Blind Man Walking Part Three

Jeff said, "This is really, really stupid. You swear you won't tell anybody about it?"
"I swear I won't tell anybody. Ever. Okay?"
"You know there's a school for the blind here in the neighborhood, right?"
"Yeah."
"Some of the blind students hang out at the same bars I go to. They're regulars. I've gotten to know a few of them pretty well. Tonight I was thinking about how difficult it must be for them to go through life and do things, you know, being blind. I was one of the last people at the bar with them and on the way home I decided to put myself in their shoes. When I left the bar I closed my eyes and kept them shut while I tried to walk through the neighborhood and find my way home. I wanted to experience what it's like being blind."

Holy shit. Jeff was right, this was hands down one of the all time dumbest things I ever heard. I had a hell of a time keeping a straight face while Jeff continued telling me his story.

"Then what happened?" I asked.
"I made it into the parking lot by the Mel-O-Dee. I took a step forward, did a flip, and fell into a creek." He said as he tumbled over, he smashed his ankle hard against something and then landed in the water. He lost his glasses during the fall.

I knew exactly where Jeff was talking about. Directly across the mall parking lot from a row of shops including the Mel-O-Dee, the pavement abruptly ends and drops down to a mangy little stagnant creek. On the opposite side there's a row of houses with their backyard fences butting up right against the steep dirt. The creek flows from nearby BART tracks past the mall's parking lot, continuing under San Pablo to come out behind The Gun Room. In a couple of spots the mall parking lot is ten to fifteen feet above the creekbed. Maybe higher. What's nasty about it is in some places the pavement edge is made up of concrete globs mixed with gravel. Those globs bulge out from under the parking lot creating sort of a large overhang before dropping off to the scummy creek below. As Jeff flipped over and fell, his left leg slammed into the concrete.

Jeff told me he attempted to crawl up and out of the muddy creekside for 45 minutes with no luck. He couldn't get good enough of a hold on anything to pull himself out, and he couldn't simply walk down the creek to an easier place to haul himself out because the pain in his left leg was so bad. Without his glasses he had a difficult time seeing anything which compounded his plight. Each try he made to escape landed him back in the mud. That at least explained the pile of soaked, mud coated clothes lying in the middle of Autumn's living room floor. Then I asked him, "Did you yell for help or anything? I mean, wasn't anybody around?" Jeff said he didn't want to explain to strangers how he ended up in the bottom of a muddy ditch after two in the morning, and he was afraid the cops would somehow be involved if he did shout for help. So he kept quiet.

"How did you finally get out of there?"
Jeff said, "I got tired and frustrated. I stood up, climbed out on my hurt leg, and hopped the rest of the way back home."

Oh man. Putting his full weight on a broken leg must have caused Jeff some terrible pain not to mention aggrivating his injury. When he made it into the apartment he was covered head to toe in filth. He stripped his clothes off in the living room and left them where they fell. I asked about his noisy shower adventure. With only one good leg to stand on Jeff said he did almost fall head first a couple of times while he was in the tub trying to clean up. That's what caused so much racket. He left the shower's sliding glass door partially open for some reason. Now I knew why there was water all over the bathroom floor when I went to take a leak.

We were rapidly approaching the hospital. I couldn't hold back anymore. I was on the verge of laughing out loud numerous times while Jeff was talking but I managed to keep my composure. When he finished I looked at him and said, "Well, you learned a valuable lesson tonight. Being blind kinda sucks, doesn't it?" I slapped him on the shoulder and I laughed my ass off. Jeff stared shamefully into his lap. "I told you it was stupid." He said.

We pulled into Alta Bates hospital complex and I drove right up to the emergency room entrance. Leaving the engine running I got out, grabbed the crutches from the back seat and helped Jeff stand up on them. As he worked his way inside the building I took the Cougar to the hospital parking garage and found a spot to leave the car. By the time I rejoined Jeff he was sitting in a chair in front of a desk with a glass window filling out medical forms. A few minutes later hospital staff brought him a wheelchair and they strapped an ice pack to his ankle. Then the two of us waited. And waited. I zoned out watching a crummy TV that was high up in a far corner of the room. The channel was stuck on CNN. There weren't any magazines lying around to read.

Eventually an old Filipino man in blue hospital scrubs came into the waiting room and hauled Jeff away. Bored out of my mind I continued to zone out while infrequently scanning across the faces of a few unhappy people sitting here and there in the emergency room lobby doing the same thing I was. Waiting. I wasn't paying attention to how long Jeff was gone. When Jeff finally did emerge through double doors leading into the lobby, the guy pushing his wheelchair looked angry and Jeff was holding an oversized brown folder containing x-rays of his lower left leg.

Alta Bates' emergency room staff told Jeff he broke his ankle in three places.