读者文摘:我不知道自己还能活多久(5)（在线收听）

Less than five minutes later, he pulled off Highway 16 at the farm and ran directly for the hopper,

不到5分钟后，他在农场旁的16号公路旁停下车，直接朝着装料斗跑去，

but his father wasn't there and the auger was silent—the truck and the tractor too.

但他的父亲不在那里，螺旋钻、卡车和拖拉机也都安静下来。

The picture didn't reconcile. No blood. No painful cries. No droning auger.

这景象一点也不和谐。没有血，没有痛苦的哭声，没有嗡嗡作响的螺旋钻。

He then noticed the open door to the garage, and inside, his father splayed out on the floor in a dusty shirt and baseball cap,

然后，他注意到车库的门开着，父亲仰着躺在里面的地板上，他穿着一件满是灰尘的衬衫，戴着棒球帽，

legs hidden by the office wall, smoking perhaps the last cigarette of his life.

两条腿被办公室的墙挡住了，他抽着或许是生命中的最后一支烟。

"How bad is it?" Adam asked.

“情况有多糟？”亚当问。

Kurt looked up from the floor, smoke trailing from his lips. "I messed up big-time," he said.

库尔特从地板上抬起头来，烟从他的嘴唇中飘出。他说，“我把大日子给搞砸了。”

Strangely, there was virtually no blood.

奇怪的是，几乎没有血。

(His doctor would later guess this was due to Kurt's decades of heavy smoking.)

（他的医生后来猜测，这是因为库尔特几十年来大量吸烟所致。）

Nevertheless, his foot was missing and his leg was horribly mangled, dusted with dirt and debris, the bones protruding beyond his calf muscle.

然而，他的脚不见了，腿被严重撕裂，沾满了灰尘和碎片，骨头从小腿肌肉处突出。

Though he'd already called 911 from the road, Adam now called the chief of his rescue squad,

虽然亚当已经在路上打过911，他现在又打电话给他的救援队队长，

told the squad to "kick it into overdrive," that his father had severed his foot and would likely need an air ambulance.

让他们“加速赶来”，说他的父亲把脚割断了，可能需要一辆救护直升机。

Adam then snapped into "firefighter mode," as he calls it.

亚当随即进入他所说的“消防员模式”。

He started asking his father questions, keeping him lucid until the roughly 12-person team arrived a few minutes later.

他开始询问父亲问题，让他保持清醒，随后大约12人的小组在几分钟后到达。

The rescue squad carefully loaded Kurt onto a stretcher and into the ambulance, then raced back to Pender Community Hospital.

救援队小心地把库尔特抬上担架，上了救护直升机，然后赶回彭德社区医院。

Kurt doesn't remember much of the ride,

库尔特对去医院的路途没有太多记忆，

but he does recall the helicopter flight to Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln and all that sodden, muddy farmland below.

但他确实记得直升机飞到林肯布莱恩医疗中心，还有下面那片湿漉漉、泥泞不堪的农田。

After two surgeries, a week at Bryan Medical, and two more at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital,

布莱恩接受了两次手术，他在布莱恩医疗中心住院一周，

Kurt returned to the farm, the stump of his left leg wrapped in a clean elastic bandage just below the knee.

然后又在圣母马利亚康复医院待了两周后，返回农场。他左腿的残肢被一条干净的弹性绷带包裹在膝盖以下。

For a while, he was stuck inside with a pair of crutches and a walker and too many get-well-soon cards to read in one sitting,

有一段时间，他不得不待在家中，拄着拐杖和助行器走路，还一口气读了好多祝愿他康复的卡片。

just another one of the hundred or so agricultural workers who sustain a lost-work-time injury every day.

他只是每天遭受工伤的大约一百名农业工人中的一个。

"It's frustrating. But," Kurt says, "it's just the nature of a farmer. Don't think. Gets in a hurry. Gets tired. Whatever."

库尔特说，“这令人沮丧，但当农民本来就是这样，什么都不要想，匆匆忙忙的，疲惫不堪，诸如此类的事”

Four months after the accident, Kurt received his prosthetic leg, and soon the farmer was back to doing what he loves.

事故发生四个月后，库尔特装了假肢，很快这位农民又开始做他喜欢做的事情。

Strong-willed, as his family has always known him to be, he helped with the harvest last fall,

他还是像家人熟知的那样意志坚强，在去年秋天帮忙秋收，

even ran that same leg-chewing auger as he unloaded corn into grain bins.

他甚至还在把玉米卸到谷仓中时，操作那台把他的腿截掉的螺旋钻。

"When we went down to the hospital to see him, first thing out of his mouth was 'Why are you guys not working?'" farmhand Tyler Hilkemann told KCAU in Sioux City.

我们去医院看他时，他说的第一句话就是‘你们为什么不去工作？’”农场工人泰勒·希尔克曼在爱荷华州苏城告诉KCAU。

"Ever since he got his leg, you can't stop him. One of these days we might steal it from him."

“自从他有了假腿，你就没法让他停下来。总有一天我们可能会把他的假腿偷过来。”