I see the date on James’s name tag a few minutes after he walks into the hospital room. He’s across the bed from me, petting Leah, and the neon-orange sticker stuck to his right jacket pocket catches my eye. I land on the date and look at it for some seconds, the meaning slipping my grasp. I feel like I am reading a word in a foreign language whose meaning I can’t quite recall. Soon the meaning emerges: it’s your birthday.
I step out onto the street suddenly filled with a sensation I’ve experienced before, usually prompted by you: I would like something horrible to happen to me. I would like to be in an accident, I would like for it to be swift and spectacular, I would like for it to define a before and after in my life, and I would like lots of people to see it.
I would like lots of people to see it and feel bad for me and help me recover. I would like the person who did it to have to admit to it. I would like for them to suffer consequences. I would like them to apologize to me and I would like to forgive them.
I would like to cry and cry and cry because it will take six months for my legs to fully heal and because the skin graft onto the side of my body will have to be bandaged and de-bandaged and re-bandaged every day for the better part of a year and because when my body flew over the hood of the car and then onto the roof and then back down onto the ground I hit my head but it’s as yet unclear how much memory loss there might be. I would like everyone to know about this. I will tell them. I will let them know, and when they feel badly for me, I will say thank you, and no, there’s nothing you can do, just watch the street when you’re crossing, I guess, though that’s never a guarantee, because there was no way I could’ve seen this guy coming, I had the right-of-way, and he was looking at his phone.
I would like for this to happen and yet it doesn’t. I go out onto the street, I am careful, I look both ways before I cross and if a car is coming my way particularly fast I wait until they pass. I do not want to premeditate a brush with death, I do not want to set it up. I want an actual accident. I want something unforeseen, on a random day, life-defining and yet ultimately inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, something like the day you were born.