Tom

After after they cleaned my wound I found myself stuck on a surgical floor. I was stuck because the operation was on a Friday on a long holiday weekend. I was stuck because Harborview earns more money when I am in a surgical floor and then when I am on a rehabilitation floor.

 

So here I am on a long Labor Day weekend stuck in the wrong bed, on the wrong floor, in the wrong unit trying to make the best of it. My roommate is Tom. Tom's body is broken and misshapen. He can walk but with each step I feel your pain. Only by comparison is Tom able bodied. I am in no position to be picky and will take any able-bodied help I can get.

 

After a while, Tom told me his story. One day about a year ago, Tom was set with his girlfriend and disgusted with his life. He drove his truck at 100 miles an hour into a concrete pier on the Ballard Bridge in an effort to end his life. He failed. The state pulled him from the wreckage and sent him to Harborview where at a cost approaching a million dollars they restored his body to some semblance of normalcy and eventually discharged him to a nursing home.

 

He has many stories up a nursing home and his life on state disability. He was living on an amount of money that I would consider to be a joke. Now he is back in the hospital trying to restore movement to his arm so that he can touch his head and help to Kate take care of himself.

 

Tom is quiet and nice and very helpful. He is a great roommate and I only wish that there are things that I could do to make his life better. Before he leaves I give him an old laptop that I had in the garage set up to do a few things which might simplify his life. I show him how to get e-mail and how to place ads on craigslist so that he can look for work.

 

Tom earns money cutting lawns and doing other kinds of unskilled manual labor. It would give me pain just to hire him and see him use his twisted body to perform some task I am unwilling, or now unable, to perform.

 

I have heard my wife tells stories of taking care of failed suicides. She tells me of a man with little left of his jaw and his face after an attempt to shoot himself in the head failed.

I must wonder whether if our society cannot give these people help perhaps they can give them a way which is painless, clean, and sure. And in doing this are we performing a great sin.

. Tom, where ever you are wish you a great life.