How to Get Run Over by a Truck
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On a sunny morning bike ride in Brooklyn, twenty-four-year-old Katie McKenna was forever changed when she was run over by an eighteen-wheeler. Being crushed under a massive semi wasn’t something Katie should have survived. After ten hours of emergency surgery, she woke to find herself in a body and a life that would never be the same.
In this brutally honest and surprisingly funny memoir, Katie recalls the pivotal event and the long, confusing road to recovery that followed. Between the unprepared nudity in front of her parents post-surgery, hospital happy hours, and the persistent fear that she would never walk again, Katie details the struggles she’s faced navigating her new reality. This inspiring memoir follows Katie’s remarkable journey to let go of her old life and fall in love with her new one.
Katie C. McKenna
Katie McKenna is a professional fund-raiser and stand-up comedian living in Brooklyn. She runs a blog called Small Bites and Little Victories and is an expert on the best date spots in New York City. How to Get Run Over by a Truck is her first book.
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How to Get Run Over by a Truck - Katie C. McKenna
PART I
Girl Meets Truck
CHAPTER ONE
How to Get Run Over By a Truck
So, how do you get run over by a truck? My first recommendation is to ride a bicycle. This is specifically for their fool factor—every time I saw someone riding a bicycle it seemed so innocuous. It was low-impact exercise that was good for you. Lance Armstrong rode a bicycle, and he beat like one million kinds of cancer. What could be healthier?
Plus, I live in Brooklyn, and all the hipsters ride bicycles: they have messenger bags and wear vintage glasses, and they make riding over the Williamsburg Bridge look cool and effortless. I figured if those pasty-skinned music lovers could handle riding their bikes in Brooklyn so could I. I mean, hello! I was an all-county track champion in high school. I knew I could own that bicycle. I’m not just talking about owning it in the actual I purchased it
kind of way—I mean own it in the frat-boy way, e.g., We totally owned that keg last night.
That was the way I was going to own that bicycle.
I actually did, for almost a year. I rode my bike for errands. I rode my bike to work. I rode my bike to my friends’ apartments in the neighborhood, locking it to stop signs and feeling eco-conscious and thoughtful. In the summer I even took myself on romantic bike rides—and let me tell you, that bicycle had moves. Stopping in McCarren Park at twilight made me feel like I was in a foreign film, sitting on a park bench in a black beret and a scarf, drinking wine—when in fact I was sitting on patchy brown grass, wearing sport shorts and running shoes and drinking a Bud Light tall boy in a brown paper bag.
When I woke up early on October 2, I won’t tell you that I had a premonition or that there was a hand on my shoulder that told me not to go out that day—because that would be untrue. But I did get the feeling that someone was trying to tell me something I obviously had no interest in hearing. These were signs from God. Three, in fact: 1. My bike tires were flat; 2. I almost fell down the stairs trying to get my bike out of the apartment; and—most important—3. I decided not to wear any underwear that day.
Most lazy twenty-four-year-olds, when faced with the fact that their bike tires were flat, would say, Fuck it, I’m not going to bother.
Nope, not me, not Katie can-do. I thought instead, I’ll fill up my tires and get in a workout—this is going to be the best morning ever!
Then my bike tried to attack me as I took it down the stairs. We got out of the door just fine, but as we went down the stairs the bike started to bend and fold as if it was trying to fight me back into the apartment. I should have seen it for what it was: a cry for help. Bob the Bike knew more than I did—he didn’t want to die that day either. He was trying to stop me, but I wasn’t listening. I wanted to be thin, to get that endorphin rush, and on top of that I wanted to see the sunrise—I wanted it all.
And then there was the matter of the last sign that I shamelessly ignored. As a child I was told to always wear clean underwear. My mother’s reason was always the same: What if you get into an accident?
This never made any sense to me, because I always assumed that if I got into an accident I would wind up peeing my pants anyway. But because I was a good girl I wore clean underwear nonetheless. That morning I made a conscious decision to go without and, by doing so, I now believe I tempted fate; my accident was bound to happen.
Before I continue, I need to make one point about this whole underwear thing: I had just gotten up, underwear-free, and the idea of putting on a beautifully pristine pair of undies just to get them dirty made no sense at all. I figured that on this point, God and I were on the same page. . . . I was mistaken.
It was an unbelievably beautiful day. There was the smell of fall in the air, the sky was a deep blue, and there was no one on the streets. The morning felt like a secret; it was so dark and quiet, it gave me shivers. The few trees left on my block were beginning to change from dark green into a golden yellow. Fall has always been my favorite season, a time of new beginnings, a new year of school, a new fall jacket—a chance to start over again.
I walked my bike one block up and over another to the Hess station on the corner of Metropolitan and Humboldt. I had a quarter tucked into my sock to pay for the air I was going to pump into Bob’s tires. By 6:15, tires fully inflated, I was riding down Metropolitan without much of a plan. I knew I wanted to ride for forty-five minutes and just explore the neighborhood.
My roommates and I had recently moved into a new apartment in Williamsburg. In the most classic of New York real estate scams, our Mafia-esque landlords (I am talking gold chains nestled in a tuft of chest hair and velour Fila tracksuits) had told us that our old building was being sold, and that we had to be out in a month. In actuality the building was not being sold; they were just bringing in people who would pay more rent. We moved about ten blocks away, farther from the sweet Italian neighborhood that we had been living in and closer to the industrial part of Williamsburg.
I actually liked living closer to the factories. I thought it was cool to live in a place that was a little less gentrified, a little grittier. I loved being able to see dirty New York—the New York that had frightened me as a kid. When I was little, I was so afraid of the big bad dirty city that when my mom and I came in from Long Island to see Peter Pan on Broadway, I made her leave during intermission. Now that I was a big girl, I was proud I wasn’t scared of the city anymore.
On this particular morning I rode past the furniture outlets and the mattress factories, past the abandoned brick buildings with the painted names of past tenants chipping off their brick façades. I wanted to take it all in. I was feeling good. I was forgetting about the fight that I had with my boyfriend the night before. I was sweating off my nerves about my new job. The world felt big, and I felt wonderfully small.
About a half hour into my ride, the sun was starting to rise over the low buildings on Vandervoort Avenue. I decided that watching the sunrise as I rode out the last fifteen minutes would be a perfect conclusion to my morning workout. I wanted to take this morning and make it mine. I wanted to see something beautiful and then be able to keep it in my pocket all day. It would be my secret to keep.
Stopping at the light at the corner of Maspeth and Vandervoort, I looked back at the car behind me, a black Mazda sedan. I waved at the driver and pointed to the right, letting them know which way I was going to turn. The truck that was next to me didn’t have its indicator on, so I assumed the driver was going straight. Just in case he wasn’t, I waved in his side mirror anyway. I pointed to myself and then I pointed to the right. I always communicated with truck drivers via their side-view mirrors. I spent a lot of time behind trucks on Interstate 80 on my trips from college in Ohio back to my home in New York. Every one of them had a sign that specifically said, IF YOU CAN’T SEE MY MIRRORS, I CAN’T SEE YOU.
My assumption was that the opposite was also true: If you can see my mirrors, I can see you.
I was wrong.
When the light turned green, I took my right turn wide and easy, without a thought about the eighteen-wheel vehicle to my left—because it wasn’t turning, and for that matter the Mazda wasn’t either. I thought I had tons of room.
I didn’t.
The truck driver hadn’t seen my very clear indication that I was going to turn right. He hadn’t seen me at all. He hadn’t seen my metallic blue bicycle with the red writing on it. He hadn’t seen the long-sleeve T-shirt I was wearing—the one I got from running a 5K for a fallen Army Ranger. He hadn’t seen the Denison lacrosse shorts I had owned since my senior year of college. He hadn’t seen any part of me. All he saw was a green light, and he turned.
The last thing I remember before actually being run over was the hollow sound of my fist banging the side of the truck, and then I felt as though I was tumbling. I don’t know where my bike had gone. I knew I was on the road, and there was this moment when I thought, Am I in an action movie? This is the kind of shit that happens in action movies. What would Bruce Willis do? What can I do to stop this?!?
The answer was nothing. There was nothing I could do.
Before I even really realized what was happening, I felt pressure and then heard a cracking sound. The realization that the cracking was my bones shocked me. I squeezed my eyes shut, and I felt the first four wheels of the truck run over my body. I didn’t have time to process the pain. All I could think was, Sweet Jesus, please let this man stop before the second set of wheels comes for me.
No, no, no, please God no,
I shrieked before the second set of wheels rolled over my already crushed middle.
This time I kept my eyes open. I watched this second set of giant wheels run over my body. I heard more cracking and felt the grooves in the tires on my skin. I heard the mud flaps thwack over me. I felt gravel in my back. I was a sparrow that had lingered too long in the road, no different from every slow bird, every irresponsible squirrel, every wayward dog that just wasn’t fast enough.
Then there was the sound of a horn—a one-note beep that didn’t stop. This was the kind of horn-blowing you hear on the BQE during rush hour, the kind where you know the horn is being punched out of frustration. When I heard that horn, I thought to myself, Now you beep. You couldn’t have beeped before your death machine crushed my body? Hearing something meant I was still alive. I was still here and—as long as I stayed awake—I was alive. As long as my eyes were open, I was awake. So I barely blinked.
My bike was tangled up in my legs, like a five-year-old who had just had her first spill. I remember being nine and watching my little sister, Callie, learn how to ride her bike in the street in front of our house. My dad had just removed her training wheels and was holding the seat. He was running behind her, keeping her steady, making her feel grown-up but protected. She could look back and he was there. When he thought she could do it on her own, he let go, as all parents do. She was great for about fifty feet, but then she looked back and realized he wasn’t behind her anymore. Callie lost all her confidence in that moment. She forgot that she had been doing it on her own for the last few moments, and she wobbled, screamed, and fell. As she fell, her legs kept moving. They looked like they weren’t even a part of her body, as though they were working on their own, and she was unsure if she should continue to pedal or if jumping off would save her.
My body must have reacted the same way as it felt those wheels, trying to jump off, trying to go faster . . . trying, trying, trying. Flesh and metal had merged together. Bob the Bike was dead. I was left with bits of his shattered metal body embedded in my skin, his gearshift impaled in my stomach.
I never saw the driver. He didn’t leave the scene of the accident, but he didn’t walk back to see if I was okay either. I guess he didn’t want to see the fruits of his recklessness. To be fair, I couldn’t look at myself either, at where the tires had made contact with my body.
I lay there waiting for something to change, to get better or worse. I waited for a break in the silence that kept ringing in my ears. I remember looking up as the early morning sky went from that deep blue to a sunlight-pale, pale blue—the clouds looked as if they were whipped out of cotton candy.
I screamed out for someone to call my mother. If my mom was there, she could fix it. As soon as she was notified, all this could be undone. Because this was not reality. Reality was the fact that I had to get back to my apartment and iron my button-down shirt. Reality was that I had a big day at work, and I was nervous about getting really sweaty in my new suit. Reality was not that I was on the precipice of losing my life—that was not what was happening. I refused to close my eyes.
As the initial shock of impact began to wear off, my body reacted with crushing pain. It was unlike anything I could have imagined. I was confused by it. I couldn’t believe there could be a sensation so horrible and intense or that it would continue to radiate out of my body—usually the pain of dropping something on your foot or running your knee into a door fades, even if just a little. This excruciating pain stayed right where it was, doing relay races up and down the length of my body. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop it. I couldn’t shake it off, or massage it, or walk to a place that I thought would somehow give me relief. I had no choice but to just lie there, trying not to drown in it.
I remember a young woman who was about my age came over to me and said she would call my mom. She asked me if I knew her phone number. I did. I remembered it as a song that my mom had taught my siblings and me to help us learn all the numbers. This young woman, the one who was calling my mom now, had been in the black Mazda. Her boyfriend had been driving. He was directing traffic around me, around the accident scene. They were saving me.
He put up orange cones, and flares were lit around me. Everything changed. I watched as this woman took responsibility for calling a perfect stranger’s mother to tell her that her daughter’s body had just been crushed by an eighteen-wheeler. I heard her say that her name was Gisele; she sounded scared. Her voice shook as she told my family’s answering machine that I had been in an accident and that whoever got this should call her back as soon as possible.
I knew then that I was broken. My mom wasn’t home. She had been called and nothing was better. Plus, Gisele was so frightened—she couldn’t even feign calm as she left that message. I was stricken with terror, but I couldn’t give in to it. I thought that if I let myself fall into it—fall into the fear, the loneliness, the hurt—I would be lost forever. I had no cell phone, no ID, and, Jesus Christ, no underwear. If I didn’t manage to stay conscious, I would become a whorish Jane Doe who rode a bicycle. I couldn’t go out like that.
My one job was to stay awake. I needed to stay awake.
My brain kept whirring as I lay on that Brooklyn street: What do these people need to know? What do I need to say?
I can move my toes and my fingers—if I pass out, tell the paramedics I’m not paralyzed.
I spoke with the authority of someone who actually knew what they were talking about, not a theater major who could barely put on a Band-Aid. Thank God for all those TV movies I watched—you know the ones, where someone gets into an accident, and then they freak out and say, I can’t move my legs, I CAN’T MOVE MY LEGS.
Well, I couldn’t move my legs either. But I could move my toes, and I knew that counted for something.
Please, can you hold my hand?
I asked Gisele. I’m scared.
I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to be strong and funny and to let this just roll off me. I wanted to believe that this wasn’t a big deal—that I could put a Band-Aid on this one, all by myself. But after telling another person I was frightened, it became clear to me that I wasn’t tough enough to do this on my own. My mom wasn’t there, and I was surrounded by strangers. So I did what made me feel like I was close to my family: I began to pray.
I asked Gisele, the stranger holding my hand, if she would pray with me. Without knowing if she was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim—I began to pray the Hail Mary. I prayed to Mary to not let me die. I really didn’t want to die.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
My voice usually quivered at the hour-of-death part when I said this prayer out loud—this time it felt as if the words were shaking my entire body. Was this it? Seriously? Was I going to die, here on this street in Brooklyn, because of a wrong turn on a fucking bike ride?
I always thought I might die young. When I was a little kid, I would watch the five o’clock news, and whenever there was a news report about a young girl, with everything to live for, who had been killed in a freak accident, I would think, That’s going to be me in about ten years. Then I would think about what my news report was going to be like. I wondered what they would say about me. Would they talk about my family? My friends? Or would the focus be on my athletic accomplishments? I hoped they used good pictures. I even told my parents the song I wanted played at my funeral: Solsbury Hill
by Peter Gabriel. Of course, they would tell me how morbid I was and how it was wrong to talk like that. I understood what they were saying, but part of me just wanted everyone to be prepared, plus that song would be killer during the procession.
As I held desperately on to the hand of my new best friend, a man in khaki cargo shorts, a plaid short-sleeve shirt, and a New York Yankees hat stepped out of his Toyota Camry and walked toward my spot on the asphalt.
With no hesitation he slipped his rough hand into mine, looked into my eyes, and with a Spanish accent and a confident tone said, Listen to me, I am a pastor—I have spoken to God, and he has told me you are not going to die today. Okay?
I needed for him to be right. I wanted him to be my prophet. Do you promise?
I asked, with the sincerity of a six-year-old.
Yes,
he promised. If I could have lifted my hand, I would have made him pinkie swear.
He took Gisele’s hand and said, Let us say the Lord’s Prayer,
and I said the Our Father with my new congregation of three. I realize now that I had never said the Our Father with such fear—I really prayed that God would forgive me my trespasses! I had trespassed a lot. Like the time in third grade when I broke my date to the SCA fair with Tom Fulgieri. I did it on the phone, and I let Shauna Phillips listen in on another extension. And then, while he was still on the phone, she started to laugh. I knew it was mean, but I wanted to be cool more than I wanted to be nice. I hoped God forgave me for that one. I also hoped that God didn’t put a whole lot of emphasis on underage drinking as a sin, because then I was really screwed. I didn’t truly feel bad about doing it, and I had done it a lot. I prayed for God to know that I didn’t want to die, that I didn’t want to go to hell, that I didn’t want to even go to heaven, for that matter. I just wanted out of this situation. But the fact that my legs weren’t working, and I didn’t have a flux capacitor to turn back time left me totally screwed. So I just made sure I didn’t close my eyes.
The only thing I could control just then was my eyes. They were the only part of my body that wasn’t hurting. I kept them open for my mother, for my father, for my sister, for my brothers, for my boyfriend, for my friends—I knew if I closed them I would be giving up on ever seeing those people again, on seeing anything else in my life again. I would never see a little kid with an ice cream cone or a leaf blowing like a confused butterfly in the wind. If I closed my eyes, I would never see the way someone looks right after you hug them. If I closed my eyes, there was the possibility that I would be in darkness forever. So I stared unblinking into the sunlight, fearfully gulping up as much light as I could. Plus, if God was going to take me, I wanted to see Him coming.
CHAPTER TWO
More
When the police arrived, I felt a wave of relief. They are going to take care of me, I thought. This will be okay, the police are here. After all, they did what I couldn’t do—fight bad guys, save lives, kick bad peoples’ asses. I always waved at the police. In high school I was polite when they found me doing things I shouldn’t have been doing at the town docks. And then, after 9/11, out of nowhere, I found myself hugging a policeman just to say thank you. Two of my uncles were cops. They were strong and funny, and they made me feel safe and protected whenever they were around.
These policemen were not like my uncles—there was no warmth or kindness in their eyes. They made me feel like I wasn’t even there. When they looked at me, it wasn’t exactly disdain that crossed their faces, more like apathy. Of all of the emotions that I thought my situation would evoke, apathy was not one of them. I wanted them to like me, to care about me. I tried to fashion a joke about the fact that my ass was half exposed due to my lack of undergarments. When the officers didn’t even crack a smile, I knew I was more injured than I had thought—because jokes about exposed bottoms are really funny, and if people aren’t entertained by them, then something must be seriously wrong.
After my awesome joke went bust, a policeman with a mustache leaned over and told me I was going to be okay. I didn’t believe him. I asked him if he had morphine; he said no. I asked him where the ambulance was; he said it was on its way. I asked if it could come any faster because I was hurting a lot. Big fat tears slid down my face. I tried not to sob, for fear that it would hurt my belly even more. Instead, I turned my head to the left and kept my arms stretched out and let the tears fall from my right eye over my nose to my left eye, then onto the pavement.
When I heard the ambulance sirens, I freaked out because I knew that when they came and picked me up I was going to go to the hospital, and then everything was going to get real, fast. The entire time I was plastered to the street, I was in limbo, suspended between reality and some sort of video-game dream. The ambulance sirens made it clear that I was not in a video game and that this was not a dream—I was going to leave this spot on the gravel, and I needed to do what I could to save myself from dying. My biggest fear was that the ambulance was going to take me to Kings County General Hospital. It was probably one of the closer hospitals in Brooklyn, but I didn’t want close—I wanted good.
My best friend Maribeth was a nurse, and she had told me that when you are in an emergency situation you are still in control of what you want to happen. They can’t make you go to a hospital that you don’t want to go to. And I did not want to go to Kings County. A friend of mine had gone there after she broke her leg, and she didn’t see a doctor for eight hours. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, exactly, but I knew that my injuries couldn’t wait that long.
It isn’t clear to me how I got on the gurney, but I do remember them putting that neck brace thing on me, and me screaming. When I was finally secured in the ambulance, something came over me, and I started to speak in a voice that didn’t sound like my own. Excuse me, sir, I refuse to go to Kings County. I need to go to a hospital that has a good trauma center. Will you take me there?
It was as if my brain was on autopilot—it was doing what needed to be done to keep me alive.
The EMT said, The best trauma hospital is Elmhurst, and yes, we can take you there because you requested it, but it will take us longer to get there than it would to get to Kings County.
What I didn’t know then was that Elmhurst wasn’t just the best trauma hospital, it was the place where the city sent people who needed hospitalization while they were incarcerated.
I said, Sir, I don’t care, I need to go to a place where they can fix me.
I realized that I sounded like a snob, but I was being honest, and if there is ever a time to be a total bitch, I think being strapped to a gurney in an ambulance with tire tracks on your body is one of those times.
The driver and the other EMT argued about where was the best place to go for my injuries, while another guy kept asking me questions. Instead of answering, I just begged for morphine. I am not sure why I thought that every person in a uniform was carrying morphine with them, as though they had an IV drip right underneath their badge.
He looked at me and said, We can’t give you anything or else the medical staff won’t know how much pain you are in—they need to know.
Can’t we just tell them that I am in a lot of pain? I mean, A LOT!
He shook his head.
I was not liking him.
He continued to ask me questions and tried to give me oxygen, which did nothing except irritate me. Why would one put the equivalent of plastic wrap around my face and then ask me what my address was? Every time he asked me a question, I would take off the mask to answer it, and then he would put it back on me. It would have been comical if I hadn’t felt like killing the man. I officially did not like this dude. He gave me no morphine, made me no promises of survival, and had cut off one of my favorite sorority T-shirts, the one that we made for our freshman formal. Didn’t he know that I would have voluntarily taken it off if he had just asked nicely? Despite my protests, the bastard cut the T-shirt off, and then he cut off my shorts. I contemplated giving him a breakdown on my lack of panties but deemed him unworthy.
My sassiness dissipated once my clothes were cut off. I felt the cold air on my exposed body. I couldn’t fathom that it would be possible to feel more vulnerable and scared than I had felt just a few minutes before, but my nakedness in front of a person who didn’t love me left me as fragile as tracing paper. I didn’t realize it then, but this was only the first of what would be many, many times I would be naked in front of a total stranger.
Mr. EMT continued to ask me questions: my address, my phone number, my parents’ names, my parents’ address, where I worked, my social security number, etc. . . . And the geniuses in the front of the ambulance not only hit every pothole in Brooklyn, but