Lying in bed all day, just waiting for time to pass. I don’t think I was struggling to live. It wasn’t the feeling of being alive, nor was it the fear of death. Each day was a battle against the consumption of time. Time felt so long.

Rounds, tests, rehabilitation, meals. After that, all there was left to do was wait for time to pass. I stared at the white ceiling. The ceiling panels had countless holes. Today, I counted those holes again. Next, I counted the drops from the IV. One drop, two drops, three drops… by the time I counted up to a thousand, five thousand, or ten thousand, it was time for the next IV. I watched the shadows grow longer. They started in front of the window and now stretched past the window frame. By the time the shadows reached the next window frame, would my mother come to visit…?

I couldn’t grasp my own situation. If I asked the doctor, he would tell me the name of the illness or injury, but nothing beyond that made sense. Asking the nurse or the rehab instructor only resulted in vague answers. Their responses were all the same: “Let’s work on rehabilitation and start a new life.” Normally, I would have asked in detail about the future, but in that mental state, I couldn’t understand anything they said. I couldn’t even feel despair or optimism about my situation.

All I could hope for was for today to end.

My meals had gradually become more solid, and as long as I didn’t feel nauseous when I put food in my mouth, I was allowed to eat. Rehabilitation was still mainly about the PT moving my hip joints to keep them from stiffening, and OT working on strengthening the function of my slightly movable left arm. Is that the most I could do in my current rehab?

**

One day, a police officer came by. He said he wanted to interview me. To the questions of the rather elderly officer, I could only answer, “I don’t remember.” I had no memory from the time I left Denny’s in Zushi, stopped at a nearby traffic light, until I woke up in the emergency room of this hospital.

The officer explained the details of the accident. On October 23rd, around 11:55 PM, while driving in a tunnel on the old Shonan road heading from Zushi to Kamakura, near the city border between Zushi and Kamakura, I had an accident on a downhill right curve near the tunnel exit. The driver of the oncoming car had just gotten his license and bought his car, and he was returning home after drinking. Unable to make the turn, he swerved into my lane and crashed head-on with me.

A witness driving behind me said I was driving within the speed limit, and that the other driver was speeding, leaving no time to avoid the crash. It was indeed a blind corner, and with the oncoming car flying into my lane at high speed, it would have been impossible to avoid. The officer also told me that after the head-on collision, I was hit by another car from behind. The officer who came to the hospital said that when he arrived at the scene, I was repeatedly saying, “My shoulder hurts, my shoulder hurts,” and “I can’t breathe. Please take off my helmet,” from inside my helmet.

However, it seemed unbelievable to me that I had been driving within the speed limit. That road was one where I usually drove fast. Maybe the driver of the car that hit me after the collision gave a favorable statement to avoid responsibility? Or was I really driving slowly? I do remember that it was a pleasantly cool night. Perhaps I was driving slowly that night because I felt relaxed?

**

Each day was the same routine. After an hour had passed since the meal was served, the nurse would come to feed me. Patients needing full assistance are always attended to last. In this ward, which is full of patients with serious or life-threatening conditions, that was especially true. The food was cold, but when the nurse said, “We can switch to bread for breakfast,” I decided to have bread from the next day on.

Morning rounds. Disinfecting the wound. There were bedsores on my back. I later learned that hospitals that allow bedsores to form are said to have poor nursing care. In my case, since I had fractured four vertebrae from C4 to C7, and my pelvis was split in two, with my rectum also ruptured, it was impossible to change my position. Bedsores, which are severe forms of pressure ulcers, can sometimes be fatal.

I was told about the day’s tests, and then it was time for lunch. In the afternoon, there were tests, and in the evening, the rehab instructor would come to my room. By the time they left, my mother would visit. She looked so much older. I thought, was she always this old? She fed me dinner, and then night came. Even at night, I couldn’t sleep. Anxiety crept in with the twilight.

My mother would talk to me about various things. How Mr. Tomita made phone calls everywhere to prepare for a blood transfusion after hearing about the accident. Or that I would be transferred to a rehabilitation hospital once my injuries stabilized. Or how the equipment I designed right before the accident was highly praised, and that all future plants would use that equipment.

Nearly two months after the accident, I was moved from a private room to a shared room. My condition had stabilized, and they thought having others around would be a welcome distraction.

But even the shared room was full of patients with severe accidents or illnesses. An elderly person who had become demented after a long hospital stay due to illness. A young man who miraculously recovered from a traumatic brain injury caused by a traffic accident. A man, seemingly in his prime, suffering from a progressive illness, losing his ability to speak and do anything day by day, without even knowing the name of his disease. I began living with such people in the same room.

After a few days, I was allowed to raise the bed to 30 degrees. Even at just 30 degrees, I felt nauseous and dizzy. Being bedridden for so long, and with the paralyzed areas unable to constrict blood vessels, blood couldn’t return properly to the upper body. After repeatedly raising and lowering the bed, I finally got used to it. I saw the face of the person opposite me for the first time. It was the first time since the accident that I could look straight ahead, even at just 30 degrees. I was so happy.

I had my first meal while slightly sitting up.

**

The halo vest holding my fractured neck was unbearably annoying. When would it be removed? The doctor said six weeks. As six weeks approached, I asked daily, “Can it be removed yet?” But the bone wasn’t healing well. Neither my neck bones, my pelvic bones, nor my right wrist or elbow.

Every day I asked, “Can it be removed yet?” and eight weeks passed. A metal arch was above my head, bolts were drilled into my skull near my ears, and my neck was fixed with stays to a hard vest-like armor, unable to move at all. When I lay on the bed looking up, I could only see up; when I lay on my side looking left, I could only see left; when I lay on my right side, only the right. That was my world.

The pain of being physically immobilized and the intense itchiness were unbearable. Although the nurse wiped my body frequently, she couldn’t get her hands inside the vest-like armor. My head itched so much that I asked them to shave my hair with clippers. Even scrubbing with a towel didn’t alleviate the itching.

The hardware fixing my pelvis was also annoying. Because of it, I couldn’t sit up in bed. I was only allowed up to 30 degrees.

Even after nine weeks, the hardware connecting my neck and torso wasn’t removed. The bone was still not healing well. It wasn’t just a simple fracture but closer to a shattering. Usually, a bone graft is taken from the pelvis to fuse the neck, but since my pelvis was also fractured, they had taken bone from my shin instead. This was causing a delay in the bone healing process.

It was decided that I would undergo another surgery to embed hardware in the back of my neck. I was already tired of surgeries. But I had no choice. The surgery was scheduled, and two days later, it would be performed.

I felt a little better, but with this news, my spirits sank again. When I thought about being kept alive like this.

Apparently, my pelvic bone had mostly fused. The torii-like hardware fixing my pelvis would be removed during the neck surgery. That was my only consolation.

**

Breathing was difficult. My throat hurt. My neck hurt. The surgery seemed to be over. I saw my father and mother’s faces in the corner of my awareness. I fell into a deep sleep again.

I woke up in the middle of the night. My neck hurt. It was excruciating. I couldn’t even press the nurse call button, so I called out with all the voice I could muster, asking the nurse to help me with the pain.

The nurse contacted the doctor and gave me a painkiller injection. But there was no change. The pain didn’t stop at all. When I told the nurse, she contacted the doctor again, and they decided to give me a stronger painkiller. After the shot, I started to lose consciousness. Even though my eyes were closed, I could see the surroundings. The scene swirled and turned into a mysterious vision. A scene I’d never seen before. Shadows appeared in my consciousness. The shadows attacked me. I ran. The shadows chased. I was chased by the terrifying shadows. I ran as if to shake off the

shadows, and the scene changed. There were countless shadowy people around. I couldn’t see their faces clearly. It was scary. Then, something round was thrown at me. I managed to catch it. The moment I caught it, I woke up. When I woke up, the intense pain in my neck was gone.

Was that a dream? What a strange dream.