A Random Encounter with a Retaining Wall
I should preface this short story with a disclaimer. This isn't about me. This is actually my take on what happened to a previous friend of mine. Much of the major events are true and that's mildly depressing.
So here it is:

"I'm dying, I must be dying," he thought to himself as he lay there, half crumpled, half stretched out from the impact. He could feel a cool breeze on his face and a cooler sensation on the upper back of his head, he knew he was bleeding because he could feel the blood oozing out, coasting down the back of his head and splashing into the puddle of blood beneath him.

He couldn't move, partly because of the somewhat real fear that he may have sustained damage to his spine and could sever his spinal cord, but also because he was in extraordinary pain. The pain that he imagined one must feel when they die.

"Why is this happening to me?" he wondered aloud and then wondered to himself if his brain was exposed to the air and if so, could someone read his mind. He almost giggled to himself but instead tried to breathe as shallowly as possible. And he tried to run through a laundry list of injuries he might imagine he had so that he could help the paramedics when they finally did show up.

There was no panic in his thoughts, possibly because of the shock of the accident and impact and loss of blood. He calmly considered his pains, his unknown areas and the parts of him that were functioning more or less normally. His arm was broken, that one was easy, he could see the abnormal joint in his forearm and could feel the sharp stabbing pains of the bones shifting against each other. He tried to keep his arm as still as possible and thought that he might pass out from the pain before too long. And he wanted to be conscious for when the paramedics showed up.

"Where in the hell are they anyway? I've been lying here forever already," he wondered out loud. Above him, the sky was lightening with each passing moment as another day broke over Tempe and the world began to hum back into motion. Someone would find him soon enough, they had to or he was sure that he would die.

The day was going to be another hot one, no surprise there, August in Arizona tends to be warm. And today would be no exception, it was already nice and warm out and that was before the sun had even risen above the eastern horizon. If he'd been able to roll over, he might have seen the purple streaks in the sky being chased away by the growing light on the horizon. But he couldn't turn over. Or wouldn�t.

He kept going through his list of injuries. Arm was broken in at least one place. Head was bad, he knew that leaking from the head was a bad sign, especially since he didn't feel any pain there at all, just a very dull throbbing that he realized was his own heart beating, and slowly pushing more and more of his blood out the tattered and torn edges of the wound on the back of his head. He concentrated for a moment on calming his body, seeing if he could slow the beating by willpower, momentarily lost in a silly game of mind over matter.

Arm broken, head broken open (he laughed as he thought, "Like a pinata only the candy's nasty in there this time."

And then he would admonish himself for making light of such a dangerous and life threatening situation. Then another voice inside (or almost all the way inside as his brain was exposed to the world outside now so there was no true in and out anymore) chimed in with a "Relax, getting worked up about this will only make it worse, better to stay loose and wait for help to arrive." And another voice joined in, this time it was a voice of dissent, the mother inside the mind perhaps, "Why weren�t you wearing a helmet? You don't know how to ride those things so what the hell were you thinking?"

"I was having fun," he croaked out in reply, not realizing how dry his mouth had become. The sound of his voice seemed to loom above him, the words dripping down in a garish cartoon image, the letters draining into sheets of blood, of his blood until he was lying in a real pool of his own blood.

He was thirsty and tired and in pain and starting to get pissed off because no help had come yet. He had been there for a while and no one had even seen him or the upturned wheels of the little motorcycle he'd been bombing around on most of the night. Not the shards of plastic and glass that had bounced everywhere when he�d hit the cement retaining wall.

He thought about what had happened, tried to piece together the moments leading up to the accident. What he had been doing and what he should have been doing. But as hard as he tried, nothing would come to him. He couldn't recall the last few moments before impact, could only remember that instant of blinding white and red pain, of his body leaving the seat of the bike and colliding with the unyielding surface of the wall. And then nothing until he woke up in the position he was laying in now. No idea of whether it had been his fault or the little classic motorcycle's fault, it was made in 1968 so it might not be working properly although Charlie had said it was in perfect condition.

And he felt a strong pang of anger and regret. "Charlie's going to be so pissed off at me," he thought and then remembered that it wasn't Charlie's bike anymore. He'd gotten a cash advance off his credit card and bought the bike from him last night in a moment of impulsive "I WANT". "Shit, that's MY bike I just wrecked and I still owe Charlie for it," he swore to himself.

Arm? Broken. Head? Broken open. What else? He wiggled his toes, tried to move his arm that he was lying on, no shocks of white pain there so he guessed it was alright. He thought about turning his head but decided against it as he was unsure about the state of his spine. Internal injuries? Not sure but he didn't feel any intense pain from his innards. He knew there would be scrapes from hitting the wall, cuts from the flying glass, bruises everywhere and probably a long, long time before he was okay again. If he lived at all.

And he reflected on the peculiarity of considering whether he would be alive at this time tomorrow or next week. It made him want to run up some more credit debt and that made him laugh in spite of his situation.

He realized that there was a siren somewhere around him, racing towards him with its siren wailing. And he breathed a sigh of relief thinking that he would be alright. But the ambulance raced by him, at high speed and with no intention of picking him up at all. He slumped, resigned to his fate.

He must have passed out because when he awoke there were two men sweatily working on him. They saw he was conscious and slowed down their efforts. He was on a gurney being rolled into the cavernous back end of the ambulance. They were speaking to him but the words made no sense. He was able to glance at his resting place from the accident, see the scary large pool of blood that had been seeping from him. The impact mark on the wall where his head had hit it. Later he would be told that people could see his hair stuck in the wall.

Later.

Later he would find himself physically well but unable to piece together the events. Like they had faded into some dream sequence.

But he knew he wasn't quite the same person as before. How could he be when he had laid there for those hours with his head opened to the air, his brain uncovered and his body wracked with the savage pain of hitting a wall at 25 miles an hour without any protective gear at all. Unless you can call sandals, shorts and a t-shirt protective gear.

He had changed. He'd become a different sort of person. He'd go out for drinks and wake up the next morning with a pile of stolen things next to him, from cars he'd broken into along the way home from the bar. He would black out for hours at a time and steal things. He would forget to eat for days at a time. He would open a beer moments after having opened another beer. He would alienate and push away his friends to make newer ones that didn't know about the accident and didn't care that he seemed to have lost his moral center.

He began to steal more openly, descending into the chaos of a shattered mind inside a fractured skull.

He didn't fade away, he just drifted off, further and further orbiting out into the new low life world he'd found and discovered fit in with his new persona better than the college students he'd hung out with previously. It was easier to sink than to climb and sink he did. Out of sight and into the murky depths of those folks who never have a job for more than a month at a time, live from hand to mouth and are always on the lookout for an easy score.

In his next life, he should wear the helmet.