just poor old broken me and the shush lady out there. So, the Adrenalin went to the only other place it could – my brainpan.

If you think I was thinking earlier, well, now I was really thinking.

Since my heart was racing I was gasping quite a bit, and even though I had gone from a 28 to a 6 on the pain scale (1 – 10, mind you), the pain was still more than enough to elicit a series of groans in betwixt breaths. In retrospect, I think the 6 was actually more of a 12 or 13, but like I said, I have such a high tolerance to begin with, assigning numbers to the level tends to be a bit elusive to me at times.

So anyway, my brain went into overdrive – yet again – and I shoved my hand into my coat pocket and felt around. Sure enough, my phone was still there, so I pulled it out.

At this point I could hear the shush lady talking to the 9-1-1 dispatcher. As is the case with such things they were keeping her on the phone and asking her questions that she was relaying to me so that I could answer them. Through the blur of not having my glasses, combined with the glare of the sun, I somehow managed to key in my passcode to my phone and unlock it.

While fiddling about with my phone I noticed that my leg was feeling rather warm. I twisted and lifted my head enough to see it and noticed that there was a whole mess of red all over the playground. Seventh grade biology class with Mr. Hackworth ran through my head – in particular the human skeleton – and I said to myself, “Self… That’s just fucking great. You’ve got a compound fracture and you’re going to lay here and bleed out.”

I then told the shush lady, “You might want to tell them I’m bleeding.”

To her credit, she did.

And so, I still wasn’t entirely sure what the outcome of this was going to be. While the shush lady was telling me “They’re on their way. They’ll be here soon,” I was dialing my wife’s number. When she answered I was pretty much out of breath because I was still fighting the pain, falling into step with the Adrenalin dump, and, for all intents and purposes, going into shock. Really all I can remember of the conversation was managing to tell her that A) I had fallen off a roof, B) Obviously I was still alive, C) 911 had been called and paramedics were on the way, D) I probably had a broken leg,  E) Stay at work, there’s nothing you can do right now, I’ll let you know when I get to the hospital so you will know where I am, and F) I love you.

What she might not have known at that time – or maybe she did, I don’t know – was that given the rudimentary assessment I had been able to make of myself I wasn’t entirely sure that the “I love you” wasn’t the last one I was going to get to say. However, I knew I had already caused her enough worry so I wasn’t going to compound it with fatalistic yammering. I should also note that calling her was a somewhat labored decision. I made it quickly, yes, but for a moment I considered waiting until I was safely ensconced in the hospital so that she wasn’t going through the rest of her day worrying. However, the bleeding thing and the fact that someone from Ethical was bound to call her prompted me to be pre-emptive about it and make the call myself. Perhaps not my best decision, but it is what it is.

Something I forgot to mention – during all of this, in between gasps, and talking to Evil Kat, I had been telling shush lady to call Kitt – my supervisor at Ethical. She was at the other end of the building in her office and I sort of figured she should know what happened so that she could grab my time sheet and clock me out. After all, I wasn’t working anymore. I was quite literally laying down on the job and they didn’t need to be paying for that.

So… I got off the phone with my wife and asked shush lady if she had reached Kitt, whereupon she said, “I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”

Even in my crumpled state I thought this odd, and it was a bit annoying.

So what did I do?

I fumbled around on my phone and dialed Kitt’s number.

At this point the Ladue Fire Department (more on them later) was on their way in all their glory with sirens blaring. They aren’t very far away at all, so there in the relative quiet of midday, the sirens were easy to hear, and they were growing louder every second.

I was still gasping a bit, but I was starting to fall into step with the Adrenalin dump and I was forcing myself to do a John Rambo and “ignore the pain” – or, try to…

The phone rang and Kitt answered, “Hey, Murv.”

I said, “Hey, Kitt… <gasp> Hey, do you hear those sirens?’

“Yeah, I wonder what’s up.”

“Well, they’re coming for me.”

The rest of the conversation involved her telling me she was on her way and asking where I was – as close as I can recall, anyway.

Then, the sirens got really loud.

Then the sirens stopped.

Then the world was filled with the sounds of idling diesel engines, doors opening, and hurried footsteps…

Me… Well, I was getting ready to make another phone call, mostly because I still wasn’t sure where I stood with the whole living or dying thing and I figured I should say some tentative goodbyes.

More to come…

(Continued from When Ladders Attack…)

Physics can be fun – if you can get past the arithmetic involved. I’ll admit that I had to look up the formula to calculate the number in the title because it has been 35+ years since I have been seated in a physics class and my career path took me places that really didn’t involve calculating the energy on impact of a falling object (namely me) on a regular basis. Therefore, yeah, formulas for such things were securely locked away on the dusty shelves of a long forgotten brain closet marked “Shit I Really Don’t Have A Need To Remember Anymore.”

So, 4369.44 Joules. Translated, that’s something on the order of 43 Kilowatts for about 1/10th of a second. That is how much energy was theoretically created by the force of my impact with the asphalt. But, I am getting ahead of myself. When last we left off the evil ladder had just pulled me backwards off the roof and I was about to die. Since I am still alive and writing this now I suppose I should back up and flesh out some of the other details.

Firstly, before anyone starts leaving weird comments, the St. Louis Ethical Society and their equipment are in no way at fault for any of this. Neither am I. It has literally been determined that this was the freakest of freak incidents. There was no reason for the ladder to kick out. It didn’t fail by way of a defect. It was solid as a rock. And I wasn’t being crazy and reckless. It was just one of those things that happened. In the grand scheme of things it was apparently on my schedule of life events – you know, that schedule they don’t tell you about that blindsides you when fate says, “Oh yeah, it’s time for Sellars to get fucked up for a while, and not in the good way.” So, anyway, the long and short is that I don’t want to see any comments from ambulance chasers or armchair lawyers who want to start screaming “lawsuit!” Nobody was at fault here. It was an accident, and as Elvis Costello says, “Accidents will happen…”

So, back to the 4369.44 Joules… Or, as noted, the fractions of a second prior to them.

It’s a very weird feeling when time slows down. I’ve written about it for Rowan Gant in several of my novels. That moment when something is happening and it seems that everything else in the world is moving at a normal pace and you are frozen in time… Or, maybe that you are at a normal pace and everything else around you has sped up. Who knows? All I can say is that experiencing it firsthand is disconcerting. It may also be why I am still here and writing these blog entries.

So… There I went, backwards off the roof, somewhere around 15 feet above the ground. My body was pitching in the direction it had been pulled and momentum was taking me into a head first trajectory and my first thought was literally, “Oh, FUCK!” Well, it was less a thought and more a verbal exclamation. In fact, I think it came out of my mouth more like, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!”

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You hear the old saying about your life flashing before your eyes and such. Well, in my case my life DIDN’T flash before my eyes. What happened took place in what was probably a nanosecond, but hey, our brains are far more powerful computers than we realize. In my case, my brain went through the following sequence:

Surprise.

Panic.

Fear.

Acceptance of impending death.

Fuck that, I’m not ready to die just yet.

At this point I am going to date myself. Not like go out on a date. I mean I am going to say something that shows just how friggin’ ancient I am. There was a television series back in the early 70’s. It lasted all of one season and it was titled “The Delphi Bureau.” It revolved around  the adventures of government agent Glenn Garth Gregory and his photographic memory. Whenever he was in a situation – sometimes life threatening – which would call for some obscure information, you would see his thought processes visually represented on the screen. As in, you would see schematics or whatever flash on the screen as he would remember them and then use that info to form a course of action.

That is what happened to me.

I can’t for the life of me tell you exactly what all flashed through my head. What I remember were a series of lines, numbers, and outcomes superimposed on a still photo of myself falling off a roof. I know, weird, right? But, as weird as it may be I am not about to question it. All I can tell you is that this image of calculations and trajectories had a lot of red scribbling, which was immediately obvious as not the optimal outcome. There was one scribble of yellow, which, in my mind, appeared to be a survivable outcome. Unfortunately, there were no green.

I know, I know… The distance to the ground below allowed only for a fraction of a second of free fall, but like I said, our brains can compute way faster than we realize at times. My guess is that Adrenalin takes you from Pentium to Cray Supercomputer.

At any rate, I opted for the yellow scribbles and line because, as I noted earlier, I wasn’t ready to die just yet.

So… I windmilled my arms hard and bent at the waist, which forced my torso forward and allowed me to bring my legs back beneath me. There were a series of thoughts that went through my head at this point. They went something like:

Oh, fuck (Again, yes. This was sort of a theme.)

This is going to hurt.

If I can land on my feet I just might survive this.

You know that if this works you’re going to have two broken legs, right?

With all these rapid calculations and morbid thoughts going through my head I didn’t immediately notice that the ladder was afraid for its life as well. How do I know this? Because a split second later on impact I DID notice that it was still hooked around my leg.

4369.44 Joules. 43 Kilowatts. That’s what lit me up on impact.

Out of pure reflex I brought my arms up and wrapped them around the back of my head, because I knew that I wasn’t going to stick this landing and get a 10 from any of the judges. The ladder was screaming in fear and grabbing at the wall – and my left leg. Because of this it canted me to one side bringing the full force of the impact onto my right leg. However, since the ladder wasn’t possessed of higher brain functions, it continued trying to mitigate it’s own fall by grabbing at me. Now, I’m not sure how much y’all know about aluminum extension ladders, but they can tend to have some sharp edges. Not super sharp, but, ya’know, edgy enough that with sufficient force they can cause damage. Well, that’s kind of what happened. The ladder, in its frenzy to save itself, twisted around my left leg and grabbed at my right, cutting a deep gash into my shin. However, I have to say, that was the least of my worries at that particular moment.

Remember those 4369.44 Joules? Well, they ran right up my leg, along my spine, and into my brainpan.

There was a bright flash of light, which in retrospect was either me bleeding off a few kilowatts or a reaction to what can only be described as blinding pain. As much as I would love to think I Teslaed a few kilowatts into the grid by wireless transfer, I suspect the latter (not ladder) is actually the case.

I felt myself pitch backward. I kept my head covered and went splat. That’s about the only way I can describe it. Then I skidded a couple of feet. So did the ladder, but thankfully, at this point, it had decided I was a lost cause and it skidded the opposite direction. This was a good thing because my relationship with it was pretty much on the rocks and I really didn’t want it touching me anymore.

I screamed.

Really loud like.

Mostly because on a scale of 1 to 10 my pain was a 28.

Then, my brain re-engaged the expletive center located somewhere in my frontal lobes. But wait, there’s more. It disengaged all of the filters, and increased the volume to 11.

Remember, there are young children on the other side of the wall being picked up by their parents right about now. Just my luck.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” and literally every other curse word, phrase, and nasty-horrible thing I knew to say – in any language – came out of my mouth at better than full volume, intermixed with guttural screams of agony. Of this I can assure you. I am not exaggerating. I know I am a fiction writer and therefore lie for a living, but this… I’m telling you. Agony. Pure and simple.

It was at this point that one of the pre-school teachers came storming out the door onto the deck. I can only surmise that she assumed I was out there spewing expletives because I was a maintenance guy and something wasn’t going my way, and therefore I was going to fix it by cursing at it. Why do I surmise this? Because she stormed out the door and very loudly shushed me.

Then she saw me and my former friend the ladder lying on the ground and the shush turned into a rather surprised gasp.

More to come…