No Regrets, The List

Oscar woke up in bed. He yawned, tussled his messy brown hair and tried to roll over, but as he did something stopped him half way – there was something tugging on his arm. It was something painful! His tired eyes started fluttering open to find out what was poking in his arm. As he moved, his head set on fire in a splitting headache. It was probably a hangover he reasoned, another big night out celebrating the end of high school and going on to university. If that was the case (which it likely was) then he really didn’t want to know what he was waking up to. He silently hoped it wouldn't be like the time he woke up next to a homeless man in a cardboard box. That was one of the milder things he had woken up to. Bracing himself for whatever condition he was in and with great effort he lifted his heavy eyelids.

From his surroundings he gathered that he was in bed, but… it was not his own bed. It wasn’t even any bed he recognised, the sheets and blanket where pure white, almost clinical. In fact it was remarkably clinical looking, he opened his eyes a bit more… he was in a hospital bed. Gazing around he saw heart monitors, other strange beeping machines and cables running from bags of fluid down to under his sheet. He followed the lines of tubes and came across the cause of the painful item that was tugging at his arm, it was a drip. What on Earth was going on? And just how drunk did he get? His head was still paining, his vision blurry at best but most of all he was completely confused. His first instinct was to get loose from all of the strange wires and tubes crossing over him. He pulled off one of the devices that was attached to his right index finger, which caused something to start beeping – loudly! Turning his attention to the tube running into his arm he was considering the best way to pull it out when a somewhat overweight nurse came bounding into the room.

“Mr Rose, you are awake! What are you doing with your heart monitor?” She rushed to his bedside and placed the heart monitor gently back onto his finger. “Please do not move the monitors or any of the other tubes, just lie down here and relax. I will call the doctor and he will explain everything to you. OK?” Oscar nodded, what else could he do, apparently the doctor was on his way.

Oscar lay there waiting for the doctor, slowly beginning to regaining his consciousness and growing ever more curious as to what he was doing there. He couldn’t remember anything about the night before, or the night before that. What stupid things had he done this time? Surely there must be a chart here or something that he could read, there was always a chart on those doctor TV shows. He peered around the room and started to sit up, but all of a sudden there was a sharp pain in his abdomen. Oscar winced and his hand shot to where the pain was coming from. He ran his hand along his stomach and felt something, something metal… many metal somethings. 1,2,3.. were those staples?

Just at that moment the doctor walked in and instinctively his hand retreated back down to his side. “Ah Oscar, Mr Rose. Glad to see you are up, my name is Doctor Spencer, how are you feeling?” he asked. “Uh, uhm, I … I don’t really know. What am I doing here doctor? What happened?” Oscar asked him.

The Doctor walked to the bottom of the bed and picked up his file (A file! He knew there would be a file) and began reading through it. Slowly he went back to the doorway of the room and called a nurse over. It was obvious Dr Spencer was trying to be quiet with her, but a hospital is already quiet as it is so Oscar could just make out what he was whispering to her ‘Nurse, could you please bring the counsellor for this one’.

Doctor Spencer returned back to the bedside. “Mr Rose, we are just going to talk candidly about why you are here is that alright?” Oscar nodded. “You were in a car accident. You suffered some critical injuries and have been in a coma for just over a month now.” He paused, and Oscar’s heart dropped into his stomach – or jumped into his throat, he wasn’t quite sure which. He just knew he was feeling quite dizzy again.

“Try not to be alarmed, you will be quite fine. We had to do some surgery at the time to stop some of the internal bleeding and we removed your appendix while you were under because it was already quite infected when you came in. A bit of a silver lining.” Really, Oscar thought. THAT is a silver lining! The doctor continued “You had a bad concussion, a laceration to your forehead, some broken ribs and a broken fibula. Due to head trauma you have been in a coma for the last month, but you have been stable and gladly become conscious again. Do not worry Mr Rose, with a bit of physiotherapy you will be just fine.”             

Oscar peeled back the thin sheet covering him to reveal a typical hospital gown. Below the sheet his leg was in a cast, and when he pulled back the gown he saw his torso was filled with scars, bruises and yes a few staples for good measure. He also noticed a little cut on his right lower abdomen, from the appendix he guessed.

“Wow, my body looks like Frankenstein… Or the son of Frankenstein’s monster, or - I don’t know that movie was a bit before my time.”

In the background a lady apprehensively came into the room with her hands laced together in front of her waist. “Oscar this is Sister Agnes, she is the hospital councilor. There is something else we need to tell you…”

Oscar didn’t pay much attention to the rest of what the doctor and Sister Agnes said. After all, how well can you still concentrate after you are told that your parents died in the car crash you survived. There is no use in telling you how Oscar took the news. There is no use telling you about how he first reacted, about how he cried and denied it, or about how a million and one other things happened in that room that day, both inside and outside of his thoughts. There is no use in telling you about the next few weeks that Oscar spent in the hospital either. No use in telling the story of his occupational and psychological therapy to try and heal all of his different kinds of wounds. The visits of his friends and relatives, the mountain of flowers and cards isn’t very useful to tell either. There is no use telling you all of this because it is a long and difficult story. Some things you will understand, and others you may not. But there is no use telling you about this because it would take up a lot of your time, and life is short.

Parkdale Mediclinic 

On the Sunday morning that Oscar walked out of the hospital, he hobbled through the big revolving door and had only 3 things with him. Those three things were the clothes on his back, a folded up piece of paper in his hand and a vow that he never would have made the year before.

The last 2 months had been an unimaginable ride, one that Oscar never thought he would have to take. His days were spent going in and out of therapy. Some visits were psychological, which was counselling with Sister Agnes, and others were for physical therapy. The physio was with Ms Petranela, a cute physiotherapist. He didn’t mind too much stretching and learning to walk with her holding his arm for guidance as they ventured down the passageway and back, then to the lunchroom and back, and finally to the gardens. They kept his days pretty busy between meals and the time with Sister Agnes and Ms Petronela. But after the day was done it became a different story, Oscar couldn’t sleep. Before the accident Oscar Rose could fall asleep before his head hit the pillow, like on the way down he would be unconscious before his cheek met with the cotton. But for the last few weeks he couldn't get the hang of it. The only companion in his room was his thoughts, but lately they were not on good terms. Reluctant to spend his waking hours at night in a quiet room with nothing but his thoughts, he found a yellow legal pad and a pen.

On that piece of paper he started writing a list. A list of everything he wanted to do in life, a list of the things that some people never got the chance to do. I hear what you are thinking and no, it is not a bucket list. A bucket list is a collection of things that you want to do before you die, a last minute hail Mary that people create quickly and try to tick it before they kick it. No this was different, this was a living list. A list of all the things he wanted to do while he was still alive! Every night when he couldn’t sleep he would take out the list and add to it. He wrote in large letters right at the top “No Regrets.” and started jotting down his items. On the Sunday morning that Oscar walked out of the hospital, that list had become triple columned and double sided, and also fairly weathered from being opened and folded up every night.

Despite all the things that Oscar had been through in the last few months, he left all of his worries and cares back in that hospital where they belonged. He walked out of the revolving door with his chin held high and a proud stride; as proud as it could be with crutches and a limp, but still a proud stride.

A hooter beeped across the way and Oscar looked along the entranceway to see a tiny Citroen C2, filled to bursting point with his 5 best friends, hanging out the window and waving like idiots. He limped towards the car and they all shifted and sat on laps to make space for Oscar and his crutches. "Yo the big OT! You are back man!" came a chant from Tod, ones of his best and oldest mates. Tod and Oscar had been friends since, what was it – Grade 0, so 12 years now. They were always together stirring trouble and people eventually began calling them 'OT' from their initials, a name they both took on with pride.

Tod was an easy spot because he always wore the same thing, a backwards trucker’s cap over his surfer blonde hair and his trademark red sunglasses that he always wore. Always. Even at night.

"We’ve missed you Oz"

"Yeah we missed you!” cooed two of the girls in the car, Jessica and Tracey. You could just make them out from under the lap of Dominik’s huge frame. Why they didn’t sit the other way around he didn’t know. The two girls were both very pretty and sweet, and they had been friends with the group for a while.

“So Oscar –“ Theodore said, popping up from the shotgun seat with an imaginary microphone “You’ve just come out of major surgery and probably a lot of experimental probing, what are you going to do next?” he asked in the voice of an NFL interviewer, moving the imaginary microphone over to Oscar. “Well first I would just like to say” Oscar said, moving in to speak into the non-existent microphone “That you are all a bunch of idiots.” The group smiled and laughed, Dominik bending in a seated bow. Oscar pulled out his list and circled the first item “But I hope you bunch of idiots have your passports… Start the car Tod, we are heading to Vegas!”