I backed up a few steps until I was against the locker. I leaned against it for support, feeling a deep, burning pain in my side now. I looked down at my left side, seeing nothing but a tear in my down jacket and a few feathers floating away on the air currents.
"Are you okay Bill?" Mike, trembling with adrenaline asked me. "Did he get you?"
"Yeah." I nodded, trying to remain calm. The halls around me were awash with excited conversation. I saw several teachers heading for us. I unzipped my coat and let it drop from my body. There was a small hole in my flannel shirt, the edges tinged with blood. I lifted the shirt revealing my bare skin.
"It don't look that bad." Mike said hopefully, examining the wound.
"Uh huh." I nodded, looking at it myself. It was about an inch in length, a slight amount of blood oozing from it, just below the bottom of my rib cage on the left side. Sure it didn't look bad from the outside; stab wounds rarely did; but what was damaged inside?
"You okay?" Mike asked me again, not liking what he was seeing in my face.
"I think I should sit down." I replied, doing so, my mind trying to recall the structures in that part of my body. The spleen was the first thing to come to mine. If my spleen had been lacerated I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. My left kidney was also in there, depending on how deep and at what angle the knife had gone in, it could be in peril. If there had been an upward angle, could he have gotten the left lung? I had been stabbed! My mind kept yelling at me. Stabbed!
"What's going on here?" A teacher demanded after pushing his way through the crowd of kids. He took in the sight of Richie barfing and holding his damaged testes and of me sitting against the lockers with my shirt pulled up and blood oozing from a wound. He saw the knife sitting on the ground about ten feet away. Richie's friends had already made themselves scarce.
"He's been stabbed Mr. Johnson." Mike told the teacher.
"Stabbed?" Mr. Johnson said, alarmed, shocked. Remember that this was 1982, long before such things became commonplace in schools. "Are you all right young man?"
"No." I said, looking up into the teacher's face. "I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay?"
"What are you… "
"Shut UP!" I told him. "I have been stabbed in the left upper abdominal quadrant. I need to get to a hospital immediately. Please go call for an ambulance."
"But who… "
"Never mind that shit!" I yelled forcefully. "Go call a fucking ambulance. Now!"
That got him moving. By that time more teachers had reached the scene anyway.
The ambulance showed up and I almost got the screaming horrors when I saw who the paramedic was. It was Ken Tully, who would be operations manager from the time I got hired until our small company was purchased by a national corporation four years later at which time he would get a severance package along with the rest of the old management. Ken had been the biggest prick on two legs, serving as hatchet man for the owner of the company. It had never occurred to me that he'd once been a field paramedic. I didn't think he could possibly be a good one. This was a freaking nightmare.
But much to my surprise and delight, he was competent at his job. He dressed the wound and started two large bore IVs on me on the way to the trauma center. He even had a decent bedside manner, continually telling me I'd be all right, explaining that he was just taking precautions by cutting off all of my clothes and plugging two garden hoses into my veins. If I hadn't been so scared I might have taken time to wonder what would happen to him in the future to make him such a dick.
But I was very scared, shaken to my very core by the incident. I could die from this, I kept thinking. I could be bleeding to death right now. But the thought that kept recurring most was: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! I had never been stabbed, I'd never been close to death. What did this mean? I couldn't die could I? I'd already lived to thirty-two! I couldn't die as a teenager! Hadn't the cards already been dealt?
As I was wheeled into the trauma center resuscitation room and surrounded by doctors, nurses, and various other technicians, as I had my wound poked and prodded, as I had needles jabbed into my femoral arteries to check blood gases, as I had a slimy finger shoved up my ass to check for sphincter tone and bowel perforation, the thought kept recurring over and over: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE! X-rays were shot of me, a catheter was rammed up my penis by a nurse who looked old enough to have assisted at the delivery of my father and still I kept thinking: THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!
"Billy," The doctor in charge told me. "We're going to give you some medicine that's going to make you sleepy. We need to put you out for a little bit so we can do a little check on you, to make sure you're not bleeding inside your stomach."
"A peritoneal lavage." I said numbly, making the doctor blink.
"Why yes." He nodded. "Have you had it done before?"
"No." I answered. "Never before. Never."
The doctor gave me THE LOOK for a moment and then said to a nurse, "Give him the Versed."
A minute later I began to feel very sleepy and very stoned. It did little to allay my fear. I knew that they were going to put me unconscious, install a breathing tube in me and hook me up to a ventilator. They were then going to cut open my abdomen, squirt saline into it, and then suck it back out again to see if there was any blood. If there was blood I would be taken to the operating room and sliced open where they would attempt to repair whatever damage Richie's knife had inflicted upon me. If they couldn't, I would die without ever regaining consciousness. I was quite possibly experiencing the last few moments of consciousness I'd ever have. No matter how stoned on narcotics you are, that is a scary thought.
"Let's put him out." A doctor said and an anesthesiologist put something else in my IV.
I had time for only one more thought. THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN BEFORE!
Pain. That was my first waking thought. It was coming from multiple sources. My throat was sore, as sore as the time I'd had tonsillitis. My lower abdomen was sore too, right near my belly button. My dick was burning uncomfortably, like I had to pee and couldn't. And there was a faint ache in my left side. I felt groggy, like I couldn't quite drag myself out of sleep. And someone was calling my name over and over again. What was going on? I wondered.
"Billy, can… ake up?" A broken voice, fading in and out asked. "… illy? Breathe… this."
Something was sitting on my face. It was hissing and tasted like plastic. Breathing it made my throat hurt worse. What was going on?
Finally I opened my eyes, wincing as my pupils reacted to the bright light. I was looking up at a set of fluorescent light bulbs on the ceiling. A hideous yellow curtain was drawn around the area I was in and a young, pretty face was looking down at me. She was a nurse I realized after a moment's thought.
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"Like shit." I muttered, wincing in pain as my vocal cords rebelled at their premature usage.
"Aptly put I'm sure." She nodded. "Just keep breathing that oxygen and you'll feel better in a few minutes."
Oxygen? What was going on? Why was someone giving me oxygen? I tried to concentrate and finally remembered what had happened to me. I'd been stabbed! They'd put me out to give me a peritoneal lavage. That was why my throat hurt so badly, from the breathing tube that had been rammed through my vocal cords. Was I okay? How much time had gone past?
"How am I?" I croaked to the nurse, every word an agony, but I needed to know. "Am I going to live?"
"I think so." She smiled. "It looks like you're going to be just fine."