If you can't hook the readers with your first five pages you're fucked, right? So I sat down today and seriously for like the billionth time rewrote the chapter. I'm hoping this version works. I wrote it the way I wanted to write it, without all the bullshit other people were saying I needed to put in.
Here it is if anyone wants to comment on it. I don't care if you hate it. I want to know.
Prologue
18 November 2000, 101 Grand Avenue, Capitola, California
It was 4 a.m. I hadn’t slept for three days. The only noise was the sound of the waves sliding into the rocks at the base of the cliff below my apartment, and the strange robotic purr of the CPM (continuous passive movement) machine to which my right leg was strapped.
I was afraid to close my eyes. I was sure that I would never open them again.
*****
Three days before I had undergone a seven hour experimental surgery on my right leg to rebuild my knee and femur out of cadaver parts. It wasn’t a voluntary operation. Eight years before, in 1992, I had broken my right leg, but had somehow failed to notice. I ran competitively in 10Ks until 2000, when my leg started collapsing underneath me. I didn’t think the collapses were a major issue until it happened while I was walking through a cafeteria with a tray full of food. It seemed wasteful to buy an overpriced plate of macaroni and cheese only to have it end up on the floor.
My leg was collapsing because the right knuckle of my femur had broken off in an accident and, over the years, the jagged remains of the bone had smashed the inside of my knee to pieces, like a broken glass bottle hammering into a filet mignon. An initial surgery to fix the problem was botched and the surgeon informed me that my knee had to be removed and replaced with a titanium rod.
I found out that the rod would prevent me from bending my leg. And wouldn’t make a cool didgeridoo sound when I walked as I had imagined when I first heard about it. I embarked on a series of visits to 20 of the top knee doctors in the San Francisco area to see if someone had a better idea for my leg.
After I had explained my situation, and produced the surgery report, X-rays, and pictures, I would ask if there was a solution for my problem that didn’t involve a rod. Every doctor looked at me as if I was asking if it was medically possible to make the Easter Bunny pop out of my ass. No one could help me.
Then I found out that there was a doctor, one of two in the US, doing experimental knee surgeries with cadaver parts. Although I wasn’t excited about the idea of having a zombie knee, I went to see him. Dead body bits seemed like a better option than having something in my leg that might make me more susceptible to lightning strikes.
And that’s how I met Dr. Douglas Blatz. At our first meeting he said he couldn’t help me. But then I managed to convince him to try. I’m ashamed to admit I did that by crying like a two year old and then threatening to cut off my leg. He didn’t know at the time that I was lying about owning a bread knife.
Chris Kuhn, my physical therapist since the first surgery, worked many long hours during the eight month wait for a donor to prepare me for my zombie knee surgery. He kept my spirits up during the grueling sessions by inventing fun games, like one where he would throw a ball at my head while I stood on a wobble board. He knew damn well I would never catch it.
Dr. Blatz had warned me that the surgery would be hard, that I would never run again and that I would have to wear a brace on my leg for the rest of my life. I didn’t listen, thinking that if I had managed to run on a broken leg for eight years I could do anything.
*****
My knee resembled a rotting cantaloupe. It felt as if someone was jack hammering my leg. My femur coursed with an electrical sensation that ran through the bone into my thigh. Every time the CPM forced my knee to bend 20 degrees it sounded like someone slowly stepping on a box of Wheat Chex cereal.
The pain gradually began affecting the rest of my body. My heart felt like it was trying to bounce off of my lungs and out of my body. My right hip cramped. My swollen toes, covered in a substance leaking out of my knee that looked like baby shampoo, closely resembled a parade float. It seemed that someone had set off a fire alarm in my brain and then evacuated without turning it off.
 |
| The day after my surgery |
The thought of enduring even ten more minutes of the pain was unbearable. Death was imminent. I had spent the past two days analyzing the situation from every angle as if it were an engineering problem. I needed a solution to end the pain, even if for one minute. There was no solution.
I started to cry. Through my tears I could see the waves picking up in the ocean. It was now 4:30. In another hour the surfers would be showing up at the punch bowl, a local surfing area below my balcony. I was filled with hatred for them, walking leisurely down the beach with their boards, floating out in the water, and then having breakfast on the boardwalk at Zelda’s before carrying on with their lives. They would be driving cars, working, going to the gym, eating pizza at Pizza My Heart, hanging out in the evening with their partners, talking and laughing. I would be sitting alone, doing nothing, unable to leave the confines of my apartment because I had a brace on my leg that went from my ankle to my hip that made crutching difficult and dangerous.
Then I noticed something. Just a few feet off shore, a school of dolphins was swimming in the surf. There were at least 30 of them, maybe more, fins bobbing in and out of the water as they played in the rolling waves. At that moment the sun appeared, a faint yellow line on the edge of the ocean, gradually rising and making the dolphin fins glow.
That’s what I’ll do, I thought to myself.
I’ll swim.
