“Oh, God. Why are you crying?” my brother was asking from the backseat.

“Auntie Bonnie said he cut an artery!” my mother was sobbing. “Do you want me to scream like he’s doing?”

The dog, I’m sure, vomited one last time.

This is how my family reacts to news.

A few minutes later, the car came shrieking down the gravel road. My mother leapt from the passenger seat, and before I had a chance to say hello, I’d been swept into the backseat, boxes of groceries tossed onto the pavement to make room for my failing body, and we were speeding back down the gravel road to the emergency room.

•  •  •

“You just need a few stitches” is what the doctor said when he’d finally had a chance to look me over.

“Are you sure, Doctor?” my mother was asking. “Are you sure he hasn’t cut an artery?”

I would make fun of her for questioning the doctor on something that would be obvious to a doctor, but then again, this was small-town Michigan. The hospital was in between a Dairy Queen and a Blockbuster Video.

“Um. Yes,” he said. “He’d be dead if he cut an artery.”

A tetanus shot, a handful of stitches, and a bagful of prescription painkillers later, we were driving back to the cottage, the open green fields of Michigan passing by the window.

I’d like to say I found a new appreciation for those views, the kind of appreciation that people who have faced death feel. I’d like to say I looked out that window and said something profound, something that someone who’s really gone through stuff says, like “You never know how much you’ve been missing until you almost lose it all.”

But I couldn’t say that.

All I could muster, before the pain drugs took over, was one simple sentence:

“This never would’ve happened if we just went to fucking Disneyland.”

ON THE TERRORS OF NATURE

I’ve never understood people who actually enjoy being outdoors. I understand you can’t exactly avoid going outside. I admit I leave my apartment for ten minutes every day to retrieve sandwiches and cookies to drag back to my lair. But I certainly don’t have fun doing it. Outside is where the sun’s piercing rays sear my skin. Outside is where spiders breed and plot ways to penetrate my kitchen. Outside is where bears live. Like actual bears that roam around waiting to rip your arms and legs off and eat them like stale chicken wings. If I didn’t need nutrition or occasional sunlight to survive, rest assured my apartment door would stay permanently bolted.