“Hewitt, are you sure you’re hungry?”

“Yes, I’m quite hungry now.”

Carey still wasn’t convinced I was fine.  She kept asking me all kinds of questions that were making my headache worse.  On top of that, she kept passing restaurant after restaurant.  I was hungry and I wanted my cheeseburger, whether it was from McDonald’s or not.

“So you really don’t remember anything after getting off the rollercoaster?”

“Nothing, Carey.  I wish I could.  Maybe I could figure out what happened if I did.”

Being a pre-med student, you learn that there are a number of reasons a person could pass out and then lose his memory.  Low blood sugar, dehydration, motion sickness, allergic reactions, blunt force trauma to the back of the head with the pavement.  But since I had no memory of the event, there was no figuring it out.

“Carey, can we please eat.  My stomach is digesting itself.  If you don’t stop somewhere I’m going to die of starvation instead of whatever made me pass out.”

“Ok, ok.  Let’s go to the Island Burger Shack up ahead.  I’ve heard it’s really good and it’s only a few more miles.”

“Yeah, that sounds great.  As long as I can get a big cheeseburger and fries…”

And I was out.  Yet again.

When I woke up it was raining.  Or at least I thought it was raining, and the car was stopped.  There was blood on my shirt and my right eyebrow was throbbing.  When I realized Carey wasn’t in the car, I opened the car door to get out and look for her.  That’s when I realized that it wasn’t raining and that Carey had hit a fire hydrant.  And she was in hysterics.

“Hewitt, don’t move!  Just stay where you are!  (Oh, gosh this time I’ve probably killed him.)  The fire department is on the way.  Just don’t move!”

“Carey, I’m fine, I think.  I feel fine.  I’m getting out.”

Against her better wishes I got out of the car and stood beside her.  I eventually got her to sit down on the curb and talk calmly to me.

“Now what happened.”

“You passed out again, and I freaked out and lost control of the car and hit the fire hydrant and when I hit the fire hydrant the car stopped but you didn’t and you smashed your face into the dashboard…”

Carey lost her composure again and started sobbing uncontrollably.  She thought I was going to die and this time it would be her fault.  At least this explained the blood on my shirt from a nosebleed and the throbbing makings of a good black eye.        

Thankfully, Carey wasn’t hurt.  Her airbag worked, unlike mine.  When the fire department and rescue squad finally got there, they piled me back into the ambulance for the second time that day.  Oddly enough, now the paramedics thought I was going to die.

When we got to the hospital we went through the same long and complicated process again, except this time they were admitting me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Hewitt, your staying here until we can figure out what’s going on with you.”

“Doc, I really don’t have the time to stay here, I’ve got stuff to do to prepare for school next year.”

“Oh, so where are you going?”

“Hopefully medical school.  If that doesn’t work, I’ve got to start picking up applications from McDonald’s.”

“Hewitt, you’re a smart guy from what I’ve seen.  You’ll get into school.  Maybe we’ll work together someday!”

So I wasn’t as excited about the last comment as Dr. Matthews was.  Everyone had this strange habit of telling me that everything was going to be ok, when I knew that it might not.  I appreciated their confidence and encouragement, but reality was hard to ignore.

It was also hard to ignore the reality that I was spending the night in the hospital.  I had so much planned for this weekend.  I was going to take Carey out on a date for once.  When you get to really dating seriously, you don’t go on many dates, except to maybe Wal-Mart.  I was going to wash my car, which was not an option now whether I was in the hospital or not since the last washing it would ever get just came from a fire hydrant.  And now I needed to look for a new car.  

Thankfully, since I had been in the hospital just a few short hours ago, they didn’t have to put me through quite as big a wringer.  I just got hooked up to a heart monitor for the night, and an IV line and a blood pressure cuff, and nurses came to check on me every five minutes.  It was just a tiny bit annoying.  I finally had to make Carey go home at nearly 10PM.  Her sister picked her up since my car was destroyed.  Her family knew where she was, but I didn’t want them worrying.  

So there I was.  Wasting my weekend away.  While not passing out in the hospital where the nurses could monitor it.  They let me out Saturday evening when they thought that I had my belly full of hospital food.  I think that Dr. Matthews and the nurses were all convinced that my blood sugar was just too low.  But I’m convinced that if the hospital food didn’t kill me, nothing will.  

Sunday morning I got up and went to church as always.  I felt great.  My head was a little achy from two impacts on Friday, but other than that and my shiner, I was fine.  My Sunday School class had a special prayer for me, which was kind of odd with me sitting there and feeling great.  But I appreciated the generous offer.  There’s nothing a little prayer won’t cure.  

After church, my mom and dad had a big Sunday meal as always.  Mom was busy stirring at the vegetables and Dad was busy with the roast beef.  Carey always came for Sunday dinner, so we were sitting on the couch being useless because Carey had also convinced my family that I was going to die and so they wouldn’t allow me to do any sort of work.  We were able to discuss the new series of sermons that our pastor was doing.

“I’m really excited about studying the minor prophets of the Bible, Carey.  There’s just so much I don’t know about them, but I know they’re important because God put them in the Bible.”

“I think it’s going to be really interesting.  It always amazed me that God would talk directly to someone like that.”

“Are you guys about ready to eat?”

Dad yelled from the kitchen since we weren’t in there like we normally were picking off of every little thing that came out of the oven or off the stove.  

“I just about have the roast cut up and your mom is putting the finishing touches on the…”

Then a yell.  I looked up to see what Dad had done.  The electric knife had slipped and his hand was bleeding all over the roast beef.  Mom scrambled around trying to get a towel on it to stop the bleeding.  I got up and ran to the kitchen to try to help.  Dad had cut a big chunk out of the area where his thumb and index finger meet.  We put pressure on it to try to keep him from bleeding to death.  This meant another trip to the hospital.  We finally wrapped his hand in a dish towel and started out the door to the hospital.

That’s when I woke up.

I had passed out again.  Carey was holding my head in her lap where I had left it and continued to freak out as she had other times.  Mom was wiping my face with the same dishtowel that we wrapped Dad’s hand in, except it didn’t have any blood on it.  I raised up and grabbed Dad’s wrist.  He wasn’t bleeding.  He wasn’t even cut.  I had dreamed it all when I was unconscious.  But it was as if I never went to sleep.  My dream had just picked up right where I left off in the real world.