When my mother called, I was still strapped to a backboard in the emergency room at County Hospital, my vision blurring with each fluorescent light that passed overhead as the gurney rattled down the hallway. The world around me was a cacophony of voices—nurses calling out numbers, the squeak of shoes on linoleum, machines beeping their urgent warnings. My chest burned with every breath I tried to take, a deep ache radiating from what I would later learn were three broken ribs. Blood pooled sticky and warm in my hair on one side. My left shoulder throbbed with a hot, electric pain that made me nauseous.
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