The Emergency Room

Immediately after my accident I arrived at the Long Island College Hospital Emergency Room. I knew something was wrong with my spine already but not the extent. While lying on the pavement I remember feeling a dead tingling sensation in my lower back and knowing the straighter I stayed and the less I moved the better. At the ER I tried to keep calm and while that day in particular was foggy in regards to what went on, when the x-rays and cat-scans happened, who I saw and what the order was, there was one moment for which I will be forever grateful.

Before I has been given a bed in the ER I was lying strapped to a gurney staring at the ceiling and trying to not lose it. My mind was racing, I was scared to death and the only thing I knew was that I was in the middle of a life altering moment. Just as I was feeling my most frightened and vulnerable I saw a young man approach, he laid his hand on my arm giving it a gentle squeeze, looked into my eyes with a calming demeanor, and while I forgot the exact words he said it was a simple,"It will be OK, you are in good hands and we will do all we can to take care of you." I will never forget the calm compassion of that look. It meant the world to me.

Some time later, when I had received a bed he returned. His name was Saul and he was a ER doctor. I don't remember the time-line of the day but we, amazingly, had a long ranging lucid conversation on a host of subjects. He was a doctor but also an artist. He had gone to Bard to receive his MFA and had work in a current exhibition at PS1. Our talk touched on personal physical injuries, how his work in the ER informed his own art practice, my own practice and upcoming work at Socrates Sculpture Park, the artist Mark di Suvero, gold-leafing, art school and a host of other subjects.

I will never forget the sensitivity he showed me that day, and with my girlfriend, the two of them allowed me to make it through what was the most frightening day of my life. It is not often you meet someone briefly and have the feeling you will know this person for years to come, and in his case I truly hope I do.