fine. It takes a moment to realise that he is you. You’re going to be fine. According to her. She even wants you to try walking.
‘So soon?’ asks Wendy, a little shocked.
‘With crutches,’ says the doctor.
You sit up and the world seems to drop away from you and you say, ‘Whoa.’ Wendy shoots a look at the doctor, who nods and smiles and beckons you forward. You launch yourself upright on one crutch then the other. You lurch forward, a single step on your good leg, and despite the painkillers you feel the horrible throb of your bad leg. Thrusting your awkward crutches before you, you stagger across the cold linoleum floor like a newly hatched stick insect.
‘Good,’ lies the doctor.
While you’re up she hands you a little plastic cylinder and asks for a urine sample but tells you not to lock the toilet door in case you pass out again. You manage to provide her with half a canister of liquid gold without pissing on your fingers, and gratefully make your way back to bed where you flop, exhausted.
You remember the kids again and ask Wendy what’s happening with them. She says she couldn’t get on to either of them but has left messages at their schools. You know Wendy wouldn’t lie to you but it seems odd that she didn’t get to speak to one of them at least. Oddly odd. Oddity. Oddingtonoplometry.
A huge horrible wave of pain wakes you but you feel—oddly—rested. How long have you been here? How many days have passed like this?
Wendy tells you the accident happened five hours ago. Five hours. How can that be? It seems like five months. You’ve lived through so much, survived so much. You’re the discombobulated robot on that old sci-fi show—this does not compute, this does not compute.
The doctor says you can go home and you feel like you’ve jumped from episode three to episode thirty-six. Wendy starts to protest but you stop her because you know if you go home you won’t die. People get better at home. People die in hospitals.
A silent orderly wheels you out to the car park but does not stay to help Wendy fold your errant left leg into the car. After three painful attempts, you shoo her off and lower yourself onto the passenger seat. You swing your right leg into the car then use it to lever yourself upwards towards the roof. Writhing maniacally, you manage to bump and drag your aching left leg inside before you collapse back into the seat. You sit there groaning in pain but nonetheless proud of your achievement. You pull the lever at the side of the seat to slide it further back. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong lever; the seat-back drops away and you plummet backwards, finding yourself staring at a roof again.
Wendy tries not to laugh. You are upset and angry but simultaneously aware of your responsibility not to take things too seriously given your miraculous escape from death. You lie there for a while, looking at the broken switch on the roof light before you say, ‘Well at least things can’t get much worse than this.’ You will often recall this statement in the year to come and reflect upon your cluelessness.
Wendy drives you home from hospital. You feel like you’re on drugs. Not the massive doses of painkillers that are coursing through your body but recreational drugs that turn the sky an impossibly vivid blue. Cars wind down the highway ahead of you like a glittering string of jewels. Wendy, driving next to you, smells beautiful, is beauty.
The world is so splendidly splendid you want to gather it in your arms and gobble it all up. You smile. Wendy smiles at your smile. You cannot begin to explain the deep peace you are experiencing so you just blink at her like a sleepy lizard, like a lizard-God. Godlike.
The car crunches into your gravel driveway and you wake. You look up at your little wooden house settled in its untamed garden and feel enormously grateful for the enoughness of your life: a partner you still want, children in good health with all their fingers and toes, two cars, three bedrooms, taps with running water.
You just turn on the tap and the water comes! And electricity! And appliances!
How many people get to live like this? You live in the top—what?—ten per cent? of the world’s privileged. How fucking lucky is that? How lucky are you!
Dizzy with gratitude, you almost topple backwards so Wendy takes your arm and leads you up the front steps. Egg leaps at you joyfully and you want to hug him but you poke him away from your bad leg with your crutches. The house feels cool and smells uniquely O’Dell—a barely discernible but distinct combination of wet dog, apple-scented washing powder, dirty socks and freshly cut grass.
You stagger down the hall and haul your enormous aching leg into bed. As Wendy fusses in distant rooms, you become aware of other areas of pain, a symphony of minor and major chords playing through your body. You are mega-alert, alive to every note and nuance, things terrible and splendid. And now you are aware of something. You are aware that something is coming.
You are waiting.
What are you waiting for?
An epiphany!
In a flash you realise that there is a grand purpose to being run over by the blue Toyota. You are going to Learn Something. The Universe has a Lesson it wants to teach you. At some point over the next days or weeks, Knowledge will be revealed to you.
You are at the beginning of a Hero Journey. You have been Called to Adventure. And although you have no idea what the journey entails or where it will take you, you feel honoured, thrilled to the core that you have been Chosen.
In your mind you fast-forward to a little café where you sit opposite Frannie Prager, laughing about how unevolved you both were before the fates threw you together and set you on that ridiculous, rocky path to glory those many eons ago.
Rosie bursts through the door and throws her arms around you. Her school uniform smells of stale bread.
‘Daddy!’ she cries.
‘Mind his leg,’ says Wendy and you realise she is sitting on the bed next to you and you wonder how long she’s been there.
Rosie’s distress eases as she sees you are in one piece and her story tumbles out: Mrs Rich, the art teacher, found her and told her you had been hit by a car.
‘Found you where?’ says Wendy, leaping in from left field.
‘At the bus stop,’ says Rosie, tackled before she can make her run.
‘Why were you at the bus stop?’
‘I ran away from school.’
‘Why?’
Rosie zigzags through the big beats of the narrative with little regard for traditional story structure. The salient points appear to be these:
(a) Mean mother tries to exclude girl from trip.
(b) Mean daughter supports mean mother.
(c) Rosie outraged.
(d) Rosie confronts mean daughter.
(e) Untoward language employed by both parties.
