Accident

 

I had a nasty accident in the subway, pitching down a flight of stone steps and landing at the landing. I must have tripped, I guess, or had a shoe issue. Maybe I was wearing reading glasses and getting a false picture of things a ilttle under six feet away. I didn't exaxtly see it happen, though I did know it was happening (oh shit), and definitely lost consciousness for a good instant there.

I opened my eyes under rhe eyes of cops doing the things they are supposed to do, making an appraisal of the situation and a plan to get me out of there and noticing that I was screaming whenever they touched my left leg (fracture in the femur, right by the knee). They got me into an ambulance which got me to Bellevue, once the fabled East Side lunatic asylum, but a very civilized place nowadays, and I'm not about to make any complaints except maybe on the subject of Mayor Eric Adams, thanks to whom all my meals are mostly plant-based and entirely vegetarian, which is fine with me—far better than any hospital food I've had before, which is not to say good, exactly, but edible enough to ensure I don't starve—but maybe not the best political move Adams could have made.

At night, the hospital becomes a symphony of irritating electronic noises, from the random bleep or bleat to the occasional full-scale melodty. This became the subject for me of a non-lucid dream on the first bight. "Methought", as dream reporters used to say, I had the computer on and was following all those sounds as notifications. I actually told the  night nurse about this in the morning: "All those noises are on the imternet!" "You were dreaming," she said, correctly.