I'm OK i'm ok.

 In 1988 I was 22 years old. I had recently graduated from college where I had played football for four years and had returned for the next semester's graduation of my best friend. The night before at a local bar my friend's father fell down the stairs and broke his neck. I was the first to him and I knew that it was bad. I repositioned his head and helped him breathe again and I held his head and stabilized his neck the best I could as chaos rain around me. In the time it took to empty out the bar and gather six police officers to the scene I held his head. I could feel him breathing and assured his sons he was still alive. The paramedics arrived and I passed over his head and stepped over his body I walked into the scene that would change my life forever. My best friend's older brother and the oldest son of the man on the ground was being pushed by a police officer who was saying if you do not leave I will arrest you. I'll never forget the eloquent words spoken that started the nightmare, "fuck you go ahead and arrest me." He was spun around and thrown against the wall. Another officer was crossing in front of me to assist and I made a terrible mistake of touching his shoulder. I meant to get his attention to say, "this is his son," but never got the chance to speak. In a clean spinning swinging motion he struck me across the face with a leather covered, lead weighted, Billy Jack fracturing my orbit and stunning me with a not so brilliant flash of white light. He too was stunned and surprised to find that I still stood and very calmly asked, "why did you hit me?" He took a step back so I took a step forward. The Billy Jack waggled in his hand and I saw the fear in his face. I tried to say again, "he is this man's son," but before I could finish I felt as though I had been stabbed. I felt a fire hot pain shooting up through my left kidney and in reflex and in rage I spun and threw the back of my elbow into the face of my assailant who'd attacked me. This is when things went into slow motion, everything and everyone around me, the cop's head snapping back spraying blood against the wall behind him and the sparking electro blue light crackling from the prongs of the stun gun he had just hit me with still in his hand as he slid down the wall smearing the blood as he crumpled to the floor. The crack to the back of my head was noticeably different sounding because it came from the wood of a baton the brilliant white flash of light. This officer being equally shocked and weary when I turned and shouted, "stop hitting me!" Two other officers from either side grabbing both my arms ending it, but the cop with the bloody mouth coming back at me again and jamming his stun gun directly into the middle of my chest and stunning the officers right off of my arms. Me dropping and lunging forward head-butting him in the face dropping him again. I came up pushing out with both hands sending the other officers over picnic tables on either side. The back doors wide-open and beckoning, me sprinting for them, but as I reached the opening I ran directly into the seventh officer responding to the scene. We met in a sickening crunch and crumpled to the ground in a tangled mess. I was hand cuffed and face down and a cop stomped on the cuff and in another sickening crunch broke my wrist. Then there were multiple kicks and hits and clubbings and finally the most brilliant white flash of the pain and light from being fried by four Nova Control stun guns used at once. I woke up face-down in a cell choking in a small pool of my own blood. My hands were still handcuffed behind my back and my face was glued to the concrete floor by coagulating blood. I could hear a constant flood of loudly shouted profanity that was so volgur and constant that it could not be real. Then I realized it was my best friend shouting for my very life. I rolled up on my side in fetal position and coughed out a glob of bloody puke and said, "Dennis, Dennis! I'm OK. I'm ok." Nothing could have been further from the truth. Sometimes you don't have to be asleep to have a nightmare.