The Underground Road

Why this sticks in my memory, I don’t know. But here we go.

I’m not sure there’s really a boring place I’ve been. I tend to enjoy going everywhere. Even places that weren’t designed to be exciting can become part of the adventure simply because of what was happening in my life at the time.

But there is one place that comes to mind: the underground tunnels between Craig Hospital and Swedish Hospital.

Now, that sounds considerably more interesting than it actually was.

These weren’t secret tunnels leading to some underground Colorado civilization. They were simply a way to get from one hospital to the other.

At the time, I was in a wheelchair, making my way through those tunnels on the way to therapy.

I was working to help my injured brain, and part of that therapy involved getting my face zapped with electricity.

Yep.

Electricity. To the face.

And apparently, the experience was memorable for more than just me.

The nurse was afraid I was going to hit her while she was doing it.

I can only imagine what that looked like from her side. There I was, sitting in a wheelchair, getting electrical stimulation to my face, while she was apparently keeping one eye on the equipment and the other on me, just in case things got interesting.

Fortunately, nobody got punched.

Looking back, though, I think those tunnels mean more to me than I realized.

They were just tunnels. Concrete, hospital walls, fluorescent lights, and a wheelchair rolling from one building to another.

But I was in the middle of a very different chapter of my life.

I was working my way through therapy, trying to get pieces of my life moving in the right direction again. Those tunnels were simply part of the route.

And sometimes that’s how memories work.

The places that stay with us aren’t always the beautiful ones or the exciting ones. Sometimes it’s a hallway, a hospital room, a parking lot, or an underground tunnel that becomes attached to something much bigger.

The place itself may have been ordinary.

The moment wasn’t.

So, congratulations, underground hospital tunnels.

You made the list.

Not exactly the Road Less Traveled.

More like the Road Less Interesting that somehow became a pretty important part of the journey.