Second Chance

I have to share an experience with you I had two weeks ago. It was on Saturday I had planned several things for this weekend: recycle my bottle collection, clean up the flat, rearrange my book shelves, wallpaper the kitchen, clean up the garden, do some new videos and so on. On Saturday evening I had an appointment at the cinema, I packed my bag and that's the last thing I can remember clearly. The next thing I remember: me awaking at the hospital. I always carry my small camera in the pocket and when I checked the small cupboard beneath my bed I found my wallet, my watch, my keys and my camera. With me in the room were two persons: a young Russian who was injured in a punch up and an old German who was waiting for his knee surgery. In the first hours after I woke up I couldn't remember a thing, I asked all the time the same questions: where am I? What happened? The Russian guy got angry: I told you already thousand times: you are at the hospital, you were involved in a heavy car accident! From that moment on I could remember where I was now, but till today I still don't know what happened at this Saturday evening. I started to realize that a bunch of bones was broken on my left side: the ankle, the fibula, something in the knee, a rib and the collarbone. I still can't lift my left arm properly. It's very unusual, I mean it's a rather strange feeling to wake up in the hospital. On Friday I was shopping and my fridge was full of fresh food, I thought I would be away for some hours and now I lay in a bed, couldn't move my left side and every bone there seemed to ache. The Russian guy refused to stay at the hospital, he signed a paper, that he left the hospital against the advice of the doctors and was gone. How I envied him! For the Russian came another German guy, also for knee surgery. If I say German I mean Franconian (Franconia is a part of Bavaria) and Franconians speak a dialect that sound's as strange as Texan dialect may sound to Californians. Being both of same age the old guys started to talk and talk and talk. The one guy near the window had worked at a wine restaurant and knew half of the city, the guy near to my bed had worked as a painter and knew nearly everybody in the city. This was my new world: this room, those guys and the changing personal of nurses, doctors and cleaners. During my stay I was confronted with 5 different doctors. I can remember only one name: Dr. Machfus from Syria, his name remembered me of Nagib Machfus, winner of the literature Nobel Prize (I think 1989 or 1990). One constant was HANS he was a patient whom I never saw but he shouted all the time 'Hello, hello, hello.' Day and night, night and day. Sometimes there were variations: Hello, please? Or: Please, Hello! Sometimes but very seldom HANS was quiet and when he was too long quiet I started to worry about HANS that he might have been killed by a stressed nurse or patient? But then HANS was there again: Hello, hello, hello! I made big progresses. Maybe I wanted to escape HANS as quick as possible. The third day after I awoke I drove to the lavatory with MY wheel chair, the fourth day I walked there with crutches, the sixth day I walked alone, and at the eighth day I left the hospital for rehab. I start to realize that I had been damned lucky. I had been hit by a car as a pedestrian but my head seems to have suffered only minor injuries, except the total amnesia concerning the accident. I'm alive and in some way, it's like a second chance, like my second birthday. Thanks.

YouTube | February 2, 2008