Adrenaline: Our Bodies’ Natural Drug

Plastic shopping bags painfully weigh down on my forearms as I wait for the pedestrian cross signal to flash. I turn to say something to my friend Rana, also carrying several plastic and boxy paper shopping bags in her hands. The night is cool tonight. It’s not cold but it is a low enough temperature for me to have thrown on my black, thick, fleecy zip up. Tiny little spits of rain hit my legs through my jeans like harmless pieces of gravel. The sun is just setting, but I can still see some pink and yellow streaks of glowing rays among the dimming blue sky.

Finally, the little glowing white man replaces the spot where the glowing red hand used to be. It’s safe to cross. I turn to Rana on my left and draw in a breath to say something to her. I look at her face. In an instant she goes from her usual toothy smile to looking like a deer in headlights. I wondered why.

The biggest impact I’d ever felt strikes me from my right. I close my eyes and tense my body. I’m moving, but I don’t know how. I can only make out a couple streaks of light, and Harvey’s notorious bright orange sign. I can’t make out the letters but I recognize it. All at the same time, I feel cold wind across my face and hear a yelp-like scream. This scream isn’t from me. Its from Rana, who is two feet beside me, watching my body fly without my own will from the cross walk into the middle of the street.

After being whipped 10 feet, all motion stops and I’m turned onto my back. I begin to feel coldness at the tips of my fingers and all around my legs. My immediate thought is : “I’m dead. moms gonna kill me”, but I wasn’t dead. The frigid sensation was from the cold, wet concrete. I couldn’t even feel the cold so much because my entire body was numb to feeling, yet I still shivered. I laid on my back with my arms and legs spread out like I would usually on a freshly folded bed. This was oddly comfortable. I lift my head up to look at Rana, who just called my two friends that were walking a couple blocks ahead of us. Completely dazed by this impact, I watch Rana grow more and more anxious from this angle, and then slump down into the comfort of my Forever 21 jacket of fluff.

“I’m calling an ambulance” I hear someone say, but I’m too bothered by my wet hair sticking to my neck than to think about an ambulance. I don’t even think I need one.

The pain doesn’t start to kick in until I get to the emergency room. My leg feels like it’s swelling by the minute. Every time I feel my blood pump, my thigh aches with a persistent throb. This persistence exists and nags at me like a child would nag at their mother, except this child is as strong as the bumper of a 2005 Lexus LS model 430. I’m shaking uncontrollably, my hands twitching and my legs jolting every so often, reminding me of the never-ending pain in my leg, neck, back and head.

I lay in a curtained children’s emergency room and a doctor gives me two light-pink, pretty looking peanut sized pills to help with the pain. Truth is, I’d do anything for some adrenaline right now.