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“When willI be able to tattoo?” That was the only question Sebastian Savage needed answered.
He didn’t care about anything else. He didn’t care about how many more surgeries he’d need to have. The constant back, neck, and leg pain he’d been in since the car accident. Or how long it would take for him to rehab. All he cared about was when he could put ink to skin again.
Dr. Toly’s rosy cheeks hollowed as he pursed his lips as he inhaled through his nose. In the history of mankind, had any good news ever followed a pursed lip and loud nostril breathing?
Seb didn’t think so.
“It’s hard to say. There is a lot of swelling around your spinal cord, which will go down in time. It could be a month, six months, a year, or never. There’s no direct path to recovery with nerve damage, I’m afraid.”
Seb had undergone surgery on his back for several compression fractures. He’d had a spinal fusion, which had alleviated some of his pain, but he was still suffering from nerve damage in his arms, legs, and, most importantly, his hands. He had another surgery scheduled and wanted answers to what going under the knife would or wouldn’t achieve.
“Are you saying that there’s a chance I’ll never pick up a machine again?” Hearing himself voice his greatest fear made him nauseous.
“I’m not a fortune teller. I don’t have a crystal ball. Let’s just focus on what we can control. Have the surgery on Friday. Do the rehab. Let’s just take this day by day.”
Day by day. That wasn’t really Seb’s style. He planned ahead. He set goals for himself, and he met them. He was always working toward something. In theory, his goal could be working toward tattooing again. The problem was the goal was not concrete. He didn’t have control over whether or not he achieved that objective through grit and hard work.
His recovery sounded wishy-washy. It sounded elusive. It sounded like there was a possibility he would do everything they asked and still wouldn’t be able to tattoo.
Dr. Toly rocked forward in his high-backed leather chair and put his hands on his desk. “Hopefully soon, you can get back to the job I know you love.”
Tattooing wasn’t just a job to Seb. It wasn’t a career choice. It was his religion. It was his sanity. It was his…everything. It had saved him from a very dark place.
He didn’t care about the money or fame it had subsequently brought to him. His tattoo gun was the only thing that had ever brought him peace. It was an extension of himself. He’d been tattooing since he was fourteen years old. If he wasn’t a tattoo artist, who was he?
How could one Uber ride change all of that? One second, he’d been on the way home from LAX after attending his oldest brother’s wedding in Illinois, the next thing he remembered was waking up in the emergency room.
That was ten days ago. After a three-day stay in the hospital following a spinal fusion, he’d been released, and this was his first follow-up with the specialist that he’d seen when he’d been in the hospital after his surgery.
“There are several new therapies that I can suggest to you.”
As Seb sat in the sterile doctor’s office and the physician listed off possible medications and rehabilitation avenues, all he heard was a whooshing sound in his head.
None of this seemed real to him. It all felt like a nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from. He had no memory of the accident. He’d seen clips of the aftermath on news outlets and on Instagram and TikTok, but he had no actual memory of being the fourth car in a seven-car pile-up sandwiched between two big rigs.
Over the past few days, he’d started having flashbacks of the event. They came without warning when he was wide awake. A blink was all it took, and he was transported back to the 405 freeway. He wasn’t sure if the images he was seeing were from his actual experience or if they were things he’d seen on TV and on social media.
Either way, it felt real. It felt scary. He felt helpless. Trapped. When he closed his eyes, he saw the accordion metal of the hood of the car. Or he closed his eyes and saw a tire flying through the air. The large metal blades of the jaws of life. He heard people screaming. He saw the bright, burning flames of the big rig’s engine that had exploded.
He knew that he was one of the lucky ones. Fourteen people had been involved in the fatal crash, and only eleven had survived. Out of those eleven, two were still in a coma, one had to have a leg amputated, and another was paralyzed from the neck down.
He was one of the lucky seven who had been able to walk out of the hospital relatively unscathed. At least to the outside world. His truth, his reality was that the accident may have robbed him of his one true love—tattooing.
Seb had no concept of time or how long he’d been seated across from Dr. Toly when the doctor abruptly stood. “If you have any questions, just let me know.”
Seb barely registered stopping by the front desk on the way out to pay his bill and set up his next appointment. He was only vaguely aware that he’d been handed paperwork and pamphlets to look over regarding the pre- and post-surgical instructions for his upcoming procedure to repair his back. He was on autopilot as he took the elevator down from the tenth floor.
He felt like a zombie, a shell of himself, as he walked out of the medical building and sat on the bench, waiting for his ride. He wasn’t thrilled about having to get back into an Uber, but he didn’t have a lot of choices since he wasn’t cleared to drive yet. Thank god for DoorDash and Instacart; they’d been lifesavers since he’d gotten released from the hospital.
Seb checked his phone and saw that his driver was five minutes away. He set the device on his thigh to watch for updates, made a fist and then released it. Or at least he tried. All that happened was that the tips of his fingers curled. He’d lost fifty percent of his mobility and roughly seventy-five percent of the sensation in his hands, all thanks to the damage to his spine from the car accident.
Most people who suffered from his injury would be able to lead a completely normal life post-surgery. Seb would never forget waking up in the hospital and meeting the doctor for the first time. Dr. Baldy, who was unironically bald and wore tiny, metal glasses that sat on a pointy nose, he’d been the first to inform him that he was one of the “lucky ones” before flippantly relaying that, of course, there would be some twitching and numbness, but unless Seb was a surgeon who needed that level of fine motor skills, he would be fine. When Seb told him he was a tattoo artist, Dr. Baldy’s grin slipped. That’s when Seb knew he was fucked. The days that followed felt like a nightmare. One he still hadn’t woken up from.
Seb was still waiting for his Uber when his phone rang and he saw his mom’s face on the screen. He didn’t want to answer it, but he knew that if he didn’t, she’d just call back. Since the accident, she’d called him several times a day. He’d spent the little energy he had convincing her that she did not need to fly out and come stay with him. Thankfully, both his nieces, who were adults now at age twenty-two, lived in Los Angeles. If it weren’t for them being in the same town, he was sure his mom would have come out.
As much as Seb loved his mother, Elaine Savage could be a lot, especially, with him. Seb was the baby of the family. The youngest of her three sons. And beside his birth rank, Seb had always needed extra attention and help.
