Fallen: A Trauma, a Marriage, and the Transformative Power of Music Read Online Free

together, bought a bottle of wine, and walked to Claytons, the local grocery store, to buy takeout picnic food from the deli counter. We were midway down the junk food aisle discussing the specific ways, come September, Simon could phase out carpentry work when he stopped beside the shelves of Perrier and tonic water, put his hand on the cart, and leaned toward me, off balance.
    “I have such a weird feeling,” he said. “Destabilized. Like everything in my life is about to change. Totally change, like on a molecular level. Like my very atoms are shifting.”
    “Yeah?” I said. “That’s a good thing, right?”
    “It’s weird,” he repeated and shrugged. He wasn’t prone to weird feelings, much less to belaboring them, and although it was obvious that the sensation was an uncomfortable one, it seemed inconceivable that a premonition of change could bode anything but good. Simon had worked so hard for so many years, and he was so skilled at what he did. This was his time.
    VANCOUVER GENERAL HOSPITAL is monstrous, a labyrinth of parking lots and entranceways and long halls, designed, it appears, to keep me from finding Simon. The panic, held at bay for so long, burbles over as Ryan and I try to find a parking spot, then an entrance to the hospital, and finally where the hell we are supposed to go. We hurtle down various corridors, and for the first time, I am rendered incoherent with panic. I want to stop dead and call Simon’s name until he comes to retrieve me and explain what the fuck is going on. Rounding a corner, we meet up with Lou and Dave, the same look of unsuppressed panic on their faces. Then we see Simon’s uncle Jerry and his aunt Barb stepping out of an elevator.
    Jer is a judge, recently retired but still possessing both the ease and weight of authority his title conferred, an authority that is easily matched, if not exceeded, by that of Barb, his wife of forty years. It is a relief to see them. They are parents, and I have never felt more like a child lost at the mall. It is also frightening: Lorna and Marc have called in the reserves. Jer and Barb’s presence means something is really, truly, terribly wrong.
    Together we all enter the elevator, which Barb and Jer have just exited in confusion. The door closes, but none of us thinks to push a button. We stand in the motionless elevator for a solid minute trying to construct a plan when someone—Jer? Dave?—finally remembers to choose a floor. We navigate the route to the emergency room, where, upon seeing a lineup at admissions, I move decisively to the back of the queue. This is something I can do: wait in line. As if my visit to the hospital is no more critical than checking on the status of a patient who, say, needed a few stitches or a tetanus shot.
    Lou walks past me, past the red stripe that the queued line is not supposed to cross, and through the doors into the ER. A moment later he returns, takes my arm, and leads me back to a nurse and a social worker. I am the daughter of a social worker, and I know what her presence means: this is more than just serious. She explains that Simon is still in surgery. She says he is very sick. His condition deteriorated in-flight: when he arrived at the hospital, he had high blood pressure and a low heart rate and was unable to breathe on his own. His left pupil was blown. (
Blown.
This word catches me, traps me:
blown,
suggesting leaves or cherry blossoms, colored glass transformed into pretty, light-catching baubles, kites, or candles on a birthday cake. It is an inexplicable word in the context of Simon’s eyes, which are a pale, jade green with a thin amber filigree around the iris and which, most notably, are, and have always been, steady and wide open.) After having a seizure, Simon’s body contracted into the stiff contortions of a decerebrate posture. Before being taken into surgery, he was rated multiple times by the trauma doctor as having a Glasgow Coma Scale score of 3, 3 being the lowest