Rosetta Stone (0:00)

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Andy Borowitz (1:21)

Welcome to the Moth Podcast welcome to the podcast. I'm Andy Borowitz. The Moth features true stories told live without notes. All stories on the podcast are taken from our ongoing storytelling series in New York and Los Angeles and from our tour shows across the country. Visit themoth.org the story you are about to hear is by Ed Gavigan and this is his second appearance on the Moth Podcast. Many of you will remember his first story about unwittingly walking into a gang initiation in New York City and only barely surviving his injuries. We got an enormous response to this story and Ed himself received hundreds of emails from podcast listeners. We're very happy to share with you that Ed and his wife, the cute poet bartender from the story, just had a beautiful baby girl. If you'd like to hear the original story, you can find it@themost.org this new story was recorded live at the moth mainstage in March 2009, and the theme of the night was put to the test.

Ed Gavigan (2:26)

So when the phone rang that morning, I didn't want to pick it up. I was in a world of pain. I had everything hurt. My body, my head. I was an emotional and a physical wreck. And I looked over at the caller ID and I could see that it was the District Attorney's office calling. And so I knew that it was Assistant District Attorney Kennedy calling. And I knew what he was calling about, but I didn't know exactly what he wanted, he was calling about a case where five guys were in custody for attempted murder. And they were gang members from a gang called the Latin Kings. And they had come in from Brooklyn on the night before Thanksgiving. And their mission was to kill somebody that night as part of an initiation where they were hoping to move up in the management ranks of the gang. Kind of like an outward bound for urban thugs. And you never think that you're going to be the guy whose whole life changes forever because you choose to walk down one side of the street instead of the other side. But as I turned off of Bleecker street to walk down the block that night, I picked the right hand side of the street and I walked into their ambush. And about 15 minutes later, I was being wheeled into the emergency trauma room at St. Vincent's with multiple stab wounds from three different knives. One of them had a 10 inch blade. And the surgeon operated the rest of the night to try and save me. I needed two complete blood transfusions to keep me in place until he could do his work. And I was conscious up until they put me out for the surgery. And I was pretty certain that I was not going to make it. In fact, everybody was so sure that there was no way I could live that they gave my case to the homicide detectives, I guess to save on the paperwork when I eventually died. But they took out organs and they removed about a third of my intestines. And I was on life support. And when I came off of life support, the nurse came in with a clipboard and she wanted to talk to me about my insurance. Well, I was self employed, so I was insurance free. And they let me though, have a special program at St. Vincent's for people with no insurance, which consisted of a bottle of Percocet and a cane and a bag to put all my crap in. And they said as they pulled out the morphine and the catheter and the chest tubes and the oxygen mask, they said, come back in two weeks, we want to take a look at those stitches. And my mother, who had sat by my bedside for the whole thing, said, you need to come back to Wyoming, where I grew up and where the whole family was. And she goes, we gotta leave this horrible city and, you know, get a plane ticket and just come back and be safe and get out of here. And I agreed. I felt like I could use a little break. And we flew back to Wyoming and my two brothers and my sister were there, and they just could not believe what had transpired. And they said, you know, what the hell went on? And I said, you know what? I want to tell you this. I want to tell you everything that happened, but I'm so happy to be alive. I feel so lucky. I want to go out into the mountains, all right, because we grew up in Wyoming, and we have this camping thing, and I said, let's drive out into the hills, and we'll make a fire on a hill. I'll look at the stars, and I'll tell you what happened. And you can, you know, kind of understand what it was like. So they're like, all right, we'll drive out in the mountains. You can tell us a story in front of a big fire. All right? So my sister gets in her Honda, and she's like, listen, I have to work in the morning, so we got to take two cars so I can drive back swine. She goes in the Honda with one of my brothers, and I'm with my other brother and his. He's got a 1966 GTO. So we're following her driving out at dusk across the prairie into the mountains. And my brother is driving. He's looking over at me, and he's like, man, you look like shit. And I had lost £40 in the hospital. I was looking pretty skeletal, and I was kind of freaking out at every little bump and everything. And he started to cry, and he's like, I can't believe it was really, like, five guys, three knives, like. And I was like, yeah. But, you know, when I was in college, I was at Notre Dame. I was on the boxing team. So I knocked one guy out, and they arrested him, and he gave up the names of all the other guys who ran away. So there were five guys in jail because I got one and knocked him out. And my brother's like, dude, all right, all right. That's cool. But he couldn't believe that that would be a test of manhood, that three guys with knives would ambush an unarmed guy. And he's looking at me, and he's crying. And that was why he didn't see, as we came over the hill, that my sister had stopped on the road because there was a herd of antelope crossing. And I didn't have a seatbelt on because when we got in the car, I had so many stitches from the stab wounds and the surgery that the seatbelt hurt too much to put on. And he was looking at me. And we hit my sister's car at 60 miles an hour, and I hit my face on the dashboard, and I went through the windshield. And I came to about 40 yards down the highway, and I could just smell the burning rubber. And I looked, and I saw the headlights at crazy angles. We'd torn the back off of my sister's car. Both cars were in the ditch. There's broken glass everywhere and dissing radiators. And they're all screaming. And I think I'm dead again. But it hurts so much that I can't imagine that they have this kind of pain after you're dead. And I'm laying there, and they all come running over and they're screaming and looking down at me. And I look up, and we're in the middle. We're an hour from anything. There's no phones, there's no lights, there's no houses. I really had wanted to get out into the woods. And we just stood there. Neither car can drive. And the next car that comes along is a pickup truck. And this guy pulls over. Of course, he sees everything that's gone on, Calls the state troopers, the highway patrol shows up. Trooper gets out. He comes over. He wants everybody's id. We all give him our driver's license, and he goes, well, I'm not writing any tickets tonight. You all have the same last name. You sort this out when you get home. All right? We need to get this guy to the hospital. So they're loading me into the back of this pickup truck, and I'm in just. I'm in bad pain. And as my sister and the pickup driver putting me in, I hear the trooper saying to my brother, that GTO was a 66. My brother's like, yeah, it had a factory tri Power carburetor on it. And I'm just like, wyoming, man. All right, can you get me to the hospital? So we drive into Cheyenne. It's an hour. We get to the hospital, and at that time of night, it's Cheyenne mainly. All they deal with is car accidents. So they bring me in, and the nurse on duty goes, weren't wearing a seatbelt, were you? I'm like, all right. We get up on the thing. She starts to take my shirt off to check my vitals, and she sees stab wounds, surgery scars, staples, hundreds of stitches. She goes, honey, what happened to you? Where did you come from? I'm just like, listen, just stitch up my face. I need to get out of here. All right? Let me get on my way. So I take the next plane back to New York City. I get here, and I've got my appointment with my surgeon that saved my life. I've Got to go in and see him now. The last thing that he told me was, stay off your feet and don't take a shower, and I'll see you in two weeks. So I go in to see him, and he is pissed. It's like he's just restored an old English piece of furniture, and I've taken a hammer to it, and he starts looking at me, and he says, you know what? If you had had that seatbelt on, you would have ruptured everything inside of you from the impact, and you'd be dead. So you actually saved your own life. And I'm like, whatever doesn't kill me just hurts me even more. It's fine. So the surgeon, you know, checks everything out. I'm fine. I've got two black eyes, a broken nose, stitches from my forehead to my brow, my nose, both lips are full of stitches, and I've got broken teeth. He just sends me on my way. And I go back to my apartment, and I'm having a hard time. I can't sleep. I've got competing nightmares. I've got. I'm being stabbed. I'm in a car crash. I'm in surgery. I just flew through the windshield. I can't eat. I can't go to the bathroom. I'm oozing pus and intermittent bloody noses. I just cry. I cry and cry. I'm wracked with sobs. I can't. I have no idea what my place on earth is anymore. Nothing is safe. And then I decided to check my phone messages, right? Because the machine is completely full. I've got 36 messages, like. Beep. This is Bob. I'm here with Ellen. We're waiting for you. You didn't come to the meeting. I can't understand. Ed, you know, I really thought this was important to you. I really. I have to say, I'm very annoyed. Beep. Ed. Bob, Ellen had to leave. All right? Now I. We're never going to work again. Okay? I don't understand. Next one. Ed, we've been waiting for the furniture to be delivered. I don't understand what happened.