The Worst Part of Nearly Dying

A Reflection

The worst part of nearly dying is not the moment you wake up. You blink open your eyes to adjust to the light. Maybe you shake some glass out of your hair. Time stops for one whole second—long enough to feel your soul float in and out of your body, if you believe in that kind of stuff. You reach down and feel shattered bones. “It’s broken,” you say matter-of-factly, because there’s nothing else that can possibly be said.

The worst part of nearly dying is not the confusion of a sweaty EMT coming at you with a pair of scissors. He holds you down with rough hands and warns you to stop crying; they’re only going to cut off your clothes. Except that’s precisely why you’re in tears. You just bought that expensive winter coat that makes you feel good about yourself and seeing it snipped apart is just the tip of the iceberg.

The worst part of nearly dying is not the mind-numbing pain of having your completely crushed ankle popped back into the socket without painkillers. The horrible scream this elicits is almost the worst part, but not quite. The human mind is a beautiful thing because it does not imprint the memory of physical pain. Moments later, you’ll only remember that shrill scream echoing off the bare tile and the disturbingly cold expression on the doctor’s face.

The worst part of nearly dying is definitely not your emergency surgery. You’re floating down that road on a cloud of anesthesia and morphine.

The worst part of nearly dying is not the collection of metal pins they screw into your skeleton to hold the fragments together. You don’t want to deal with amputation, right? Frankenstein’s monster didn’t get to choose his patchwork fate, either.

The worst part of nearly dying is not the days you spend bedridden, fighting off infections while fighting for the will to keep going. Blood might pool in your bed. Painkillers might make you too sick to function. None of it, no matter how concerning, can keep you from your sole escape rope of sleep.

The worst part of nearly dying is not struggling to keep your life together when you go back to school or work. After an exhausting day, you spend all of your non-existent free time lifting three-pound weights in physical therapy. Your favorite part quickly becomes the electrical stimulation because at least it’s proof you can still feel. Friends will wonder, almost with a hint of jealousy, how you manage to “do it all.” They don’t realize you have no other choice.

The worst part of nearly dying is not being called a murderer by a handful of hateful teenagers who don’t seem to care that the accident was not your fault. They’re the same people who think it’s okay to ridicule you for being temporarily stuck in a wheelchair. Their voices do not carry.

The worst part of nearly dying is not the night you spent crying because you will never be able to wear heels again. Some women wish they had an excuse to live in flats.

The worst part of nearly dying is not the constant string of surgeries you must undergo to convince your bones to grow back together. You will live with chronic arthritis for the rest of your life, but many people do. One day you will draft a rehearsed speech to explain to new friends why you can’t climb that hill or go ice skating ever again.

The worst part of nearly dying is not learning to embrace your scars instead of hiding them from prying eyes. The railroad tracks stitched up your leg are signs of life.

The very worst part of nearly dying is the secret. You are the only one who knows the truth about what it means to toe the edge and you’re not allowed to talk about it. You know how it feels to watch everything fall apart right before your eyes — how easily the spool of someone’s life unravels. When that car hit you, it also stamped a ticking time bomb onto your chest. It’s the same bomb that implodes in the pit of your stomach with every unanswered phone call, every ambulance siren, and every empty chair at the table. The realization that death is a careening horizon ticks away at your life, in time with the clicking of your new misshapen bones.