It's not that your wishes won't be answered, you just might not like the implementation
On Wednesday morning I woke up, feeling tired and burned out. I wished that I didn’t have to get out of bed. I was on the verge of calling in sick at work and just taking the day off, which in retrospect would have been the wiser course of action. Instead, I just decided that I’d get up and go to work regardless of my actual desires.
I hopped onto my bike, waved at the neighborhood kids in a friendly way because that’s what you do, and headed on my way to work. There was lots of congestion on route 17, because there quite often was, and when that happens, motorcyclists ride on the boarder of the road between the cars and the sidewalk. The motorists all know that they do this, so they’re on the lookout.
Shame that one of the motorists wasn’t a local, and he was also under the misimpression that doing this was illegal (and, being a cager, didn’t think that killing the odd motorcyclist for doing something he didn’t think was allowed was even a problem). So when he decided to turn left to find a route that didn’t have as much congestion, he didn’t even think to check his mirrors like any local would, and even though there was a bicyclist at the intersection and Tokyo-area cyclists are notorious for ignoring any traffic signals, he assumed that since the pedestrian light was red, the cyclist wouldn’t cross against him.
So round the corner he went without even so much as slowing down. Shame I was filtering through traffic right around him. Down I went with a bang, and my bike landed on my knee. That hurt quite a lot, and some swearing ensued, which quickly turned into incoherent shouts of pain. So then there I was, under my bike, which was under the car.
The driver of the car, then, instead of doing something sensible like stopping and getting out to assess the situation before proceeding further, then proceeded to drive his car over my bike with me under it “out of the way”.
I attempted to move-nothing doing. My left leg insisted that stay where I was. I attempted to move it manually, and it told me in no uncertain terms that it was going to be damn well staying where it was, thank you very much. Someone asked me if I wanted them to call me an ambulance, and I said, “Please do that.” Someone else picked up my bike and wheeled it out of the way, and as if my magic, seconds later, an ambulance arrived. I was amazed. I’ve never seen an ambulance arrive as fast as that before.
After quickly gathering up my helmet and some quick-thinking individual giving the medics my bike’s key (really, so many nice people just happened to be around at that time), the ambulance whisked me off to the nearest hospital that had a CT scanner and X-ray machine, which turned out to be a little clinic a mere five minutes away. Very handy, that. On the way, while the paramedics were undressing me, they commented that what with the full-face helmet, armored jacket, armored pants, armored gloves and sturdy boots, I could have come out of that incident much, much worse than I actually did. So I guess that was nice to know. As far as they were concerned, though, it was just a sore leg I was suffering from-probably a fracture of some description.
When they got me to the clinic with the CT scanner, the CT scanner was right by the door so they popped me into that first. When they were done with that, they much, much more gently moved me back onto my stretcher and took me to the X-ray room. I didn’t consider that a very good sign. After the X-Rays were done, the doctor in charge spent quite a while on the phone.
Eventually she explained to me, “I was looking around for a really good knee specialist.” My heart sank. “There’s an excellent orthopedic surgeon at a hospital that’s about 15 minutes away, would you like us to send you there?” I sort of mumbled assent, as I wasn’t feeling entirely coherent at that point, and then she stuck a suppository up my butt, tensor-bandaged a large splint to my leg and sent me on my way where there was an ambulance waiting.
The spint Tensor-banadaged to my leg
On the way to the ambulance, I encountered the driver of the car (or as the Japanese put it, my “accident partner”). He apologized for any trouble I’d been put to and gave me his contact details plus an accident card that his company had preprinted (in a sign of amazing confidence in their drivers) with checkmarks by which documents they would like to complete the paperwork. I had no idea what I was looking at. I vaguely recognized the business card for what it was and apologized that I didn’t have one of my own to give him in return.
The ambulance drivers apologized in advance that the hospital I was to be taken to was a bit far, then they fired up the sirens and, as far as I could tell, every single intersection they came to had a red light which they had to blow through. Also, during that ride, I had the only occasion to complain that the standard way that Japanese drivers turn left (by coming to a near-complete halt and double checking everything before proceeding) was too fast and ferocious for me.
Eventually we got to the hospital where I was unloaded and wound up in a doctor’s office where a doctor was waiting to attend to me, and got right down to doing medicine immediately. I was confused by that-wasn’t there supposed to be a lot of paperwork first? He took off the splint, noticed the swelling in my leg and proceeded to extract quite a lot of blood to bring the swelling down, put a rather-more-industrial-looking splint on and sent me off for more X-rays and a CT scan. While this was happening, various administrative types had me fill in paperwork while I was being carted from one place to another. Not that I was doing a very good job of that.
A rather-more-industrial-looking splint
I got most of one form filled in by the time they got me to the bit where they were doing routine blood tests as part of the normal admittance, and I got some sort of idea of how serious the situation was by the time they’d set me up with a bed. This wasn’t going to be a bandage-me-up-and-wish-me-luck situation after all, was it? I realized that it was even more serious when they then brought me lunch.
My first hospital lunch
Eventually a nurse came by and said, “The doctor who examined you would also like to take an MRI.” With some effort involving, among other things, moving my bed to the other side of the room where there was more room (two beds on the one side, three on the other), and very carefully holding my leg while another nurse attempted to help me get into the wheelchair, I was on my way. Every time we encountered a bump on the way, I said “ow!” because as it turns out, having just the brace to hold up a broken leg doesn’t work that well. I eventually realized that if I wheeled myself over the bumps instead of the nurse pushing me, it worked quite a lot better because I could slow down more for them.
The MRI had a similar result as the CT scan had had in the first hospital. After the MRI, they had a stretcher waiting for me-no more faffing about with wheelchairs apparently. And then, as was my wish in the morning, I spent the rest of the day in bed.