At 7:30AM I was a bloody fuckin mess.
Started out such a good day too. Woke up still tan from Mexico. Still buzzing from good sex. Ready to jack that weight back from all the tacos and shit we’d eaten the week in Tulum.
Kept my pajamas on as I went to the guest room to meditate (the warmest room in the house, and the only room where my bright orange meditation cushion would fit), sat down and found my breath. I never find my breath. Usually I’m just hoping to god I can finish this whole fuckin thing up and get on with my day.
But not on that day. On that day I found peace within my soul for many moments and it was bliss. How accomplished I felt when I walked out the door.
On my way out, I grabbed the oatmeal I’d prepped the night before, packed my avocado for a snack later in the day, and threw my backpack on, and before all that I had turned my car on to keep my balls warm the second I sat down in the sub-thirty degree weather.
I got to the gym and greeted the morning workers with a big smile.
“Morning,” the lady says mechanically as I scan my barcode.
“Gooddmorninggg to youuuuu.”
“Oh my.”
Yes lady, that’s right. Today I put Jay Cutler to shame.
See, I had bought Jay Cutler’s workout regiment a few weeks prior–you know, the famous bodybuilder–and was determined to do his entire workout that morning, since most of his workouts tired me out in the first quarter.
But not that day.
That day was the day I triumphantly finished that shit and bulked the fuck up. Time to put in that work, as my big black muslim-bodybuilder friend Bilal used to tell me when I was seventeen in Boulder, Colorado…
I head to the locker room, throw my fiance’s gym bag (which I stole) in my locker, get a quick sauna sesh in, and bounce out to the weight room.
I grab the 35s and start pumping iron.
I get to the second exercise and don’t even break a sweat.
Exercise three, no problem.
Then to finish off my tris, I grab the thirty-pound barbell and lie on my back to do some closed-grip presses.
In between sets I balance the bar on its side and close my eyes to catch my breath. And then…
CRACK!
SMASH!
I open my eyes.
Blood pours like a faucet all over my shirt, all over the floor. I get up thinking I have brain damage.
That’s it, life is over. My whole head must be cracked.
I stare at the blood. I look at the other people in the mirror looking at me. Oh god. I need a napkin.
I grab a napkin but it’s gone in moments after the blood shrinks it to nothingness.
Help. I need help.
I run to a personal trainer.
“I uh.. I dropped, I dropped a weight on…”
“HOLY SHIT. GO TO THE FRONT!”
Okay. Okay. Right.
Holding my nose I run to the front. The blood is dripping down my throat. I’m drinking my own blood.
I show up and no words are necessary.
“Sir, sit down. Put your head back.”
“No! Don’t put his head back, keep it down!”
“Sir what is your name?”
“Name? Greg. My name is Greg. I need my stuff in my locker.”
“CALL AN AMBULENCE!” someone shouts.
“Sir do you remember what happened?”
“The weight tipped over and fell on my head. I think I have a concussion.”
“Okay, sir, we’re going to get you to a hospital.”
“Okay, I need my phone. I need my phone. It’s in the center console of my car. Can you get my phone?”
“Okay what kind of car is it?”
I hand her my keys.
“It’s a Subaru Forester. Silver. It’s over there, ” and I point. “It’s in the center console,” I tell her again.
“Okay okay, I’ll get it.”
She comes back with my phone.
All of a sudden cops show up. There are cops everywhere. Big guys.
“Don’t worry the ambulance is on its way. Sir which hospital do you want to go to?”
“Which ones are they?”
“Newburgh or Poughkeepsie.”
“I need to call my…” I call Daryl (my fiance).
She picks up.
“Hey love.”
“Babe I dropped a weight on my face and I have a concussion I think. Blood is pouring out of me and they are takin me to a hospital. Which one should I go to Poughkeepsie or Newburgh?”
Without a shadow of doubt: “Poughkeepsie.”
“Take me to Poughkeepsie,” I tell the sea of people trying to save me.
“Okay. Okay. What’s the name of the hospital in Poughkeepsie they’re taking you to?” Daryl asks.
“What’s the name of the hospital in Poughkeepsie?”
“There’s uhh… What’s the name of the hospital in Poughkeepsie?”
“There’s Mid-Hudson or Vassar.”
Vassar sounds expensive. I don’t know why I thought that.
“Mid-Hudson,” I tell them, then her (Daryl).
“Okay, everything will be okay. Stay calm. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She was at work and she can’t drive on highways so I was nervous she may attempt a dangerous feat like hopping on route 9.
The ambulance shows up.
I dial my boss.
“Broke my nose. Going to ER, can’t come in.”
I snap a pic of me and send it to him with a message that says “doctor’s note,” but I don’t do that till I get to the hospital.
I hang up cause the cops are getting me ready to leave.
“They’re here sir, the ambulance is here.”
“WAIT! I need my wallet! It’s in the same place as my phone was. Can you get it please?”
The same chick goes to get it.
A guy is there. I look at him.
“In the locker room. My stuff is in the locker room. It’s in the section second to back. Full-length locker. Orange beanie.”
To another person: “My sweatshirt is still in the gym.”
The paramedics arrive in time for all my stuff to come with me.
I’m placed on a rolly bed and taken into the winter weather and into the ambulance.
Inside the ambulance my beanie keeps falling in the cracks of the car and I keep telling the paramedic to grab it.
“I think my beanie fell.”
“Wha?”
“My beanie. I don’t wanna lose that beanie.”
Then I lay thinking of life. So much for that client I was stressed about. Work is so unimportant. Have I done everything I wanted to in life?
I get to the hospital and hold my nose, still letting the blood fall out of me cause I couldn’t stop it. I had to pee, so I wobble to the bathroom.
Daryl arrives.
How’d she get here?
I’m taken to a CAT scan room.
No brain damage, but broken nose.
They stitch me up.
Haven’t been to the gym since, but thinking I may go today. So, thought I’d write about it first.
Till then, have you read about the time I met Ryan Gosling?