The Scribe Midnight Bbq: A Life-Changing Experience, a True Story of Cheating Death

By Guy Morgan

The book consists of a very bad decision I made on May 21, 2000. It tells of the difficulties I went through as well as a major brain surgery done while I was awake and how horrible and terrifying it was. It also tells of the many people I encountered such as surgeons, nurses, specialists, and some of the rehab I went through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524543358

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Copyright © 2016 by Guy Morgan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 03/01/2017

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

And The Fluid Flows

Chapter Three

Homeward Bound

Chapter Four

The Binder Of Dos And Don’ts

Chapter Five

Can You Hear Me?

Chapter Six

The Jaw Spreader

Chapter Seven

God Comes Knocking

Chapter Eight

What A Headache

Chapter Nine

I’m A Grandpa

Chapter Ten

Thirteen-Point Success

Special thanks to all the medical personnel involved in sustaining my life during this incredibly traumatic time in my life—the nurses, interns, doctors, and surgeons. I only wish I could name you all, but there were so many. Three different hospitals that came to my aid. Most of all, thanks to Dr. Eugene George, chief neurologist/surgeon at Parkland Memorial Hospital of Dallas, Texas, for the masterful surgery he performed on me; all the while, he was one heck of a good guy. Also, thanks to all my friends and family that gave me the support I needed to achieve even the most subtle gains to my finding myself again after losing so much. Special thanks to the one person who would not let me linger without applying my time to this book, Debbra Walkmeyer McEldowney—thank you.

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Photo of author. Six months before being shot; December 1999.

Chapter One

On this day, a Saturday, I was in charge of working the seconds yard selling number 2 clay flower pots made of natural white clay alongside a busy highway in a small East Texan town of Marshall, just west of Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a warm day and sunny, but even though it was alongside a highway, it was slow in patterns. To keep me busy, I decided to wash my truck, a Dodge four-by-four quad cab with brush guards in front and nerf bars with gray bed rails, nice wheels, and oversized tires. It was one that any forty-year-old would like to pull up next to kids at a stoplight and watch them ooh and then take off and make a lot of noise with the mufflers that made it sound real throaty and strong.

Many times I had had teens try to get me to sell it to them only to say it ain’t for sale, and they would keep trying, saying that I was too old for a truck like that, and I would say, You’re too young for this truck. Anyhow, after a long day of not much to do but sit and wait for customers that seemed to never show, it was time to end the day of selling pots, so I closed up the shop and started home only to stop by the house of my wife’s cousin to have some beers. After about four or five beers, a friend of my wife’s cousin came by and invited us to a midnight barbecue, and that’s when the beer started doing the thinking for me.

So you guessed it; we said, Yah, why not? And as you read this, you too will see why not. So we loaded up and headed to the barbecue where it was right across the highway from the seconds yard I had worked at all day that day. Upon our arrival at the barbecue, my wife’s cousin introduced me to one AJ, the host of the party, and his girlfriend, Kam. He was a lanky tall man with long hair and tattoos covering his arms. She was a petite blond woman, and they lived in a rather small mobile home out in the middle of a pasture.

There was a bonfire going, so it just seemed that it was going to be a good time, no problems, but there was also some Mexicans that were there, and they started to get pretty drunk and were staggering around and hooping and hollering the typical Spanish yells. It was kinda funny to watch and listen to, and AJ was joining in with them too and promoting who could do the loudest yell and most colorful, all the while with beer in one hand and a cigarette or joint in the other.

As I sat there on the porch edge—no chair legs, just hanging down and not touching the ground—I watched the people around the fire having fun. AJ’s girlfriend came over and sat next to me, not close but maybe a foot away, just close enough to talk to one another. As we sat there watching her boyfriend and the others, she would occasionally look at me and shake her head in disgust about what they were doing. At one point, she said, I wish my kids did not have to live with this shit and instead of saying, Hey, it’s a choice or something like that, I, like an idiot, said, Yah, you and the kids deserve better than this, meaning that it’s not good for the kids. She immediately called AJ over and told him that I had said that she should leave him and go with me. LOL. What a joke! So she was the one that got everything started.

AJ came over to me and shoved me and said that I thought I was better than everybody else just because I drove a nice truck. And at about that time, my wife’s cousin said out loud, Hell, you should see his house. He lives in a mansion. That is when AJ took a swing at me, but I was able to avoid getting hit, so I made for the truck to leave.

As I was getting my keys ready to go in the ignition, AJ swung the door open and started to try to hit me in the face, but I was able to fend him off and start the truck. I floored it and slammed it in gear, taking off, throwing dirt everywhere, and spinning around to get headed toward the gate (exit). All the while, AJ was hanging on to the rearview mirror on the driver’s side, and two Mexicans had jumped onto and into the back of the truck; so at that point, I was not stopping for shit. It was a less than smooth driveway, just dirt across a pasture, and it had some pretty good potholes, causing the Mexicans and AJ to lose their nerve. AJ let go, and the Mexicans jumped out as we came to the gate. So not taking any chances of getting caught up with at the gate, we just ran it down and flew out into the highway, making a hard right for about two hundred yards and then had to make a hard left U-turn to get headed back home to the house of my wife’s cousin about three miles away.

Both of us were freaking out over what had just taken place and were glad to be out of there. So we made the drive to his house and made the turn around in his driveway and sat there and smoked a cigarette trying to digest the whole thing. After about thirty minutes or so, Chet, my wife’s cousin, said he was going in the house and asked me if I was coming. I said no and that I was going to take a little nap and then get up and go home later. What a big mistake.

I laid my seat back and went calmly to sleep only to be awakened with a hard fist to my left jaw, breaking it, and then about seven or eight unrestrained free punches to my face, breaking my left cheekbone too. Yet I was still conscious enough to grab my pistol that I had wedged between the seat cushion of the driver’s seat with the butt of the gun in good position to be grabbed in a hurry if needed. I did so, but him seeing it too, he went for it, getting it away from me and turning it on me. He fired at very close range about ten inches from my face, hitting me in the lower left jawbone about two inches down the jawbone line from my left ear, shattering my jaw from mandible to mandible, ear to ear, leaving only shards of what once was teeth, now just jagged, broken teeth. The bullet had almost taken my tongue off with it too.

The bullet passed through the soft pallet area of my mouth, taking out that little punching bag thingy in the back of my throat and also damaging the back side of my right eye, severing the optic nerve just behind the eye and exiting just about two inches above my right ear, exploding my right eardrum beyond repair. I will learn some time later.

Now a young man named Jes had heard the vehicle that AJ had come in and came out on the porch to investigate just about the time AJ had started hitting me in the face. Jes could not see the actual hits, but he could hear them taking place and had no idea who had shown up in the vehicle and couldn’t see the assault because the driver’s side was away from his vantage point. After the gunshot, he did see AJ walk away from my truck looking scared as heck as if he had just shot someone (me).

I remembered how the pop of the gun next to my face sounded and the intense ringing that came immediately after. Thankfully, Jes did not try to confront him as he left. Chet had heard the gunshot and was telling his wife to get down, not knowing that it was me that had gotten shot and nobody was after him and his family. Jes told Chet that the coast was clear and that he had seen the guy leave, so he and Chet came out to the truck to investigate. They found me with blood spewing from my face and out of my head. Chet told Jes to call 911.

Chet, a rather burly man and a bit heavy with a long graying beard, stood by the truck, patting me on the chest and telling me