B56) The Accident part 3

I woke at 4:00am. Who am I? I have no idea who I am. Complete amnesia. I don’t know who I am or where I am. I have no idea what happened to me. What I do know is pain. Agony. And not knowing who I am allows terror to show it's ugly face

The agony and terror appear to be formidable opponents.

I have been bested. It’s obvious. I feel the agony of defeat from the battle I cannot even remember.

The pain and agony made the situation so much worse. The pain is constant. Unrelenting. It just keeps coming, like an army. Like Xerxes and the Persian army hellbent on taking thermopylae. I feel like Leonidas, the king of Sparta and Xerses is the pain. Xerses demand I bow to his will (the pain).

I say "No". Xerses has a million man army. He is fighting a war of attrition. He keeps sending wave after wave of pain in the form of expendable soldiers.

I fight the good fight but the Persian army just keeps coming.

The pain broke me. They won. They have beaten me into submission and now they have taken my sanity. They have taken my ideity. I don’t know who I am anymore.

I am being tortured.

I am in agony.

The pain keeps coming...

It just keeps coming...

And coming...

(The tv was on, an old black and white WWII movie.

I put two and two together and got sixteen hundred and forty five point seven)

"I've been captured by the enemy. Now I am a POW"


“ Of what war”?

“I don’t know”

It was day four in the hospital after the accident. I'd not slept except for a few minutes here an there. I'm in the critical care unit at Rush Copley. They give excellent care but I'm not allowed to sleep. They come in every two hour (if not more often) to check on me. Sleep deprivation along with the pain and the pain meds have taken their toll and pushed me over the edge.

I didn’t recall the battle. I didn’t recall being shot down or having my ship sunk. I can’t even remember who started the war let alone who's in it. I'm a complete blank. I’m unclear as to how I became a prisoner of war. The only thing I’m certain of, I am a prisoner of war and I am being tortured. I look at my leg and wonder what they did to me or what they are doing to me.

The pain. I cannot think straight. I am struggling to hold one coherent thought in my mind at a time.

“What have they done to me”? I say.

"They are torturing me". They want information but I am a blank. I don't know. It's obvious they are torturing me because I'm not telling them what they want to know.

"I can't remember"

I cannot give my name, rank or serial number because I don’t know it. I do not know the answer to their questions.

"I don't know. I don't know". Don't they understand that.

"I don't know god damn it"! I want to scream this from the top of my lungs.

The pain is so bad. It's so bad. I need to get out of here. I need an escape plan. I feel certain my life is in jeopardy.

They are coming back soon. I know it. I begin trembling at the thought of them coming back and continuing on with more of the same.

I fear them coming back more than I fear dying.

I pulled out my IV and assorted connections. One connection I cannot break is the device attached to my leg (woundvac) . This device has a mobile cart with it. I don’t know what it is but it feels like a major source of my pain. I want to peal it off. It feels as if my bones are being crushed from the inside out.

I feel panic, pain and terror as I struggle with every breath. I fight to get the air in and fight to get the air out.

Agony in.

Agony out.

Agony in.

Agony out.

I can’t take the pain. I cannot take the pain.

I stand. The pain from standing makes me want to vomit. Walkings impossible so I hop. I came close to collapsing on the first hop. It felt like I'd been struck by lightening. My good leg almost buckled. Tears began running down my cheeks ---- another hop towards the door. One small hop at a time while I cling to the woundvac on it's rollers. Half way to the door my gown falls off. I'm naked. So. I don't care. I don't need it. I do not need clothes to escape. Clothes are non essential items.

I get to the door. still naked. Still in pain.

At the door I stop to catch my breath. I realize I have to urinate in the worst way. I see a cup sitting on the chair so I pick it up and releive myself. There I am. Naked as a Jay Bird. In one hand I have a cup of urine filled to the brim. The other hand I'm clutching the woundvac on rollers. I'm standing there on one leg staring at the cup of urine trying not to spill it.

I realize I can't move. ----------- Try it. While standing on one leg hold a cup of coffee and hop from one room to the next.

Then the nurses come in.

When I unplugged my IV and assorted connections I set off some alarms.

The first words out of my mouth:

"Who am I"?

"What have you done to me""


Their Response:

“We are nurses”

“You are Mr. Chip Knight”

“This is Rush Copley hospital”

The nurses got me back into bed and began to reattach all the connections.

“What about the war. What about the torture”? I point to the TV and the WWII movie, then to my leg.

“That’s the TV Mr. Knight. It's a movie". She walked over and turned it off.

"There is no war. You are not a prisoner of war. You were in a very bad motorcycle accident”

Nothing. I remember none of that. There was no accident…..or was there? One of the nurses hands me my cell phone. I take the phone and begin scrolling through names of contacts. I find a name that looks familiar for some reason. I call it.

Now it’s about 4:30am

My sister answered the phone. The instant I heard her voice my memory came back. Just like you would turn on a light switch. I went from not knowing to knowing.

Later on that morning I begged the doctor to let me go home. He heard about my escape attempt. Apparently they had given me such a high doses of the pain medicine it effected my memory. The doc oked my release and allowed me to be discharged. By the time I arrived home there was a nurse and a physical therapist waiting for me.

After getting upstairs (not an easy task in my condition) I took a shower with the woundvac off. My first shower in in five days. After the shower the nurse reattached the woundvac.

Not long after the nurse and physical therapist left I fell asleep. I slept for over twenty four hours only getting up to urinate in my bed pan.

Sleep...