Member-only story
I Wanted a Burrito, but Got This Brain Injury Instead
And just about every aspect of my life has changed because of it
Maybe if I hadn’t wanted a burrito, I wouldn’t have a brain injury right now.
It was early last May, and I was on my way home from a party in Bel Air. This is the person I used to be: someone who spends a Wednesday evening chatting up money-hungry men in suits, downing a few glasses of red and hitting the occasional joint while absorbing cannabis investor gossip and networking the fuck out of the situation. Casual. About five years back I’d decided that the only way to cover the secretive and mostly illegal marijuana industry was to show up in person as often as possible: drugs is a business best discussed IRL. Silver catering trays of salmon had been laid out on a balcony overlooking the pool but I’d only had a few bites, so after the Tuscan McMansion began to empty and once my Lyft wended its way out of the hills and was finally approaching my block, I asked the driver to make the next left, instead, and drop me at the taco truck down the street.
We pulled up to a red light and came to a stop. It was just after 11 p.m. I was in the back seat on the passenger side, my scalp flush against the headrest. I heard a loud crunch.
The next thing I remember is feeling a profound wrongness, everywhere. Immediately, Martin Sheen came to mind. In the season two premiere of The West Wing, Sheen’s character, the President, has been shot, but in the chaos of the moment, he has no idea. Sirens wail and his limo zooms toward the White House as Sheen coherently discusses who’s been left behind at the scene. Then, a Secret Service agent notices blood coming out of his mouth, and both the agent and the audience realize he’s hurt. I first saw this scene in high school, and its lesson apparently cleaved a place so close to my heart that it was the first thing I remembered in the wake of my own trauma.
Take careful stock, I remember thinking as I gently patted down my torso and legs, feeling for blood, because whatever is wrong might not be obvious. Like that one time with Martin Sheen.
That impulse was correct. Something was very wrong. But once I determined I was physically intact, I unbuckled my seatbelt and spilled…
