When Danielle and Florence first visited me in the Neuro ICU, it felt like the first time I saw them since before the crash. On further reflection I recalled the hazy dream-like hospital room that was actually the Trauma ICU. My memories of it even at that time seemed faded and fragmented whether because of the heavy medication or a side-effect of physical and/or mental trauma.

Regardless, how could I not realize I was quadriplegic through that period which was at least a week? I tried hard to recall what people actually said to me but could only remember portions of my mother explaining how my family scrambled to get to Seattle and my brother Daryl explaining something about a computer.

Part of the missing information could be attributed to impaired hearing, since I noticed sounds coming through my left ear had a slightly distant or muffled quality. But I think the main factor was my fragile mental state compounded by heavy medication causing faulty memory. It could also be that “selective forgetting” was a way to protect myself from uncomfortable information my mind was incapable of accepting.

One example was at some point that day I felt the urge to urinate and thought I’d need to call the nurse for a bedpan. This alarmed my visitors because they witnessed the same scenario at the trauma ICU not long before. They explained for a second time that I had been catheterized shortly after being admitted to Harborview.

Perhaps suspecting there’s other important details I hadn’t retained, Danielle provided a detailed description of my injury. Though I had deduced what what was going on with my body, it didn’t hit home until she described it as the same injury suffered by Christopher Reeve. She then asked if I knew how I was injured and after I gestured “no” she recounted what she knew about the crash from police and first responder reports. Even though I had no prior memory of such details, it didn’t come as a complete surprise since a bike crash was always the most likely explanation. She described surgery scars along my neck and spine that resembled tattoos and puncture wounds on my head from having it bolted down to keep it from moving. I couldn’t feel them at the time but did later on.

Also new to me (though likely recounted before) was the timeline of my stay at Harborview. To me it felt like it could have been anywhere between a few days and a month. In actuality it had been about two weeks. Even more surprising was learning I had flatlined for a few seconds on at least two occasions. Danielle became teary-eyed as if reliving those moments and seemed almost as re-traumatized recounting repeated unsuccessful attempts to get information from my employer’s impenetrable HR department.

Although I retained a partial memory of it, my mother described how she, my father and older brother arrived at the hospital just two days after my crash. My dad and brother had to go back home after about a week but my mom planned to stay for three months. I was appreciative for their visit because my parents had been reluctant to travel by plane since the start of Covid in 2020.

Throughout the day we were frequently interrupted by nurses taking vitals and refilling the IV with saline, liquid food and medications, staff members changing my bed position and cleaning the room, and phlebotomists drawing blood samples. An odd side-effect of my lowered metabolism (or slowed-down state of mind) was that everyone’s movements seemed “sped-up”. The entire day seemed to go by rapidly as well and before long it was evening.