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Brain Go BOOM!
Author/Survivor: John Cooper
On the second or third night, it was time for the regimented, “Lights out and bed check.”
I couldn’t sleep so my roommate and I quietly talked. Quiet like when I was a kid at a sleepover
party and the parents told us it was time to get to bed. The conversation slowly led up to why we
were there. He threw a debilitating zinger of a story at me about his childhood and growing up
in Mexico. I slowly started pulling the sheets upwards towards my eyes. The incomprehensible
description of his horrific battering, beating, and abusive childhood was almost impossible to
take in. I couldn’t believe that another human being would ever treat someone like that! I
cannot write about all of the stories and graphic details, but I shall disclose one story in
particular. After watching his mother get beat to a pulp, his father moved onto him. His hands
had been tied and after beating him senseless, he was locked in a dark room for days where his
only so-called hydration and nourishment were self produced in a bucket (#1 and #2). His
father’s actions would go against every Geneva Convention Rule established for holding a
prisoner. His father made Hitler look like the Pope.
I was brought to tears and felt a horrifically sad and inconsolable pain for him. I tried my
best not to let him hear my quiet whimper as we dozed off to sleep. I couldn’t believe what he
had endured and suffered by the hands of his own father. Crying myself to sleep that night was
not comparable to when I cried when I didn’t get the opportunity to race Apollo Ono. That night
was real; it wasn’t ICU delirium. I won’t write it, but to properly close off this chapter of the
story, I wanted to write the F word in caps a hundred times over. This, along with his other
horrific stories are burned into my brain and soul—permanently. I will never forget him or his
stories.
The next morning, he and I headed down to the dining area for breakfast. A female
patient was attempting to pick me up and lure me into her room for some morning sexual
healing. I confidently but respectfully denied her request. Later that day, she flipped and
freaked out. She cleared off all of the tables with her clenched fists and screamed things that
didn’t make sense. She proceeded to punch patients and staff members in the face and began to
slowly move closer and closer to me. Was I next because I had denied her earlier morning
sexual healing request? I quickly recalled that I could not get hit on my head, especially the right
side of my head which was facing her. The two aneurysm clips that protrude out from my right
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