The Other Path

CW: Bodily trauma.

It’s the last day of May, and this morning I drove out to a western suburb to have the sutures removed from my face. Ten days ago I wrecked my bicycle in the early hours of a Saturday, coming home late from work. Since then I’ve measured the days in unexpected milestones: by Monday afternoon I could finally stand without drooling onto the floor, on Wednesday I was able to crack out the caked, dried blood from my mustache, and Friday I was able to eat solid food after a diet of protein shakes, smoothies, and soup, munching a few pieces of pan-fried tofu with my molars, trying not to brush my still-swollen tongue against my teeth, or irritate the stitches in my gums. 

We were hosting a party at work that spilled into the early morning. I was a few drinks in, wrapping up odds and ends. By the time I collected my backpack and bike it was 2:30, and I was alone, so I set the alarm and locked the building, and headed down the path I’ve biked for nearly two years. The tires crunched across the gravel behind the surrounding warehouses, the headlight illuminating trash, branches, and the short strip of rusted train tracks where there was a trail that led up to the pot-hole laden road near the water tower and a towing company.

Swerving around the craters in the street, I arrived at Beltline Boulevard, which is usually a nightmare to cross, but there was no one. The road continued past vague office buildings, and nondescript apartment complexes that could be in any suburb or midsize college town, ending at a stubby cul de sac, with another stretch of office buildings extending beyond that. The entrance to the greenway was at the far end of the parking lot. Where the road ends and the parking lot begins there is a patch of grass with some trees and street signs, little more than a splash of green amongst the concrete and glass.

The next few hours are fragmented. I don’t remember the impact, but I sure as hell remember crawling away from the wreck, and spitting up a sizable puddle of blood. The front tire had caught a pothole, and then a curb, and I flipped over the handlebars. At least that’s what we think happened. I was likely going too fast and not paying enough attention, probably thinking about something mundane and drunk when my face smashed into the grass. In the distance my bloated mouth asked me what happened, and I knew I was fucked up. 

I don’t know. I think I sat there for a bit in the immediate shock, feeling my face to confirm the trauma, then painstakingly tapped through the menus on my phone, streaking its face with blood as I tried to call Laura. No answer, but I knew she was asleep. I thought to trek back to work, probably because it was close, and it was a known place. As I stood my legs felt fine, I could walk alright, and nothing felt broken. Using my bike to stabilize a path, I watched my feet shuffle down the road, spitting up blood when it filled my mouth. It was the same road back, past the apartments and offices, but it was a different reality where there were no printed directions, and the teeth were more known.

Then I was sitting at a picnic table by the ramp behind my work, the bike tipped over on the ground. I sobbed for a bit, partially from shock and pain, but mostly to get it out of my system, and collect myself enough to get inside. The parking lot was empty, and when I turned the corner and saw the multicolored lights through the massive garage doors it felt like driving through the dark sprawls of South Dakota, cresting a hill to see the illumination of Rapid City on the horizon. 

Once inside my autonomy was exhausted. I sprawled on the floor behind the check-in counter. I tried Laura a few more times on the phone. Apparently I called my dad, although I’m not sure why because he lives nine hours away. At some point I went into the bathroom to check myself over more thoroughly, because I remember standing with my face a few inches from the mirror so I could see myself clear enough to assess the damage. Dirt ringed my eyes, heavy bleeding from my forehead, nose, and mouth. My bottom lip was swollen twice its size, and my top lip was torn and mangled. I reached into my mouth to feel my teeth, relieved that none of them were broken. When I stuck out my tongue I cringed when I saw that the first inch of it was barely attached to the rest. I recited the findings to myself in my soaked voice: Teeth are okay, lips and tongue and fucked. Teeth are okay, lips and tongue are fucked. 

I was back behind the counter, on my side. I might have passed out for a bit. I tried the phone again, and finally the call connected. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been drifting until I heard Laura’s groggy voice, grounding and centering in my haze. I garbled out what happened, where I wound up, and tried to prepare her for how wrecked I was. She put me on speakerphone as she drove over, and then she was there, her presence luminescent. She got me off the floor, and on the way out I set the alarm again, and locked the door. The sun was rising when we got to the hospital. 

I’m standing where I crashed, having stopped here after getting the sutures removed. It’s a stretch of grass with a couple trees and street signs that looks innocuous enough, little more than a splash of green amongst pockmarked streets, parking lots, office complexes, and apartments. Last Saturday Laura left the hospital to get some things from home while I waited to get approved for surgery in the emergency room. Three of my vertebrae were fractured, and they couldn’t operate until they were certain how serious the breaks were. I was in a neck brace, my face covered in dirt, nose broken, the lining of my gums lacerated down to the bone, and my tongue bloomed in my mouth like a bloody blossom. They gave me a plastic cup of medicinal rinse to swish the grass out of my mouth, but I couldn’t keep my lips together so it all came right back out. On her way back to the hospital, Laura stopped to find my glasses, but all she found was a pool of blood, a single lens spotted with crimson splotches, and the temples snapped free from the frames. 

The blood has washed away. I scoured the ground like an archeologist unearthing artifacts of ancient violence. A dull glint in the dirt. I pulled the right rim of my glasses out of the grass, brushed the dirt from it, and put it in my bag. This place holds the air of a dark pilgrimage. Looking from the grass, and the tree, to the lot stretched beyond it I can see the trajectories of the different branches my narrative could have twisted into that night. I could have shattered all of the teeth out of my mouth, or broken my head open on the cement if I’d crashed a little sooner. I could have been paralyzed. I could have died. But I didn’t, arriving instead into a different reality where the teeth were more known. Payment was given for passage to whichever guides watched that path: a week of my life, my glasses broken in an offering of sight, and my blood given to the soil. If the offerings weren’t given freely, at least they weren’t revoked.