Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead by Brian Boyle, Bill Katovsky Read Free Book Online Page A

inches. This feels like torture. After several minutes of being zapped, I stare blankly at the ceiling.
    “See, now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she says to me in a cheerful voice. Is she serious?
    She walks over to one of my nurses, whom I don’t recognize, standing just outside my room and filling out a stack of paperwork. I can just barely hear their conversation because of the distance. Dr. Kulkarni asks her if I am able to speak. The nurse briefly looks my way. “Well, we really don’t know yet,” I hear her say. “There was evidence of a massive concussion from the crash. The fact that he’s still living is a miracle. He has been through so much already for the past month and a half. He had an incident a few weeks ago where his tracheotomy tube clogged up and he couldn’t breathe for several minutes. The lack of oxygen for his brain may have had a catastrophic effect. If he is able to speak one day, then that will be fantastic, but his overall mental capacity, if and when he comes out of the coma, is unknown.”
    Huh? This latest overheard news alert sends me furiously spiraling into panic mode. My heart is racing while trying to keep pace with my out-of-control thoughts. I have been here for a month and a half? How is that possible? I only remember waking up just a few days ago. Why did my parents tell me that I only had a few broken bones and that I would be out of here in a few days? Are they just trying to sugarcoat the fact that I might have suffered brain damage? This just doesn’t seem possible, because I’m thinking right now; I seem coherent. Don’t these people know I’m blinking on command and trying to smile and wiggle my toes? Isn’t that good enough evidence that my brain is working like it’s always worked, except that I can’t speak? And if I can’t get words to come out of my mouth, I will just have to learn sign language once I get more feeling back in my fingers. Whatever got me in this mess—and I still don’t know what accident everyone is referring to—I will not have it defeat me. Still, six weeks of my life have been excised like a giant tumor. Is this what amnesia is like? Or maybe I do have brain damage. I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life.
    After she gathers up her instruments and clipboard, Dr. Kulkarni leaves the room. A nurse walks in right afterward. I move my eyes in her direction to see if I recognize her and I do. She’s smiling and is happy to see me. “Hi Brian, I’m Nurse Kimberly. Do you remember me?” I blink once in response. She looks over the gauges on my monitors and machines. She attaches a new bag of fluid for my IV, removes blood for testing, cleans out the buildup in my breathing tube, checks my catheter, wraps air-filled compression braces around my legs, and turns on the television. I tilt my head so I can see the screen. There’s a news program about the Iraq War on, and the screen is full of wounded soldiers and civilian victims from a mass suicide bombing.
    I hear the water running in the sink and immediately start obsessing about getting a drink, just one lousy sip. It’s incredible how parched my throat feels.
    I glance up at the clock. It is 10:43. I watch the second hand go around and around, every sixty seconds marking a different drink in my imagination. For the first minute, it’s a tall glass of ice-cold water. The next minute, it’s one of those plastic two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew that I used to consume in one long continuous gulp. And wouldn’t it be great if I could swim in a pool of lemon-lime Gatorade and take a drink every time I put my head below the surface? Then it’s onto ice-cold milk—so cold that it’s right at the threshold of freezing. Of course, I can’t leave out fruit juices—apple, orange, cranberry, pineapple. I’m so desperate for liquid salvation that even a sip from a puddle of dirty water would be a treat. Thinking about all the refreshing possibilities causes me to drool.