* * *
The next coherent thing I recall is waking up in the hospital bed feeling fine except for the whiplash, the tiny multiple glass cuts on my arms, the bruised forehead and chest, the aching muscles and the sprained left ankle. Other than that I was all hunky-dory as my mom used to say when my brothers and I were little.
I did a quick self check and found there were no IV lines, feeding tubes, neck braces or casts to protect broken bones. Just me and my friend, the bed. It took me a few minutes to remember why I was there in the first place. Finally it came to me. I remembered the car wreck or bits of it anyway. At that point I still thought that maybe I was the cause of it and began to worry about the other people involved.
It was completely silent in the room and fairly dark although the sun tried to beat its way through the window curtains on my left. On my right there was a floor-to-ceiling length curtain pulled closed covering what I assumed was another half of the room, probably with a person lying in another hospital bed. I heard the occasional beep of monitoring equipment from behind it. Mounted on the wall was a TV which silently displayed a national news program. The walls were painted that greenish hospital color.
“Yep,” I said conclusively, “I must have died and gone to Hell.” I hated hospitals.
I heard the door open on the other side of the curtain and someone shuffled in. A bit of light spilled in from the hall and I could see a shadow moving on the dividing curtain. The visitor stopped at the bed on the other side and I heard the scratching of pen on paper. A few moments passed and a tall male nurse appeared in my side of the room.
“Oh good, you’re awake. How are you feeling today Mr. Nicholas,” he inquired. He had a clipboard and pen and was making marks.
“I feel like part of a car accident. How about you…,” I spied his name on a dry erase board mounted on the wall behind him, “…Eddie is it?” He frowned a moment, trying to figure out how I knew his name, turned his head and saw his name on the board, turned back and smiled a little bit.
“I’m doing swell, thanks for asking. I thought you were a psychic or something for a second there,” he joked. My train of thought stopped and I looked at him. He was paying attention to his clipboard. The statement disturbed me. I couldn’t for the life of me remember why it should but it did. I had a flashback of sitting in the car right before the accident. Something had happened to me in the car. I remember it had been like a door opening for me. But I could not grasp what it was if I needed to in order to save my life. The nurse continued.
“Good to see you’re not too traumatized from your little adventure last night.
“Yeah,” I said, “about that. Do you know what happened anyway? I mean, besides the fact that my car got into an argument with another car and lost.”
“Just sec,” He said and scribbled a few more notes before answering. “Well, the short version is you were hit by a drunk driver. You were driving along, probably minding your own business and some other guy decides with impaired judgment that he wants you to share your side of the road with him. I don’t know too much more than that.”
“A drunk driver,” I asked uncertainly. I thought I might have been daydreaming and that I had caused the wreck. Something told me I was caught up in something like that right before the accident happened. This was a tremendous relief. But other questions nagged to be answered.
“That’s right. Blood alcohol level of .2, if memory serves,” Eddie said, confirming the truth of it. “I personally call that a DD. If you could look it up the Eddie Thomas Dictionary of Internal Slang you’d see that DD means ‘Drunk enough to be Dangerous.’”
“Was anyone else hurt,” I asked ignoring the triteness of his tone.
“Well, quite a few people were hurt, some of them pretty badly. Let’s see,” he tucked his clipboard under his arm and began counting on his fingers. “There’s obviously you, so that’s one. There were the people in the SUV you ran into, a man and a woman. The man has three fractured ribs because the idiot wasn’t wearing his seatbelt and the woman has some minor cuts and bruises. That makes three. There was the car you apparently ran off the road trying to avoid the head-on collision. The woman driving that car ran into a really big rock and went through the windshield. She’s still in ICU. We don’t know if she’s going to make it yet, but the docs are hopeful. That makes four. Let’s see, who else?” He looked away to his left and searched his memory.
“There was another car behind you that was hit—well hit isn’t the right word for it, is it?—that was partially crushed when the drunk driver’s car flipped onto it after it hit you. I heard the Cops say he was airborne for a few seconds, came down and rolled onto this other car. That one was carrying a man and his nephew coming back from a basketball game or something. The nephew is in ICU and the uncle is dead.” He was somber for a moment and then carried on. “That’s five and six.” I thought I was going to be sick. Even though I was not responsible for causing the accident, to know I was part of it and that someone had died was almost too much.
“Are you going to be okay, man? Do I need to get you something to spit in?” Spit. There’s a euphemism I hadn’t heard since I was four. Why not just come out and say it? Are you going to puke? Is that so hard? I didn’t know why I was so annoyed with the nurse. He was just telling me what I’d asked him to. He could have been a bit more sensitive about it, sure, but when a person sees the things a nurse does on a daily basis they deserve a little slack in the sensitivity department. My stomach settled after a few seconds of steadying breaths.
“No, I’m good,” I said at last. “Is that all of them?”
“Oh, heavens no!” He said jovially. “You can’t forget the star of the show.” He took the curtain in one hand and walked it back to wall so I could see into the whole room. He stood blocking my view of the man’s face. “This,” Eddie continued, “is James Price, Jimmy to his friends, and he’s fresh from the ICU this morning. He won’t be waking up for little while, but he’ll pull through. They always do, don’t they?” He walked back to where he was standing, though I wished he hadn’t.
As I turned my head I was slammed into a wall of foggy recognition. Without thinking about what I was doing I raised myself up onto my side to get a clearer look and my body screamed at me stop. The cuts and bruises on his face were new, there was no expensive clothing, but the face was all I needed to see. It was the guy who’d almost run me over in front of Spectra Data Processing. He’d been in a car that had flipped into the air, rolled onto another car, killing a man and severely injuring a boy…and he looked like he’d only come out of a fight with a biker he’d offended.
There was something else significant about him too, but I couldn’t remember it. It had to do with the fact that he’d almost run me over in his shiny black car. There was a spot missing from my memory. I wondered why I was standing in the middle of the street, inviting that kind of disaster upon myself. I couldn’t recall with any precision what on earth could have drawn me out to the middle of the road. But I did have an eerie feeling about it.
“You okay, man? You look like a possum just walked over your grave.” I looked away from the unconscious man and at the nurse in shock. At first I thought I had to be dreaming the whole thing, perhaps my subconscious mind was processing and putting together fragments of my memories from the last few days to create something to occupy my mind while I slept. But the aches and pains I felt dismissed that idea.
“No,” I groaned, dropping back onto the bed. “I don’t know if I am okay. I think I know that guy.”
“You’re kidding me,” said the nurse, all amusement gone from his voice.
“I wish I were,” I replied. “Am I okay to get up?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. He looked a little wary at the idea of me getting up. Maybe he was afraid I was going to try to do something to the guy in the other bed. He didn’t have to worry about that but there was no way I could effectively communicate that to the nurse. “You better take it
easy. Nothing’s broken but your muscles are probably really sore and they won’t like the pressure. Plus your ankle is sprained. My guess is they’ll release you today but you didn’t hear that from me. The doc has to sign off on you first. Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry, anyway?”
“I’ve got to make some phone calls. Where are the things I came in with? I think I had a piece of paper with a phone number on it. I also want a phone and a phonebook.”
“There’s a phone right behind you on the nightstand. Also if you pull out the drawers your clothes and things should be folded in there. The top drawer should have a phonebook. Look, I got to go. I have to finish my rounds. Don’t tell anyone I told you who the guy next to you is. I don’t know why I did and I probably shouldn’t have.” I waved him off. He made one last mark on the clipboard and left.
I looked over at the sleeping man in the other bed. I was filled with a mixture of rage, disgust and pity for the man. Then I turned my attention to getting my things out of the drawers of the stand next to me. I riffled through my pockets until I found my wallet. Inside was the folded piece of paper with Katie’s name and number written in neat, feminine handwriting. I would call her, but not first.
The first call I placed was to my parents. After the initial shock of the news and the expected barrage of questions I was able to calm them down. They told me they were coming down as soon as they got off the phone. They promised they were driving separately so they could leave one of their cars for me to use. I told them I was fine with that as long as it wasn’t the Cadillac. I felt like a fraud driving that thing.
The next call was to Jan Fenstra at Spectra Data Processing. I opened the phone book, looked up the number and was shortly connected with her. I had explained to her basically what had happened, leaving out the part about the drunk driver being the same guy that had almost put tire tracks on me in front of her building the other day. She was very understanding and informed me that we could delay my first day if I wanted.
I told her that would probably be a good idea, but that I didn’t want to push it back more than a week. I wasn’t seriously injured but I was pretty shaken by the whole thing. She told me she understood and that she would schedule me to come in the following week on Wednesday. I told her that would be just fine with me.
My last call was meant for Katie. I hadn’t known her for long and didn’t want her to think I was a stalker but neither did I want her to think I was going to blow her off. She at least deserved a courtesy call. I looked at the paper she had written her name and number on. We had been in the bookstore, sitting in the café. I remembered that much. I remembered every detail of her. But I didn’t remember what I was doing in the store. I figured I probably wasn’t shopping. I couldn’t afford new books. But I didn’t think it mattered, either. All that mattered was I had met her and we connected. I took a deep breath and dialed. The phone rang about five or six times I guess and then her voice mail picked up the call.
“Hi, this is Katie. Sorry I’m not answering the phone now. It probably means you’re not important.” There was a pause followed by cheerful laughter. “Just kidding,” she continued. “Go ahead and leave all the usual stuff at the beep.” The infamous beep did indeed follow and I did indeed leave all the usual stuff.
“Hey Katie, this is Steve, the guy you talked to at the bookstore. Just wanted to let you know I got into a bit of a car accident last night and I’m in the hospital so if I don’t get back to you for a few days I’m not ignoring you. Nothing serious for me, but a few other people got messed up. Okay, so, well I guess I’ll talk to you later. Bye.” I hung up the phone.
Now it was a waiting game. Mom and Dad were on their way with a car so I could get around. And some of the worst news I’d ever heard was also on its way so I could be brought to my knees.