The Day My Brain Exploded Page 7

  I shouted to both, “Krishna cleaned me! I was in Brooklyn! I was in a Krishna temple in Brooklyn!”

  “Ashok, honey,” Gina said gently, “Brooklyn is far away. You are in D.C. Washington D.C. But you’ve been asleep all day.”

  “No,” I argued, “I was there, and Krishna held me!”

  Mom smiled.

  “You were just dreaming.”

  I was not, I knew. I touched my head to check if Krishna had cleansed it thoroughly. He had.

  After the Fall, the hospital took no chances. I was permanently restrained in my hospital bed, hands and feet bound. I would now have to stay in the hospital another month, instead of the two weeks initially prescribed.

  Hippocampus: Get Up, Stand Tall

  I was tied to the bed; all my rights to mobility had been revoked. I couldn’t even sit on a chair. But I had one permanent visitor: Mom. She sat in a blue plastic chair, just two feet from my face. She watched silently as I shrieked, responding to my imagined torture sequences. She was unable to do what a mother should: console me. All she could do was sit and stare. But no matter how long or loud I wailed, in my endless delirium, Mom sat in that plastic chair—watching over me helplessly as inner demons plagued me.

  One day, a nurse told Mom she had to leave the room. There was probably some needling, blood pumping, or fluid draining to be done. Mom began shouting, refusing to leave her baby’s side. One should never mess with a South Indian mother. She created such an uproar that two doctors had to be called in. Only then did she comply. But as soon as she could, Mom returned to the blue plastic chair.

  One day I was informed that I would have to leave my bed. My destination was a plush brown La-Z-Boyish chair two feet away. My reaction was a distorted version of the Stockholm Syndrome: I had grown attached to the bed, which, at first, had imprisoned me and tortured me. Now it was my sanctuary, my one place for survival, for security. I didn’t want to leave it.

  The entire relocation process took less than five minutes. A swift lift of one leg, a turn of an arm, a pull of a shoulder, and I was finally sitting upright.

  It was an unfamiliar and unwanted experience at first, but I quickly learned to love it. I was surprised how great it felt to be sitting upright.

  For the next week, I ruled from my brown throne. But there was yet another transition to make, from the plush cushion to a metal seat. This one had wheels.

  My very own wheelchair, I thought lovingly. I had been placed in my mobile home. I could move at last.

  For the first time in nearly three months, I was free. That is, free enough to keep a smile on my face, my dimples emerging once more. Wheeled from corridor to corridor, I grinned happily, waving to everyone.

  I was Miss America. No, I was a Queen. Cleopatra, Elizabeth, you name it. I was a maharani from Rajput palaces.

  My newfound pleasure, however, was quickly crushed when I learned of my next challenge: I would have to walk. On my own two legs. It was too soon, I thought, I had just started to enjoy my gray chariot. How the fuck could I walk, logistically speaking? I was attached to a huge IV pole. Sure, it kept me alive, but it was a bulky instrument that I had grown to loathe.

  I begged not to have to do it. But even timid nurses can exert their power. A scrawny Filipino nurse named Chan became my disciplinarian.

  “If you don’t walk now, you will never be able to walk again,” he threatened.

  “I’m not ready for this,” I whined.

  “Do you want to be handicapped? Crippled in a wheelchair? If that’s what you want, then stay in your wheelchair.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Use your legs, pussy.”

  That did it. I’ll show him, I thought. True, I may have been less than 120 pounds, and I may not have seen my manhood for months, but I sure was no pussy. Queen, maybe. Pussy, no.

  It was time for the baby to walk.

  I was lifted out of the wheelchair, my lumbering IV pole still attached to me. For what felt like the first time in my life, my frail feet met the cold white tiles. Kiyanna helped me stand straight, hold tightly to the pole and begin walking. Immediately, Mom joined Chan, and both held one side of my body, as I clung fiercely to my pole.

  Never had I felt so terrified.

  I was maneuvered to the long hallway. At the other end was Kiyanna, who had quickly scampered to be there. My mission was to reach her. Fifteen feet looked like fifty yards.

  At that moment, I remembered being a toddler years ago in New Jersey, running for the first time into Mommy’s arms. I had been a late bloomer, learning to walk when I was a two-year-old. Now at the age of twenty-five, I was a late bloomer all over again.

  Medulla: The Mom Diaries

  Sitting in the garish blue plastic chair next to the hospital bed, Mom could do nothing to save her son as he groaned and screamed and fought against restraints. So she wrote letters.

  March 23, 2000

  Dear God,

  It has been less than a week since Ashok’s in the hospital. Nothing makes sense to me. We had all come to share in the joy and happiness of Prakash and Karmen on their wedding day, and Ashok is in the ICU fighting for his life. Why did it all have to happen at this time? Ashok has just started his new job, a responsible position, and off to a great start. I hope I’m providing him some solace and comfort, and I hope he knows I’m there in the room.

  March 26, 2000

  My dear Ashok,

  Your condition is bad. Fever is way up. It’s been 8 days since you were admitted. Some days I wonder what is my reality and yours as I sit by your bedside in the ICU. There is a world moving outside, getting on with their daily chores. Mine has come to a standstill. There is no escape or exit for both of us. Maybe in a few weeks we will see that exit.

  I’m sitting in the ICU waiting room, and I strike up a conversation with another mom. Her 32-years-old son has had a hemorrhage. She’s a priestess of a church in D.C. She comes and sits next to me, holds my hand, praises the name of Lord Jesus, and asks me to put my hands together, blesses me and tells me that the healing hands of a mother is the only way to bring a child back to life, and that this moment shall pass and that my child will be okay. Healing words and two mothers in pain sharing a moment. For just that moment there was a calm, as loneliness and solitude go hand in hand in the waiting rooms of all hospitals.

  March 28, 2000

  Dear God,

  Watch over Ashok, let him be well and come back to us, the pep in his spoken words and his thinking intact. His brain has been hurt. It’s 3 p.m. I am teary-eyed as I watch Ashok restrained and lying so helplessly in the bed.

  Keep Ashok in good spirit dear God, despite his pain, and relieve him of some of his pain. His eyes are glazed and time is standing still.

  March 29, 2000

  My dear Ashok,

  Another afternoon, some laughter heard. There is this antiseptic feeling, where all lives hang in the balance, and for each of us it is this slow process of looking for that little light at the end of the road, where there might be slight improvement, and the day we could finally take our loved ones home. Ashok, you are so disoriented today.

  I feel so helpless.

  April 2, 2000

  Dear God,

  Please spare his eyes. He’s an artist. Spare his eyes. I know God, I’m asking a lot from you.

  April 17, 2000

  My dear Prakash and Karmen,

  Thank you for your birthday wishes, and thank you for the couple of hours at the hair stylist for a cut. For those few hours I felt a little sense of normalcy. Before long I hope Ashok will get a chance to get a haircut and shave and come back to us.

  May 4, 2000

  My dear Ashok,

  I sense calmness and a bit of nervousness with the impending surgery. I am so glad that you are conscious and will ask the Dr. all the right questions. You signed the waiver too, quite in control. In two days you will be fighting the biggest battle of your life in the OR, Ashok. Know that I love you dearly and want you to fi
ght hard and come back to us alive and kicking. Know that Dad, Prakash, Karmen and I are sending you all our positive energies.

  June 20, 2000

  Dear Ashok,

  This is your biggest test now that you fought hard to come back to us. There is so much you have to do in this life. Think pleasant thoughts as the nightmare is over. Laughter, smiles, fluffy clouds, blue waters and sunny skies await you.

  Love always, Mom

  Formatting Ashok Version 2.0: 2000 (V)

  Sunshiny Day

  I was finally freed in the first week of July.

  My first experience in the outside world was a revelation. Newborns usually cry at birth, although not because of pain. Babies squeal because they are physiologically adapting to a jolting new world outside of the womb. It is the first time they exit their warm, wet homes and confront cold, dry space. It is the first time their lungs breathe air. And it is the first time they are exposed to light.

  Until now, I had been lodged in another womb. The NCCU, the Neuro-critical Care Unit, was the remote domain of victims of stroke, bleeds, hemorrhages, and all traumatic brain injuries. This dark, confined world was the hospital’s hushed, isolated realm for neurological patients.

  The craniotomy whisked away some of that darkness. I was slowly working up toward feeling that full light on my face.

  One week before I was released, I had to visit a neuro-ophthalmologist. He was located in another building on the hospital campus. This was a major event; it would be the first time I was outside after the seeming eternity of three bed-ridden months.

  Even though I had relearned how to walk—at least rudimentarily and awkwardly, like a blind supermodel walking down an oil-slicked catwalk—I was placed in a wheelchair for my first trip outdoors.

  A superanimated young man named Nate wheeled me to the building. He was a welcome change from the typically somber hospital staff. My mother walked beside him. Whereas I was in my rumpled hospital gown, he was in a fresh uniform. It was solid white, in stunning contrast to his ebony skin. His huge body maneuvered my small, weakened frame along the sidewalk.

  Until now, I had been languishing in the dark, blinded. But when Nate wheeled me out of my prison, everything changed within a second. He had become my angel on earth, my divine healer.

  I felt air—genuine, outside air—flowing into my body. I felt the clouds and blue sky hug me. I saw the sun and felt its heat. I had just been released from the black sphere within my head into the world, a world of brightness, a world of freedom, and a world of light. The sun symbolized everything that was active and breathing. And I was finally aglow with it. I had truly re-entered the land of the living.

  “Look, there’s the sun!” I yelled to Mom and Nate.

  In Hinduism, the oldest scripture, the Vedas, glorifies the sun as a vital deity named Surya. In fact, the brahmanical rite—the thread ceremony—involves placing a holy thread on a young man with a hymn to the sun, to divine illumination. This ceremony is the Hindu equivalent of a bar mitzvah. Part of the ritual is a prayer in which the youth interlocks his hands, placing them directly on his face, then looks at the sun and prays.

  I had previously experienced the ritual myself. But at that time, I found it difficult to believe in its importance. When I was younger, I scoffed at some of the superstitions in ancient Hinduism. Like most religions, its early form involved the deification of elements: the sun, moon, fire, air, water, and earth. I once considered it naïve to worship this way.

  But after my “sun experience,” I had, to some degree, a change of mind. Why are most children and adults intrigued by fire? Why do the sun and moon hold a grip on our imaginations? We know the science behind all these entities, but still, they hold a magical influence over us.

  Certainly, I was affected by what I witnessed that day. I had, in a way, realized a higher power. Perhaps the ancient gurus, with all their silly fears and superstitions, were right after all. Perhaps the elements indeed possess divinity.

  My sight would never be the same again. But I had new eyes, and a new way of seeing.

  The Hotel

  The doctors insisted my family and I stay for a while in a nearby Washington hotel, before going to my parents’ home in New Jersey. We couldn’t risk another medical mishap like my fall. This time, I was given another metal companion: a massive IV pole that continuously delivered powerful antibiotics.

  I hated my new posse member. I couldn’t walk anywhere without lugging him around. Moving with him seemed to be an exercise in animism: When I looked at him, I swear I could see his mocking smile.

  My parents administered daily injections of essential postsurgical intravenous antibiotics. Our insurance didn’t cover daily personal nurses after hospitalization, so my parents became my caregivers. They had to dose me every three hours, through my arm’s PICC line, which jutted from the inside of my elbow.

  “Homecare” nurses came every few days to make sure my parents performed these duties correctly. I had little confidence in my parents’ work, especially when they made my skin bleed.

  During that time, we had an interesting guest, one of the few relatives we have in this country. My father’s brother came to visit from Texas. A wiry, wheat-skinned Indian man, Ramanan Uncle was a welcome addition to our second-rate hospice. He had oversized spectacles and a bushy, almost cartoonish mustache. A hard-working pharmacist, he carefully guided my parents in their work. He made me feel less bitter about the IV pole, inviting me to mail it to him after I was free from it. Most important, his presence curbed my parents’ frequent arguments. At the time, he meant everything to me. I adored him.

  Away from the hospital, everyday rituals now became a source of embarrassment. Bathing was the worst. I had to be washed by my mother. I know it was no big issue to her, but I just couldn’t deal with it. I could accept my nurses bathing me, but this was different.

  Luckily, I was often drugged out at bathtime, which spared me some mortification at being soaped up like a baby in the tub. After rinsing my body, Mom would shampoo my hair, or what had grown back so far; this was the only positive aspect of the entire ordeal. Since I had received only sponge baths in the hospital, I had forgotten the wonderful sensation of free-flowing water. Mom gently lathered my hair and poured water on it from a small jug. It felt as if God herself was pouring divine nectar on my bruised skull. Those moments of joy were rare. I typically felt an overwhelming sadness. I was sad to be unable to function as a “normal” adult, sad to be unable to perform a simple activity I had once taken for granted, and sad to be a baby, once again bathed by Mommy.

  Homeless (or, Life in Cardboard)

  The morning before we left the hotel to travel to my parents’ home in New Jersey, Mom confessed something that nearly induced another hemorrhage. While Dad and Ramanan Uncle were sleeping in their respective bedrooms, not yet arisen at 8 a.m., she cornered me in the blue-tiled kitchenette of the large hotel suite.

  Thirsty for water, I was reaching for a glass, when she tapped my shoulder, surprising me.

  “Ashok,” she said tenderly, “let me make you some tea.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered groggily.

  “By the way, I have to confess something. Go sit down, and I’ll bring the tea.”

  She looked worried as she carried in the two cups. I was already seated on one end of the uncomfortable wicker couches in the living room. She sat next to me. She had made tasty tea. It was chamomile, with a dab of honey.

  “While you were hospitalized,” she began apprehensively, “Your father . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “He broke your apartment lease.”

  I thought she was joking, and I began chuckling.

  “He broke the lease, removed every single belonging from your studio apartment.”

  “You’re just playing with me, right? Dad wouldn’t do that.”

  “I wish it weren’t true. I tried to tell him not to, but he was so adamant.”

  She rubbed her eyes.

&n
bsp; “So where’s my stuff?” I asked, suddenly angry.

  “He packed everything in cardboard cartons and placed them in our garage.”

  Seeing my face, which was turning stormier as she continued speaking, she said, “Ashok, he didn’t know what he was doing, he didn’t know what would happen to you! You have to forgive him!”

  I nodded, but I didn’t know what hurt more: the idea that I was now homeless, or the fact that by breaking my lease, my father had acted on a belief that I was as good as dead.

  I said nothing, but kept sipping my tea. Mom left the room. When Dad and Ramanan Uncle woke up, I confronted Dad, who quickly told me that it was the best thing he could do at the time. I said nothing.

  Later that week, Ramanan Uncle left for Texas, while Mom, Dad, and I moved back into their four-bedroom, two-story redbrick Colonial house, nestled comfortably in the state in which I may have been born, but where I had no intention of dying: New Jersey.

  I immediately went to the garage to find my stuff. When I saw all of my possessions stuffed into sealed cartons in the cramped garage, I was too stunned even to cry. All severe-brain-injury survivors suffer some sort of amnesia and must look through their personal possessions to regain their broken identities. I wanted that ritual of soothing recognition.

  When I finally had the courage to open every box, I saw my journals, clothes, books, compact discs, videotapes, private letters, photos—and I realized that Dad had already seen and touched everything that I ever owned, and stuffed them into cardboard.

  I said nothing.

  In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Piss

  Three days after I returned to New Jersey, one of my father’s buddies, who lived in India, named Jignesh, invited my parents and me to visit him in Long Island, where he was staying for a weeklong business trip. Mom was feeling sick and exhausted, so Dad and I went alone.

  In the middle of the rather long drive, I had to use the bathroom. As we drove into the parking lot of the next service station, we saw large crowds pushing into the cramped space. It looked less like a rest area than a bustling suburban shopping mall.