Don't Move

You ran the stop sign. You had your imitation wolf-skin jacket on, your headset was plugged into your ears, and you never even slowed down. The rain had just stopped, and soon it would start again. The sky was the color of ashes, and above the branches of the plane trees, above the TV antennas, it was filled with great, twittering, feathery flocks of starlings. They looked like giant blotches, black against the gray of the sky, veering and swerving in tight formations, packed so close that they were touching one another, but harmlessly; and then they would open up and spread apart and almost disappear from sight before coming together again, as densely as before. Down on the ground, the pedestrians were covering their heads with newspapers, even with their bare hands, to protect themselves from the hail of droppings raining down from the sky, sliming the pavement, mingling with wet fallen leaves in viscous clusters, and giving off a heavy sweetish smell everyone was in a hurry to get away from. You came flying along the avenue, heading for the intersection. You almost made it--the guy in the car almost managed to miss you. But the street was slick with starling guano. The car wheels skidded a little on that slippery surface, not much, but enough to graze your motor scooter. You flew up toward the birds and then down into their shit, and your backpack with all the stickers on it came down with you. Two of your notebooks landed in the gutter, in a puddle of black water. Your helmet, which you'd neglected to fasten, bounced off the street like an empty head. Someone ran over to you right away. Your eyes were open, your face was filthy, you'd lost all your front teeth. Your skin was peppered with asphalt cinders that darkened your cheeks like a man's beard. The music had stopped; your earphones were tangled up in your hair. The man in the car sprang out, leaving the door wide open, and ran to where you were lying. He looked at the big gash in your forehead and reached into his pocket for his cell phone, but it slipped out of his hand. A boy picked it up--he's the one who called in the accident. Meanwhile, the traffic was at a standstill. The guy's car was where he'd left it, straddling the streetcar tracks, and the streetcar couldn't pass. The driver got out, along with a lot of his passengers, and they all walked over to where you were. Total strangers stood in a circle around you and stared. A little groan came out of your mouth, followed by a bubble of pink froth; you were sliding into unconsciousness. All the blocked traffic delayed the ambulance, but you weren't in a hurry anymore. You were closed up in your fake-fur jacket like a bird with folded wings. At last, the EMTs got to you, put you in the ambulance, and sped away through the traffic with their sirens wailing. Some cars pulled over to the side of the road to let you pass, but the ambulance driver had to jump the sidewalks along the river, and all the while the IV bottle was swinging above your head and a hand was squeezing a big blue bag, again and again, pumping breath into your lungs. In the emergency room, the doctor who took charge of you slipped her finger into your mouth and down between your mandible and your hyoid bone. That's an extremely sensitive pressure point, and your reaction was abnormally weak. She took some gauze and wiped away the blood that was running out of your forehead. She examined your pupils; they were fixed and asymmetrical. And you were bradypneic, you were breathing too slowly. They put an artificial airway into your mouth to reposition your tongue, which had slid to the back of your throat, and then they inserted the suction catheter through your nose to clear your airway passages. They pulled up blood, tar, mucus, and tooth fragments. They put a pulse oximeter clip on one of your fingers to measure the oxygen saturation of your blood. Your oxyhemoglobin percentage was eighty-five, dangerously low, and so they intubMazzantini, Margaret is the author of 'Don't Move' with ISBN 9780385510745 and ISBN 0385510748.