You scream when you’re being run over by a car. You don’t make any conscious choice to scream, your body just starts screaming for you. Your body knows that it is proper and expected of it to scream as you’re being run over by a car. While I was being run over I took solace that my screams were more manly than I would have expected in that kind of situation. They were deep, guttural screams full of testosterone. They were the kind of screams I would expect Humphrey Bogart or Frank Sinatra to make if they were being run over by a car.

If you’re a stand up comedian you also think about the ramifications for your act while you’re being run over. I remember as it started I was sure I would never walk again. I thought about being the wheelchair comedian. People always say you never know what you’re going to get known for in show business. Maybe for me it would be filing an ADA lawsuit against a comedy club.

It’s technically inaccurate to say I was run over by a car, though that’s what it felt like at the time. While I was riding my bicycle I was hit from behind and then dragged. This is what I’m told by witnesses anyway, I went into shock pretty quickly so it’s hard to remember everything exactly as it happened. The person who hit me certainly did not stop the car after she hit me, I remember that. There were at least three seconds where I was under the car and she continued accelerating. Later when the police asked the driver why she didn’t stop after she hit me she said she was “scared.” I’m sure running me over was a very traumatizing experience for her.

After the car finally stopped several pedestrians hurried over and quite literally lifted it off of me. My helmet was gone and my bike was trashed. As I lay there I realized I could still wiggle my legs and I felt very much relieved in that moment. Somebody ran and got me a bottle of water and other people stayed with me and told me the ambulance was on the way. A crowd had gathered. When the stretcher arrived I was able to stand up and get on it myself and I started to vaguely think about real life. About dealing with insurance, possibly attorneys, about how much ambulance rides cost. But in that moment I felt so fortunate to be alive that those thoughts seemed distant, such a problem for tomorrow. The way you might think about the office while you’re on vacation. I made the decision in that moment that I deserved to treat myself and take the ambulance instead of walking to the emergency room.

The first responders were very professional. They asked me the usual questions (“What day is it? Are you on any medications? Do you have any medical conditions?” etc) and I managed to answer them correctly. I told them my left arm might be sprained or broken so they wrapped it. One of them told me the pain was going to be much worse the next day and then even worse the day after that. I will never experience the pain of childbirth but if it’s worse than what I feel every time I try to stand up from a seated position now we ought to treat women better in this country.

There were two police officers who had been on the scene and one of them poked his head back in the ambulance to ask if I wanted him to call my parents. I told him I didn’t want to worry them so I’d call them myself. He told me he wanted to slap the woman who hit me and practically shouted “I told her ‘how come you didn’t stop driving?! How come you didn’t stop driving?’” I gave him my ID and he came back later to return my ID and repeat the sentiment.

As we were driving off I heard one of the paramedics in the front say “He’s so annoying. He keeps going on about ‘How come she didn’t stop driving? How come she didn’t stop driving?’ He sounds like a goddamn civilian.” It was nice to get a look behind the curtain.

We got to the hospital and I was seen quickly. I was transferred from my stretcher to a gurney then that gurney was wheeled into a room and parked alongside several other people in gurneys separated by privacy curtains. The nurses asked me the same questions I’d been asked in the ambulance and I gave the same answers. One of the nurses who saw me was a grizzled veteran of the job named O’Sullivan and I could immediately tell she was in charge. Her bedside manner was good, she made me laugh several times but I can’t remember what she said. It was probably more how she said it anyway.

The doctors came in and discussed with me whether or not I’d need surgery. They asked me the same questions and I gave them the same answers. They apologetically helped me undress  (“Nothing personal but I’ll need you to take off your underwear to make sure you’re okay.”) As they examined me one of them asked in a concerned voice “is that a growth on your penis?” I looked down and laughed in embarrassment when I saw the white specks. “It’s tissue paper” I explained to them without needing to elaborate. Sometimes you masturbate without thinking that you might get hit by a car the next morning.

After the doctors left some nervous looking med students came to see me because they wanted hands on experience with asking the same questions and receiving the same answers. They cleaned some of my wounds before one of the doctors returned to explain to them that they were wasting their time and to say that he needed to check underneath my scrotum to make sure I wasn’t bleeding there. I hurriedly lifted my testicles myself when I saw a nervous looking med student reaching.

I was given an IV, some pain medicine, and a tetanus shot, which is an extremely painful thing you get when you answer incorrectly to the question “when was your last tetanus shot?” They told me I would receive a bunch of x-rays and they would decide how to proceed from there. My gurney was wheeled out and, since they determined I wasn’t going to die immediately, I was left to wait in a hallway for an extremely long time. People always say in Europe healthcare is free but there are long wait times. In America we take pride in paying for our long wait times.

As I lay there in a hallway needing to pee I got to see some of my companions, mostly elderly people on the brink of death. I had heard the Nurse O’Sullivan berate one of them earlier (“I told you not to go outside in dark colors on hot days! Wear a bikini if you have to!”). I think about that when I’m in hospitals, how I’m going to return here one day near the end. Surrounded not by loved one but by medical staff who trade bets as to whether I die in November or December and angrily text their boyfriend when I shit all over myself right before their lunch break.

They took xrays and then my bed with wheels was rolled back to the original spot I had been brought in to. I still had to pee and I asked one of the nurses if I could go to the bathroom. She said she’d have to give me a bottle, which she brought me and closed the curtains. I have certainly forgotten some important things that happened to me that day but I remember that I peed 24 ozs into the bottle and I remember calculating in my head that that was a pound and a half of pee. My brain has a sense of what matters.

The two police officers on the scene came by to check on me. They gave me the details for picking up my copy of the accident report and the one gave me a new version of his rant about “how come the lady didn’t stop!?”

The other cop talked to me a bit, saying that he “gets to miss traffic court because of this.” I told him that “I get to miss work so it worked out for both of us.” I thanked them sincerely for helping me and the traffic court cop said something to the effect of “hey, that’s what we do, even if everybody hates us for it…” There are times for a nuanced discussion of police brutality. They’re different from the times when you’re nodding on an IV full of painkillers.

I was told that the x rays came back negative, that they’d keep me for another hour before I could be discharged to my own care with a follow up appointment in a few days. My shirt had been ripped to shreds so they insisted on giving me a hospital vest to wear when I left. It didn’t really occur to me how much a shirtless man with open wounds walking around in public would disturb people. As a New Yorker I’ve certainly ignored worse. One of the pedestrians who had lifted the car up off me earlier came by to check up on me. I thanked him again and we took a picture together that got me a lot of likes on Facebook.

As I lay on my gurney waiting to be discharged I had had lots of time to think. Having just had a near death experience the old trope of wanting to change everything and live life differently after seemed to be true, it just didn’t last nearly as long as fiction led me to believe. Even Tony Soprano got a good two or three episodes where he tried to change his behavior before reverting to who he truly was at his core.

I did think about my comedy career, about what I needed to do to get where I wanted to be. How I should start making myself hang out at clubs and shows every night no matter how tired I am from work. How I should quit smoking pot again. The usual “no more wasted moments” fluff. But as I waited during that last hour I quickly became bored. One of the nurses had put my phone and other possessions in a bag which lay below my gurney. With moderate pain I was able to fish my hand down below until I successfully retrieved my prize. I immediately logged onto Facebook and I began to scroll through a million dull status updates as I searched for the occasional chuckle, bikini pic, and friendship ending political argument. Before long I had begun to waste time again and it felt normal and familiar.

I was alive and the same. For better or for worse.