Chapter Seventeen: Where Do I Go from Here?

I spent almost a month in the hospital altogether. It was obvious that the recovery was going to be painfully slow. The first time the nurses tried to get me to stand, my blood pressure dropped to 80/60 and my heart rate raced to a 158 beats per minute. Somehow I didn't pass out. An extra unit of blood fixed the problem, and I started to learn how to use a walker without putting any pressure on my reconstructed hip. The first time I made my way to the bathroom unassisted felt like a major accomplishment. A big thrill came when I was able to walk a couple of friends of mine to the door of my hospital room at the end of their visit.

The hospital was concerned about my plans after my release. I had no where to go. I told the patient counselor that if I they wheelchaired me to the street I could find my way to the nearest shelter. That wasn't good enough for the counselor. If I had a rich mans insurance plan I would've gone directly to a rehab hospital; probably what my recovery status called for. But I wasn't a rich man and the guy who hit me apparently [according to an attorney] had no car insurance or money. My parents, who had been non-supportive of anything I ever did in my adult life, didn't want to take me into their condo even though they had a spare room. I've known parents of drug addicts fresh out of prison who would at least house their adult children to give them a chance at obtaining an acceptable way of life. Even though I was clean of mind and body and had no criminal record they informed me that coming to stay with them wouldn't be an option. Their decision didn't surprise me. It was a reflection of their parental modus operandi, each one of them privately confiding in me the others decision not to take me in.

Finally, my aunt living in Ontario [Southern California] agreed to house me to give me a chance at a reasonable initial recovery. My father had stopped talking to his sister over 20 years earlier when she and her family went wildly evangelical. He was an atheist and didn't appreciate their tendency to work the phrase "praise the Lord" into every sentence they spoke. It looked like I was about to find out just how evangelical they still were.

Next up: Hotel Interim