In 2019, a close family member of mine was hit by a car and almost killed. I wrote this in 2021, after the dust had settled.
I was on the couch painting when Chris texted me.
“Topher was in a bike accident. I’m headed to the hospital now.”
I asked if there was any more information, but there wasn’t. I didn’t react very strongly at first. Just told her I’d be there as soon as I could get away. I called my mom, who is always inclined to downplay things. She told me to wait–Chris was on her way, it was probably minor, and there was no reason to drop everything and scare my daughter by rushing out. So I waited uncomfortably for a few minutes.
But then I got another text, a text you do not want to receive.
“The social worker says you need to come now.”
A cannon ball dropped through the bottom of my stomach. A wave of electricity started in my center and pushed outwards, down my arms and legs, pulsing to the ends of my numb fingers and toes, pulsing in my cheeks, warping my vision. I drove to the hospital madly, cracked open, horrified, electricity still pulsing in every finger. I parked in the ER garage. The five minute walk from the garage to the ER doors felt like an eternity. My legs shook, I was head to toe goosebumps, my fingers were still tingling, my face felt full of blood. At the door, a security guard checked my purse and waved me through the metal detector. The mace on my key chain was a problem. He wanted me to leave it with him and fill out a form. I thought I would die in that moment, fucking with the mace on my key chain, legs shaking, shivering in the warm night, not giving a fuck if I got my car keys back, just wanting to get to Topher’s side.
I was through the doors. Up to the visitor check in. They were waiting for me. I was directed to a small room where I found Chris with her friend Tara and a social worker. The social worker took us upstairs. I don’t remember what she said, what we knew at that point. But clearly, it was bad.
This part is a blur of faces and bits of information, of horror and waiting. They told us it could be hours before we knew anything. I remember being so anxious I started to walk to my car to drive home for a sweater and to smoke pot. I didn’t make it to the garage though. I got a call to come back. Someone was ready to sit down and talk with us.
The first thing we learned was that his spleen had ruptured. He had to have surgery, they said. Immediately. As the nearest family member, I had to sign the consent forms. Yes, yes, my god, cut him open, make this stop.
The surgeon came to talk to us. She asked, in a gentle but very firm tone, if he might have any substances in his system which might cause withdrawals. Did he do drugs?
He smokes pot, we told her. Just pot.
She asked again, very seriously. “If you don’t tell us the truth, and he has withdrawals, it could be very bad.”
I looked at Chris. “He’s not doing anything I don’t know about, right?”
She shook her head. The doctor seemed satisfied. She explained the procedure, the surgery to remove his ruptured spleen. That was the first thing. Everything else could wait.
Everything else, I thought. Everything else.
I asked if he might not wake up. She hedged. “We don’t know yet,” she said finally, and the cannonball settled deeply into my stomach, where it set about crushing my guts.
They said we could see him before surgery. We were taken back to a room where a full-on ER trauma scene was unfolding. Machines were beeping under the white fluorescent lights. A crowd of nurses and doctors surged around the bed, yelling things I didn’t understand. He was in the center of the storm, bloody and broken, his whole body spasming and seizing, eyes staring, rolling, unseeing, legs kicking, grunting, teeth clenched.
Chris, Tara and I clung to one another, frozen. Chris was crying, but I was stone. I was folding into myself, and then unfolding out across the universe and then back into myself again, the cannonball’s weight absolutely killing me, my chest full of sand. The doctor who seemed to be in charge told us we needed to stay out of the way. She was short and plump and authoritative, and wherever she is I hope heaven is blessing her.
We approached his bedside, still clinging to each other. The doctors and nurses were moving around us like dancers, each performing their urgent task as though we weren’t there. The spasming was horrible. Humans are not supposed to move that way–jerking and twitching and kicking. But the worst part was the blankness of his eyes. He was not there.
Chris, Tara and I finally let go of one another. Together we reached for Topher, wanting to feel his skin, to comfort him. But there was nowhere to lay hands, no uninjured place. His collar bone was broken, his arm and shoulder were all road rash, his legs were kicking madly. We all finally settled on gently touching his lower left arm, which had no obvious marks. We told him we loved him. We made sure he heard our voices, told him we were there and we wouldn’t leave him, that he was going to be ok. He jerked up off the pillow and lunged forward blindly, exposing the roughly whip-stitched black cord holding his head shut. The nurses restrained him. Our visit ended.
As we left the room, I noticed a police officer sitting just outside. Mostly to distract from the image of Topher’s blank eyes, I asked if they had caught the driver who had hit him.
“Not yet,” said the cop, “but they’re looking. And depending on what happens here tonight, the guy might be facing some pretty serious charges.”
I see, I said, realizing that the cop was waiting to see if he would die.
We returned to the waiting room.
Part 2
What you have to understand is that I was already half dead. I was one week into a month long day program at the psychiatric hospital, my second stint in less than a year. Years of chronic health problems and struggling to diagnose and meet my daughter’s special needs had me, to quote one of the counselors at the hospital, “just so beaten down.” I had gotten into the habit of self medicating for my migraines, fibromyalgia, and stress with alcohol, which is a real zinger in the short term but ultimately makes the whole thing much more of a drag. What I’m trying to get at is, I was not in a great place to cope with what had happened to Topher, to us.
Of course, another way of looking at it is, the day program at the psychiatric hospital is exactly where I needed to be during that ordeal. I sat numbly in group therapy from eight thirty until three. Then I would walk over to the SICU where Topher lay in the same flourescent cubicle where we had visited him that first night. He would remain there for weeks, languishing in an induced coma as his brain worked whatever mysterious magic it could to rebuild itself.
The first 12 days were a living nightmare. That first night, they had inserted a blood pressure monitor called a bolt into his brain. It stuck out of his head like a metal horn, wrapped in bloody gauze. We were instructed to keep stimulation to a minimum. We took turns sitting by his bed, holding his hands, trying not to be horrified by the bloody Frankenstein-style bolt mounted to his skull. He was constantly monitored by the most capable professionals I have ever had the honor of meeting. I can’t think of them without crying, and I will never know them to thank them.
I did hate the way no one wanted to tell me straight out that he might not live, that he might not wake, that his brain injury might have erased him, that he might not walk. I say that with no judgment. They handle these things delicately. But it’s not my style. So when I found myself alone with a doctor by his bedside the fourth day, I said, “Hey, no one wants to be straight with me. The impression that I’m getting is that I need to prepare myself for every possible outcome from a full recovery to the absolute worst.”
The doctor stopped what he was doing and looked at me for a minute before he answered.
“That pretty much covers it, yes.”
Those first few days, I would sit by him and sing to him as I had when he was a baby. I held his hand, an IV port stuck in above his tattoo of a kitten with a piece of sushi, the ridiculous “do bad things” printed across his chest taped up for a reason I can’t remember, just below his broken collar bone. I didn’t feel all there. I felt crazy. I searched my mind desperately, but could only remember the words to one song. So I sat by his bed and stared at the sushi kitten, singing “Country Roads” by John Denver over and over through my tears, singing it softly like a prayer, singing it like a spell, singing it and remembering the country roads we grew up on together, barefoot and muddy and wild. Hear me, baby boy. Please hear me.
Things did not look good. A handful of us were there constantly at first, and I immediately started to crack. I hated sitting there knowing nothing, waiting. I would leave and drink. It wasn’t good. So I started staying away more, but then the guilt would set in. No matter where I was, I was either drunk or hungover. I will spare you the details, but it wasn’t cute.
The days dragged on and he didn’t improve. The day program at the hospital kept me sober in the mornings (for the most part), and alive for the whole ordeal. My torso contained a spinning, chaotic vastness, sometimes frazzled by alcohol, sometimes sedated by weed, always inhabited by Horror, Horror as a being, as an entity. Horror I would cling to, because it was solid, the only solid thing.
One day, after leaving the hospital and stopping at a bar, I went to the accident site. I sat on the sidewalk, tipsy and hollow, staring at the pieces of headlight and bumper scattered around the street. I didn’t care that I looked crazy; I was crazy. I gathered some of the debris and squeezed until a piece of red glass cut my palm.
On the worst day, the day hope seemed to be fading, I had an idea that was both silly and poignant. I asked our friends to spread the word–please, everyone listen to “Purple Rain” at 4:20 PM the next day. Laugh if you will (and you should!), but it was pure Topher. Because Prince. Because humor and silliness and tacky jokes. Because weed. Because the power of all of our love at once.
And we did it, his close friends and acquaintances and family members in several cities. A few bars and restaurants played it, even strangers let me know they had participated. At home, I lit a purple candle. I pulled a card from a tarot deck–the deck by Salvador Dali, whose weirdness reminded me of Topher. The four of swords. A period of healing rest after battle. The image–a figure lies as though dead, as swords float above. In the background, figures sit vigilant, waiting. I laid the card by the candle. I drew a card from another deck, my favorite deck and the one I have the closest connection to. The King of Cups–Topher, big hearted, a pure water sign, all love. I laid out the pieces of broken headlight. The candle flickered on the cards and broken glass. I dropped the needle on the record at exactly 4:20.
For 8 minutes and 41 seconds, I plugged into love. I prayed, I reached out and connected to Topher and told him to come back to us, told him he was strong, sent him my strength and told him to use it. I knew others were joining me. People of many different faiths had been praying. Prayer chains had been activated by the faithful who loved us. We added our collective voice, singing Purple Rain.
After that merciless and incredible outro, I sat placid and aching and absolutely sure he had felt it, absolutely sure we had touched him, wherever he was. I’ve wondered if even the Purple One himself got in on it.
The next day, the doctor literally used the word miracle. “The improvement we have seen in the last 12 hours is nothing short of miraculous,” he said. Now, I am not saying Prince saved his life. But I am saying prayer, meditation, magic, and music are more powerful than most of us realize.
After that night, the night of the turning point, he began to improve fast. It was several more days before he was allowed to surface from the coma.
That same day, Chris let me know she had found a King of Hearts playing card in the street. The King of Hearts is the playing card equivalent of the King of Cups in the tarot. That coincidence amazed us, and we were even more astounded when Chris looked more closely at the card and realized it was NOT the King of Hearts. It was a red King of Spades. I don’t know what that means. I just know it’s weird and magical.
Libby Bruce 