Jack returns and asks where we were in our conversation when he had to tend to his wife.

I ask him why does he stay with Karie?

You’re only leading yourself into a train wreck of a marriage, I say.

Actually, I say, you’re fucked already. She’ll clean you out if you try to divorce her.

But I still have to know. Why stay with her?

Jack is speechless.

He says, what the fuck are you saying? You are so out of it, man.

Answer me, I say.

Because I love her, what’s with you? Jack exclaims.

Don’t confuse love with sympathy, I tell him.

The hell with you, Jack says. Just because you lost your job doesn’t mean you have to get drunk at my house and start preaching to me, you sick fuck.

I stare at Jack and just barely stumble out of the door.

I start my trip home, fuming.
I’m driving way too fast.
I blaze through a red light.
Headlights fill the inside of my car.
I wake up in a hospital bed to the tune of the beep of and EKG machine and the drip of an IV.
The doctor tells me I’m paralyzed from the neck down…