Accident

The perfect Saturday surrounded me, I felt it before I got up. The hollow “ting…ting…ting” sound of rain hitting the rain gutter put a smile on my face before my eyes opened and the air in my room was just a tad cooler for a late October morning than usual so I pull my 49er blanket up over face and hide my smile. “Still too early”, I mumble not having to look at the clock and escape back into my cave trying to reconnect with my last dream.

“The” Dream consisted of a mountain walk with an unknown woman, unknown only by face, everything else was burned into memory. The sun is high, the air is cool and the smell of pine washes over me like a green wave. We are holding hands, I can feel the pressure of her grip on my hand and the warmth of her skin. She is so gentle but I can’t look at her face because every time I do the dream ends or changes…she is my ideal. I look at the small dirt road that slices the forest in half for me and her and I am content, so I look at her face… …so I look at her face, my eyes blink and blink again.

“Ah Shit! I say into my covers and roll over, I had lost her again. I sit up, light a smoke and turn the television to the weather channel to see how long this beautiful day will remain beautiful. Much to my delight the rain wasn’t supposed to stop until Monday, perfect. I’m up, showered and shined in twenty minutes, giving me ample time to get to the Branham Lounge by the time it opens, I can tell today is going to be special, the perfect day to drink away with friends and try to get laid. I make the left at Branham Avenue and all I can think about is the warmth of the fire place, the sting of the vodka and the gamble that one of my earlier conquests will only be there if I can’t close with any varied new ones. I stop at the light at Almaden Expressway and can already see the familiar cars of the morning drinkers filling the parking lot. I light a cigarette as the light turns green. “Maybe I’ll have a two n’…” My thought of starting with a two and two, or a beer and a shot was interrupted with an eardrum exploding “POP!” followed by several smaller quieter ones…then dizziness and pain…extreme pain like nothing I’ve ever felt…then nothing. “I’m not drunk…I’m not drunk…I’m…” I say to no one, then nothing again. “Ah shit, look at his leg!” I hear an unrecognizable voice scream. “Don’t move him, I want to make sure it’ll stay together.” Her partner says. I try to see but I can’t open my eyes. “Let’s get the door off first and get a better look at it.” The first voice says. “Alright, bring it over…Sir…Sir, can you hear me?” A third voice says, or is it the same. “I’m not drunk…I’m not dru…” is all I can manage. “Sir, you’ve been in a car accident…can you hear me?” “Yea…why…screaming at…me?” I say and I hear and feel crumpled steel split…then nothing again. Electric white hot lightning PAIN wakes me from my mid-morning slumber and I scream as loud and as long as I can, but there is rain on my face and I am lying down in the street…what did the guy say to me, I rack my brain but all I remember is seeing the parking lot and lighting a cigarette…how did I end up here. I look to the right and see my car…I think…I see a white car with the same rims as mine, but it doesn’t look like my car…not now. Now it looks like something you’d see at a… “…AHHHHHHH FUCK! More white-hot pain shoots through my entire left side. “Sorry, I had to straighten out your leg, man.” A guy in orange pajamas says. “My…what…isn’t straight?” I say bewildered about being in the street and feeling pain and seeing my car’s left side pushed to the center of the steel mass. “WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ME…WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO ME!” My eyes well up and I begin to struggle with the realization of what just happened. More people come over, paramedics I think, to calm me down, but I cannot be calmed…I am bawling and just saying words…gibberish… “Car, rash, like, link, call…from, king, chris, wreck, blood, pain, help, shot, help…race, fringe, lane, car, kick, kill, pain, help, look, cake. I feel a pinch on my right arm and the world gets fuzzy. I rise with the gurney and I see the usual people from the bar out by the street with looks of blurry shock on their faces, I turn my head and look over my car to see a white sheet on the ground about one hundred feet past my car. “I’ve been in an accident?” I say to the paramedic. “Yes, you have…your pretty banged up so try not to move.” She says, she is very cute. “What did you give me?” I say. “Just something to calm you down.” “What did you give that? Other. Driver.” I slur and point to the sheet with my right hand. “Jim, let’s get him in the truck, he’s almost down.” She says to Jim in orange pajamas. “What…why can’t I feel my left life…side…leg?” I sleepily say…and then nothing…I am down.

My eyes open and all I see is white, but I am calm because so many mornings are spent waiting for my eyes to adjust and figure out where I am. Even the dull pain that fills my body is halfway normal due to almost 40 years of abusing it with sports and drinking. I begin to make out some of the objects in the room, everything is clean, white and sterile looking. “Jeez, who did I go home with last night?” I say to myself with half a smirk on my broken face. My attempt to sit up is stopped by plastic and Velcro straps around my wrists and chest. “What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?” I say as my eye’s clear and I realize I’m in a hospital. “Help…HELP…um, NURSE!” I scream. A young woman dressed again in white pokes her head in and smiles. “Doctor, he’s awake.” She says matter of factly, still with a smile on her face. I can smell the hospital smell now and I hate it as much as I ever have. “God, I hate hospitals.” I say out loud as the doctor walks in. “I know what you mean, but you get used to the smell after a couple years.” He says with a laugh. I try to smile, but I can’t. “Mr. Aparicio, did I say that right?” He asks. “Close enough.” I say, clearing my throat. “Have you figured out why you’re here or what happened?” He says with a quizzical look on his Asian face. “No, what nationality are you so I don’t tell you the wrong joke?” I ask trying to break the ice. “My name is Dr. Lee, I am Chinese American.” He answers. “Good, no Godzilla.” I say because I am high. He laughs a hearty laugh and I can see through my temporary Chinese eyes that he’s trying to figure out if I am racist or not. “Ok, on Saturday at 10 am you were involved in a traffic accident, you were hit by a minivan at the corner of Almaden Expressway and Branham Avenue. Do you remember that?” He says, he is a stereotypical Asian, short, bad haircut with eyes that can tell if you are lying or not. “No, I don’t…wait…I remember the cute paramedic and her partner Jim who straightened my, leg?” I say and look at my leg which is casted up to my ass with pins and wires all over the place. “How did I miss that?” I say to myself and not the doctor, but he answers anyway. “It’s probably the morphine.” He says and then continues his rundown of what happened. “The other driver ran the light and hit you square in the door…are you squeamish…do you want to hear the long version or the short version?” He asks. “Everything.” I say. “Ok, she hit you full force…your left leg took most of the damage being crushed between the door and the steering wheel and column. Fibula has four breaks; tibia has two breaks and your femur has two breaks…luckily, they were all clean breaks and not pulverized. You have twelve pins holding everything together. Your left ankle is broken along with your shoulder blade and collar bone and with a little plastic surgery the scar on your face can be fixed.” He finishes. “Scar?!” I reach up to touch my face to try to find this alleged scar only to feel bandages. We saved your eye, it should work fine once the bandages come off.” He says looking at the shock in half of my face. Then the world comes crashing down on me, I begin to cry, finally understanding the gravity of the situation. “It’s going to be fine, Chris, everything that happened can be fixed. Even though it seems bad now, in time you’ll realize that you made it out of the accident pretty well.” He says trying to calm me down. “Why am I tied down?” I snap back to reality. “The nurse caught you last night sitting up in bed getting ready to try to stand…that would have hurt, so we had to restrain you.” He says. “I don’t remember that, can you let me go now?” I say. “Yes, I’ll have the nurse come in and do that now, in the meantime here’s the remote.” He says and puts the remote in my hand, then leaves.

I can tell by the light through the window it’s late morning so I try to push back all this new weird information taking parts and pieces a little at a time to better process it. It’s week six of the NFL and even though the San Francisco Forty-niner’s suck again this year, I still like to watch the game. The nurse comes in, releases me and adjusts my bed, her left breast touches my stomach twice as she does it and I wonder if she meant to do it. So fresh, so clean, so firm women are in their early twenty’s. “Are you my morning nurse?” I ask, forgetting about the left side of my face. “Yes, my name is Glory, if you need anything, just ring my bell,” She says and points to a buzzer looking thing on the bed remote. “But promise me you won’t try to stand.” And she gives me a serious face. “Ok, no standing…Hey Gloria, what channel is football on?” I ask. “It’s just Glory and there’s no football on Tuesday’s.” She says with a laugh. “TUESDAY…it’s SUNDAY!” I yell. She quickly walks out of the room and returns with Dr. Lee. “What’s the problem, Chris?” I thought it was Sunday. “Oh, shoot. Ok, your accident was on Saturday, you were out Saturday and Sunday, you tried to get up and walk Monday night which brings us to this morning…ok?” He says, his voice is practiced reassurance incarnate. “Has anyone been here to see me?” I ask astounded that nobody has missed me in four days. “The only number on your insurance is your mom and all we get is the answering machine.” He says. “Aw, shit.” I say forgetting that she was on vacation, so I give him my brother’s number and ask him to call. “Of course…um…you have had friends come by, but without your consent we can’t let them in.” He says. “It’s ok, you can let them in, and I have no problems.” I say curious to see who would show up. Then I remember the sheet beyond my car and my asinine question. “Um, Doc?” I say. “What happened to the other driver?” I feel like I’m asking him about his sex life. “It was a woman.” He says and begins to walk out. “Is that all you can tell me?” I ask. “Why don’t you concentrate on getting better, you’ll have family and friends here soon, I’m sure.” He says. “I need to know.” I say sheepishly. “She was a divorced mother of two, she broke her neck when she was ejected out the front windshield.” She fought for a while but died this morning.” He says with no emotion, at least now I know why he paused in front of every sentence. “Oh. No.” I well up again and begin to have another emotional attack. “The kids are with their father and they were wearing their seatbelts and survived the crash, they are ok.” He says seeing me begin to panic again. “Why didn’t she see me?” I say with my lip quivering. “We don’t know, she just didn’t, it’s not your fault…remember that, Chris.” He says displaying his perfect bedside manner.

Both he and Glory leave, Glory gives a glance before she leaves the sight of the open door and now, I don’t want to see anybody, I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to do anything all I can see is the sheet beyond my ruined car lying on the wet asphalt, so very alone. I can smell the antiseptic smell of the hospital and it reminds me that I hate hospitals.

Pain…dull and far away, almost like a dream of pain experienced in my childhood creeps around my subconscious, waiting for me to wake up so it can sink its teeth into me again. I fight it off with the help of my “magic” button that doles out my morphine like an inappropriate Santa Claus. Sadly, I can’t push it when I’m asleep so the pain shakes me awake the first chance it gets. I lift my right hand to wipe away its first attack and am shocked to feel the bandages still on half my face, I am not getting used to this. I immediately see the cold aura of the room that turns from dull to bright white. I smell the same smell wishing it smelled of my soap and cigarettes like I used to. These forgotten smells are like a drug to me and I begin to go thru withdrawals. The only saving part of this room is Glory’s subtle herbal essence that floats about the room waiting for her to come back, it puts me at ease for the moment so I click on the television, curious to see if I missed anything momentous.

Choices are limited in the hospital so I choose the hunting channel above any of the daytime talk shows, not wanting to see the flotsam and jetsam that parade across those stages. I close my eyes and listen to the 2 hunters hunting and realize that I just picked the lesser of two evils. They are whispering about shot placement and how to keep your scent away from the animals to the cameraman. They banter back and forth about the upcoming kill and the thrill it gives them to stalk and kill another animal, the joy it gives them when they are successful and I remember Dad explaining to me when I was young the same exact thing because I was the pseudo cameraman back then when I used to hunt…then a loud “pop!” and I open my eyes to see the stag jump straight up then stagers left as his heart gives out. It rolls down the hill and I know it’s a good shot, because they didn’t damage the rack, contaminate the meat and the beast didn’t run too far after it was shot.

“That was a good kill.” The first hunter says with a smile on his face. I feel like I used to when I used to hunt with Dad, eager for the meat but no sense of joy, exhilaration or accomplishment. I sit in my bed and turn the television off. I think of the white sheet beyond my car and wonder if that was a “good kill” …quick, clean and no mess. I think about her last moments on this planet.

She was trying to get out of the house early because of the rain, fighting her kids because, like me, they loved the rain and just wanted to get outside. She is early because she is a good mother but her seatbelt is off because of the rush to get the kids to school took all of her wits. But nevertheless, she has time to stop by Starbucks drive thru and get her capa, frapa, whatever that gets her thru the morning. She has to put her coffee on the floor, trying to balance it between the two ridges of the car frame because the youngest broke the cup holder the day before roughhousing in the front seat. Her Bluetooth earpiece for her phone is in the junk drawer at the house. She threw it there because she didn’t like the feel of something in her ear all the time. She does all this while going over the argument she had with her ex about alimony that morning. Time is getting short and the “kid” channel on her satellite radio is driving her batty, she reaches down to get her coffee as a tear escapes her…and that is it, that’s when she hits me.

My right eye wells up and my right hand slams the bed as I begin to cry again. “It was a perfect day.” I cry. “Why didn’t she see me?” I scream at the clean white wall. I slump and curse every god there is. “What the Fuck!” I scream again, which brings Glory into the room. I am embarrassed about my tears and how I’m acting, so I look out the window and into the midmorning daylight hiding my broken face. “Hey, what’s going on here?” She says with compassion. “I don’t want to be here anymore!” I say with conviction. She comes over, seeing my internal pain, and holds my hand. “It’s going to be ok, Mr. Aparicio. I immediately feel old. “Are you in pain? She asks. “Yes, I’m in pain! I scream at her. Unfazed by my outburst, she puts her hand behind my head, touching my bandage which infuriates me. “Do you need more pain killer?” She says calmly. “No…I need to see her kids so I can apologize! I say. “It wasn’t your fault.” She says soothingly. “What, did she hit a brick wall?” I say sarcastically crying. “Here, let me help you.” She is done with my shit and hits my “magic” button. I close my eyes and can smell her leave the room, she had done her job.

I am sent back to the meadow with the sweet-smelling loam almost inaudibly crunching under our feet. I cannot wipe the smile off my unbroken face as we walk, I know this trail well. I stop in the spot known as the umbrella. The streaks of light fall gently on her hair and make her glow. I hold her beautiful hands and can feel her hold me back, I push back her glowing golden hair and look into her eyes… …I blink and then blink again, and her face is gone, lost in my smudgy half sleep… “Aw, CRAP!” I scream. “Why can’t you let me have that one moment?” I say with my eyes closed. “Ah, Glory said you were a romantic.” The new nurse says. “What, what did she say?” I open my eye and look at my new nurse, who had walked in during my sentence. “She said you were a romantic, always talking about some perfect woman on some perfect day.” She says. “I never told her about…” I say. “No, you didn’t, but you sure talk about it in your sleep, I think she likes you.” She finishes. “Are you supposed to be telling me this?” I ask, intrigued. “No, but I’m too old to care about those rules.” She finishes. “Yep, she says you’re a hopeless romantic, but if you are, why do I get all the yelling and cursing, huh, not pretty enough?” She says mockingly. “You said that I said that in my sleep, and this is the first time I met you.” I say. “No, it’s not, I’ve been here every night, when you’re morphed out. I was here the night you tried to escape.” She says. “Well then, hello, my name is” I begin to say. “I know your name, Christopher, and you owe me an apology.” She says. “What? Why, for not wanting you?” I say. “No, for trying to beat me up.” She says. “I didn’t try to.” “Yes, you did, the night you tried to leave.” She says, but she is not shocked at my memory loss, she has seen it before. “I. Am. So. Sorry.” and parts of my memory grow back and I can see shadows of a broken person struggling to stand up, pulling his IV’s out and striking a woman with drunken fervor. My eyes well up finally remembering my escape attempt and assault, I am embarrassed and begin to weep. “Hey! I know it wasn’t you, it didn’t even hurt.” She says stopping me. “Hell, if I knew were going to be all weepy, I wouldn’t have said anything.” She says and smiles. “My name is Georgia, nice to finally meet you.” She says. I smell her mouthwash and hairspray and can tell that she was a very beautiful young woman at one time. And even though she wasn’t young anymore, she still had that beauty resting across her face and body. “Nice to meet you.” I say and wipe my face.