“No te quiero ilusionar,” she’d say.

December 5, 2016 10:21 PM

Whoever he’d been before, whoever he still was inside, to the world around him, he was now a human riddle, a blank slate on which to write a thousand possible names and stories. He needed a name for the forms and the charts and the billing, and so he was assigned one — a strange name whose origins have been lost in the nearly 17 years since the accident. It might have come from an auto shop to which the truck was taken or near where the accident occurred; some people heard it came from the truck’s route, or it was simply random. However it happened, legally he became Sixty-Six Garage.
posted by Chrysostom (3 comments total)

This is stunning ... one of many stories illustrating the cost of whatever the hell we want to call the system that's resulted in the messed-up tilted world we live in.

Thanks so much for posting.
posted by allthinky at 5:41 AM on December 6, 2016

Jesus, that's heartbreaking.
posted by suelac at 8:34 AM on December 6, 2016

It angers me so much that Paula, despite being by this man's side for over 15 years, giving him a real name, talking to him as a human, getting his face and story out there, fielding hundreds of calls from distressed loved ones, is shut out because she isn't "family." If she isn't family, then I don't know what family is.
posted by ElleElle at 10:48 AM on December 6, 2016 [3 favorites]