LITMIR.BIZ

      After spending the extra hours with my students that Friday, I drove home that evening with a particular cautiousness I had acquired since this latest relapse had begun. For the first time in two decades of driving, I was suddenly someone who strictly observed the speed limit. It was past seven and it had been many hours since the sky had turned dark, and only as my last student left did I realize that I had never driven home this late. It only gave me the slightest pause, though, as I was someone who drove cross-country and had done several legs solo, I reminded myself.

      Besides, I had promised my students I would be there. Extra office hours, I had said all week, I want to hear you all out. It’s been a miserable semester for all of us and I am here for you. You don’t have to come, but if you want I am here. Two-thirds of the class came to see me that day.

      I remember the drive, like one often remembers the moments before something monumental, in crystal-clear vision that feels indisputable. The cold brisk night air coming through a small opening of the window, meant to counter the thick blast of heat from the car’s heating vent. The barely black of early evening sky, the many stars that were out that night. The unease of a snowless December, like slack tide, the taut serenity when you know something is coming. The mild murmur of my car’s radio playing familiar oldies on an a.m. radio station I’d taken a recent liking to. The emptiness of the highway, a surprise for me, until I realized this is what Friday night looked like in the Catskills.

      After an hour or so on the road, I was feeling a bit bored, so I left a phone message for Mason, my old graduate assistant at another university I had adjuncted at, who’d also been my recent cross-country road trip partner. He’d often check in with me, worried about my health. I remember rambling on his voice mail, Oh hi, it’s me, Porochista, how are you, hey I’m back to driving, long day at Bard but good one, I think I’m feeling better, things are getting good, want to catch up on your week, call me back, okay, bye, kiddo! It was one of the rare times he did not pick up on first ring.

      Mason had gone through one of my “incidents” with me already. He had been the first person I’d called when the Lyme relapse first hit me in November, when I’d pulled over on the side of the highway one rainy evening, suddenly feeling like I couldn’t tell where I was after a long day of teaching. He was the only person I could think to call since he was always checking to make sure I was okay. He had met up with me at the hospital where they’d checked for a stroke with a CT scan but found nothing—Probably like you say, it’s Lyme, the neurologist said lukewarmly. I didn’t think twice about it. Hospital visits were to be expected for the Lyme-struck, after all. And that was when I’d simply called my doctor and he’d ramped up my supplements and suggested the cane.

      I left another message that night for my friend Bobby, who lived only blocks from me, who was the gay Iranian American brother I never had but always wanted, and who had been so concerned about my health that season: Hey Bobs, I made it through a really long day up at Bard and I’m driving home again! Yes, driving with Cosmo, all good! You know what that means—I think I’m feeling better! Anyway call me back! It was also one of the rare times when Bobby did not call me back just seconds after screening his landline calls.

      I put the phone down and glanced in the rearview mirror at my standard poodle, Cosmo, deep in sleep in the backseat. Just moments later, a giant truck burst from the darkness and completely overtook my lane, like a monster that absorbs you, full speed and confident, no hesitation in sight.

      I felt two impacts and it took both of them to realize what was happening. I’d been in two car accidents before, so I knew well the sensation of watching one’s self melt into a slow motion movie montage: here I am honking my horn, here I am praying out loud, here I am screaming, here I am accelerating and braking and nothing feels right, here I am spinning, and here I am stopped. And here I even am alive, it seems.

      On the side of the road, the car smelled like it was burning and I turned to Cosmo, who seemed shook, but okay. We were okay, we had to be okay, which I thought would be how I’d say it all, but by the time 911 answered I was screaming and I’m not even sure it was words that were coming out.

      It took two 911 calls. And a lot of waiting on the New York State Thruway. We were on the side of the road but on something that wasn’t quite a shoulder. There were no lights. After some time I turned on my hazards and looked into the rearview mirror and watched more cars speed by, each seeming faster than the one before. Everything seemed black and gold, confusing, elaborate, deadly, and strangely a little bit beautiful. It was then that I realized this could be it—the odds of being struck again by a speeding vehicle seemed higher than us just being comfortably lodged there until help came. I calmly thought that this was the end. And it took me a second to fight the thought and dial 911 again: Please. There are no lights, no shoulder, cars are speeding, we are going to die. Please. I remember my voice was too calm for those words.

      The ambulance finally arrived. It seemed like I had no visible injuries and perhaps only a concussion, but I refused to go to the hospital because I was informed I could not take my dog.

      “What am I supposed to do then?” I asked, pointing to a blinking and panting Cosmo, who looked only moderately flustered.

      “You have to abandon the dog, ma’am,” the paramedic kept saying.

      “Of course I can’t,” I kept replying even as they told me stories of many accidents where the pets were just let loose in the woods on the other side of the highway, as if to console me.

      There was no way. I finally made them a deal—that I’d get checked out when I got home. “I promise.”

      The police officer looked at me like I was making a bad choice, and his gaze paused at the cane by my front seat, as if I already had a prop of injury perfectly on hand. “It’s for my Lyme disease,” I said, and he nodded blankly.

      They called me a tow truck that took me all the way home—me with a shaking Cosmo in my arms, my head suddenly pulsing, the tow truck driver taking an interest in two things: my not being married and my name. Eventually we got into it: Iran and Muslims and 9/11 and the Paris attacks, and after I realized this man wasn’t going to hit on me, I was so focused on not letting him hurl anything racist at me that I barely remembered the accident.

      At one point he said, “I’m gonna be honest with you, you Arabs have not been my favorites, you know?”

      I didn’t correct him and just focused on Cosmo’s fast breaths, which seemed synced with mine.

      “You are all right, you know,” he said at another point, which I tried to imagine was meant

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