THE JOHN DOE IN 418
CHAPTER ONE
418
I was alone. Asleep or awake, I do not know. Someone knows. But I do not. It was dark. When I looked out in the darkness I saw that it was only darkness. When I looked inward I could understand nothing but darkness. But I had no fear, nor sense of loss, and no sense that anything would change. And it was warm, but not too warm. And I did not feel any discomfort. But then it all changed.
I was alone. Asleep or awake I did not know. Someone knew, but I did not. When I looked out I saw only darkness. But it was cold and damp. Was I alive? I did not know. For I thought that this might be the afterlife for I felt I once lived.
Don't panic, I thought. Take it one step at a time until you have figured it all out. You don't know how you got here. You don't know whether you can get back where you came from, nor even if you would if you could. Are you in space? Yes. Are you on the ground? Yes.
It sure seemed I was lying on the ground. And besides feeling cold I felt the grass, and how the grass where I laid was warmer than the nearby grass which was covered with dew. I reached out and finding a blade of grass I tried to determine without being able to see it whether it had been cut, but I couldn't be sure. And yet, because it was not very long I believed it had been mowed [not recently but sometime within the last few weeks]. Then I fanned my arms out as if I was to make angels in the snow in Winter. It was not flat land I was on. I laid in what I believed was a ditch.
Maybe I could get out of here alive, I thought. But, I asked aloud, “Where am I?” and then realized I could hear my own voice, so I was not in a vacuum and I laid on the ground so I knew two directions at least—up and down. The other question that came to mind was most sobering—was I injured?
I didn't feel any pain anywhere. I put my hands on my face. There didn't seem to be any blood there was just a cold liquid like cold sweats. Then I held my hand before my eyes, but I could not see it. Was I blind? I sat up, felt of my legs and feet, my chest and stomach. I was evidently dressed and had all my limbs, nothing seemed to be broken, and I was in no pain. I didn't even have a headache nor an upset stomach. Therefore I believed everything was OK but possibly my sight. However as I stood up I found I could walk. So I explored the ditch and discovered which way it ran. And by so doing I reasoned the highway ran the same way.
Then it changed again and I was back in the warm comfortable darkness aware I had just been remembering a place and situation I had been in before already. There was a past! I had not always been like this. Alive or dead, I still did not know. But I was aware. So I opened my eyes.
And all I could see at first was a bright light. My eyes watered. So I closed them and then opened and closed them again to get used to the light. Then opening them another time I realized I was lying down looking up at a false ceiling in a well lighted, all white area. A hospital, I thought. But then I went back to the comfortable, warm dark place I had once been in.
How I had gotten there I was not sure, but I was glad I was not lying in the ditch any longer. But what it had to do with me being in the hospital I did not know. How long had it been since I was in that ditch? I did not recall, but it seemed quite a long time—perhaps years. Was I in a coma? Was that what a coma is like? Had I been in a coma that long? Why didn't I remember anything else? Was I in some unknowable danger, some unknown but knowable danger, some unknown danger that was knowable, some unfelt danger, or some unreasoned danger? I had so many many questions. But I began to wake up again.
“I am sorry,” I heard a young man say, as I felt pain in my heart. “But I don't love you. I—I love someone else. We are just good friends. I thought you understood that.”
All I could sense was a great sadness overpowering me and coming in waves as I cried, unable to stop, and embarrassed that I could not.
“You will be alright won't you? “ he asked.
I nodded I for I thought I would be, grateful for the compassion and obvious concern, but also fighting the tendency to hope he would change his mind as well as the temptation to tell him I was pregnant.
Then when I opened my eyes again there next to my bed on a chair in the well lighted, white, room sat a young woman I did not recognize dressed all in white. She did not notice me and with a tear in her eye she seemed to be playing with what looked like a friendship ring. However as I continued to watch I realized she was trying to get it off, for in the end she did just that. Then once removed, she put it in the pocket of her white smock, bowed her head and sighed a long loud sigh while I closed my eyes, retreating into the warm, comfortable, dark place I had been earlier, whether awake or asleep I do not know.
What had just happened? It had seemed to me I had broken up with a young man, but now I felt I was a man, how old I did not know, but I suspected I was not that young. But when I awakened that last time it became clear to me that the young woman had recently experienced a romantic breakup. Somehow I sensed that I had experienced her breakup just like she had—as if I had been her. Weird, I would have said aloud if I could have, but it did not concern me that I could not yet speak. To tell the truth I never gave it any thought until this very time.
Then suddenly I was back on the road in the cold, damp night with no stars. I realized I had no idea where the road came from nor where it was going. And, though it seemed so real [as real as had it been that I was actually there] but I knew it was only a memory. However at the time I remembered I had, I thought, no way to know whether there was indeed a future to look forward or a past I might want to reclaim.
And at that time in the past, I recalled sitting in my favorite bar, Wayne's Bar and Grill, with my favorite bartender, Jonathan, practicing making me a drink called a Black Russian. I could see Jonathan almost frantically mixing another one and laughed when I told him it had too much or not enough of one ingredient or another. He had no idea it was the first time I had ever drank a Black Russian and that there was no way I should, or could, know when, or if, he got it right. Like most drinks they tasted terrible. But so long as I found fault with them they were free, because he would let me drink his last attempt while he made the next, which I assume he hoped would be a perfect one.
There was only a native couple in Wayne's that night besides Jonathan and I, so he tried to get them to try one of his many concoctions. However they wisely begged off and I thought at the time they preferred cheap beer to free mixed drinks. But, as I now know, they were not unfamiliar with Black Russians at all and that is why they declined.
I had a happy feeling and laughed and joked not only with Jon but the native couple as well until at last I fell off my barstool. Picking myself up off the floor I laughed and told Jonathan I was going home. He all but begged me to stay but I stuck to my guns and walked [though staggered is a better word for it] out of the bar onto the city street.
Then, once again I opened my eyes to see the bright, white , room wherein I laid on my bed and looking around, saw no one. Then wondering if indeed it was a hospital I rolled my eyes back in my head and re-entered the warm comfort or the dark place once more.
This time I remembered a guy and a young boy in a pickup truck and telling me that was where they turned off, that it was best if I just stayed on the highway and I would get where I was going as soon as another car came along. They wished me luck and disappeared down a road perpendicular to the one I was on. Then I remembered stumbling in the dark and falling in the ditch and apparently passing out, only to wake up later and have no memory as to how I got there nor even who I was.
What a relief! I was afraid I had been hit by a car or something and had landed in the hospital awake or asleep, alive or dead I did not know. But at least I began to figure I was alive more strongly now than before. But was I in a coma? Just how does one determine such a thing?
Then it seemed I had been sitting at a kitchen table talking to an elderly lady.
“Grandma. I don't know what to do. I have to work with Irene. But Jereme broke it off with her. They were just friends, Grandma. But it broke her heart. And she's my best friend, Grandma. Was I wrong, Grandma? Jereme says he loves me. And, I-I... Well, I love him too, but...”
“But what?” the elderly lady said and set a cup of steaming hot coffee on the table in front of her grand-daughter I presumed.
“I don't trust men, Grandma.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really. Every man I've had a relationship with... Well, they all did me wrong. I know that's corny but it's the truth.”
“Yes it does sound corny, but it is not only true today it will continue to be true no matter who nor how many you meet. But if you love him, are you going to pass that up because of what someone else did in the past.”
“I am seriously thinking about it.”
“Then go ahead think about it. Just don't do it. I repeat, think about it, if you must, but don't do it or you'll regret it.”
“Okay Grandma, I won't , but what do I do about Irene. She's a great nurse. I would really feel bad if she quit on account of me and Jereme.”
“That's out of your hands. Don't worry about what you can't control. Do you think it would be any easier for her if you quit?”
“Oh, I'm not going to quit.”
“Well then, Donna, you are going to have to make the best of it.”
Once again I tried immediately to open my eyes and there was there a beautiful young woman with one green eye and one blue eye, watching me very carefully.
“You're awake,” she said clearly surprised.
“I am?” I asked, truly questioning it.
“Yes, you are,” she said, patting one lovely hand on my shoulder. “How do you feel.”
That was a simple question. “Fine,” I said.
“Good. Because quite frankly it always amazes me when my patients wake up right when I'm looking at them.”
I must have shown I was curious to find out what sort of dreams it was that I was having happen to me, because she asked me whether anything was wrong.
“Is your name Donna,” I asked shyly.
She was clearly surprised. “Why do you ask? Were you expecting someone named Donna to be here when you woke up?”
I tried unsuccessfully to nod.
“Well,” she said hesitantly. “My name is Donna, but, do you know me?”
“No,” is all I managed then drifted back into the dark, warm place.
Once there I began to remember again and felt proud of myself, but I didn't understand why. All I had done was wake up and talk to a nurse named Donna. What was there to be proud of? Then I realized it was because of what I remembered, the finding of the yellow line in the center of the road that dark night of the black out, or lapse in memory due to alcohol consumption. And, I remembered following that yellow line all the way to a little town, being increasingly assisted by increasing light as the overcast morning settled in upon me, alone there on the highway.
Then I drifted again feeling myself to be very distraught, even suicidal or homicidal one. Damn it I was pregnant. Is this what friends do to each other? How in the hell do I deal with that? Were my thoughts. Then I removed a bottle of medication from the medicine area, walked to another room quite rapidly, but very controlled so as not to attract suspicion. Now once bedside a patient that had been out of it for quite some time I prepared the needle. I swabbed his arm and... poked the needle into my own arm and not his that I might give myself the shot I had just prepared for him. Then I sat down in the chair next to his bed.
My God! I almost screamed in my mind. What had Irene just done? Then I struggled to wake up and when I opened my eyes Irene sat where she had the first time I had seen her. But was she sleeping or dead. I did not know. I fully intended then to yell but I was too weak and slipped back into the dark place, but what had she done by taking my shot? I confess that I was now troubled there in my place of darkness and rest.
Then I remembered walking into town there on that cold overcast day of the blackout. I remembered seeing the brown 1961 Ford, four door sedan start up and drive toward me, stop and its driver ask me whether I needed a ride. I remembered thinking he was going the wrong way. Then finding out he was headed for my hometown I decided to see, if indeed, it was a mistake to go back there one more time.
CHAPTER TWO
Awake
It turned out I was in Laipa, a nice, clean little farming community set in the beautiful harvest fields of Minnesota, the haying nearly done. But the ride I got back to my hometown was far from idyllic. I laugh now when I remember the young man who was a rocker not a farmer and the ride home more in the company of hell than the company of angels. The college kid had a stronger leaning towards fitting in with the fraternity crowd than the Laipan crowd. He was, though he didn't know it, quite ridiculous.
Then it changed, none too soon for my blood. I sat in the chair next to the John Doe in the hospital ward at South Metro Hospital where I worked. I had just taken a load of medication meant for Mr. Doe in an effort to go gently to sleep and never again wake up to the horrible nightmare I called life.
John Doe: I fought. I wrestled. I tried to move. I had to wake up. I had to save her. And it paid off, for as I became aware of my hospital room Irene was there asleep in the chair next to my bed, but my thrashing [my attempted thrashing really] was enough to catch the eye of a passing nurse whose presence was enough to allow me to drift off again, and it changed again.
I was just coming on duty and rushing toward my first charge when I noticed a coma patient attempting, it looked, to jump out of bed. Irene Stackley was seated, sleeping in the chair next to his bed. My God, I thought, Irene's really had it rough tonight. So, I checked the patient who settled down almost at the sight of me. And Irene seemed just to be sleeping on the job. But the patient didn't seem to stay settled down long at all. He stirred again.
John Doe: I was aware again and opened my eyes to see the nurse that had just come in. “Help her,” I would have shouted. “She's drugged herself...”
“No, no,” the nurse assured me. “She's just sleeping.”
I refused to settle down.
“Okay, I'll check her over. See? I am checking her out,” she said taking Irene's pulse. “She's just...” She could hardly find a pulse. “But you're not alright are you girl?” she said to Irene. Then she pressed my button and I again drifted off . And soon I was resting comfortably only to have it change one more time.
The sun shone bright as I sat out on the back porch listening to radio WBAR the local radio station in hopes of getting the local news and forecast.
“In other news, U. C. Poika was arrested again in connection with another streaking event on campus this week. Seeing that it was his eighth offense Judge Harry Poster ordered a psychological evaluation for...”
'Hey, that's the guy that gave me a ride home from Laipa, I thought. 'Amazing.' Then I thought again, ' He sure fits right in now, doesn't he?'
Another change in scene and I was hurrying to get dressed when my little boy came into my bedroom.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped. “Get ready for school.”
“But Mommy,” he pouted. “I am really sick. I got a bad headache, my back hurts and I'm sick in my stomach.”
I felt his forehead. It was hot. So I took his temperature—101.3°. “You are sick,” I said, and I put him back to bed as he said his sister was sick also and had in fact thrown up in the living room. So I went to her room and she was fast asleep, but covered with sweat. Her temperature was not as high as my son's but they were both quite ill. Then as I cleaned up after my daughter I talked my mom into caring for them this one day anyway. Needless to say I was late getting to work and since I had taken the liberty of being a few minutes late just because before, my supervisor was not at all happy.
Then to top it off, I had to help Irene who OD-ed on a patient's medication for some reason. And because we were short on help I wound up with most of Irene's patients. I mean, “Hello?” Where was Donna her best friend when she needed it? I just don't understand those two, chasing the same guy and him such a jerk. Is that any way to maintain a friendship? But hey. All things are fair in love and in war. Maybe Donna won and that's why Irene...?
“You're awake,” the nurse said to the patient Irene had stiffed of his medication.
“I didn't realize,” I said. “Is she—is she...?”
“She'll be fine,” the nurse said waving her hand at me. “Because of you.”
I was glad.
“You saved her life. And the life of her baby. One day she'll thank you for that herself. You'll see.”
“How are the kids doing?” I asked.
“What kids?” she asked.
“Yours.”
“How do you know I got kids?” she asked. “Does it show that much?”
“Oh, no, no. It's not that at all,” I said as I tried to slide myself up a little in the bed that I might take a closer look at her.
She adjusted my pillows a little bit to insure my comfort.
“What is it then? You got esp or something?”
“Not exactly,” I said searching for the proper words to say. “How can I say it? I guess it is fair to say I sort of hear people coming.”
“You hear my kids and I?”
“In a way. I heard the conversation. But it was like I was you taking care of them, getting ready and getting your mom to take care of them for the day again.”
“Aw!” she said wide-eyed. “You do have esp.”
I didn't know what to say.
“And here Irene was getting ready to do herself in because she's pregnant. I mean, 'Hello?' I've got two kids, a boy and a girl, with a little one on the way—and no husband. I'm too busy to commit suicide. It would have been so stupid for her to do that. And right next to her at the time is some guy with esp ready and willing to save her life. Wow,” she said.
“What are their names?”
“Whose names?”
“Your kids.”
“Chucky and Charley,” she said and smiled. “Actually Charles and Charlene. They're twins. Mama's little bundles, I like to think of them.”
I didn't find it funny for some reason.
“Seriously, I know they're not planned or anything but they are in no ways a mistake.”
“And Mama...”
I let her wonder what I would ask. But when I saw she was getting insecure and nervous I said, “Does Mama have a name?”
She smiled more of a smirk than a smile. “Sally,” she said.
“Read your books,” I said.
“My books?”
“The ones about d**k, and Jane, and Sally, and of course Spot.”
“Aw!' she said. “I love those books.” Then she was suddenly finished working over my bed. “Listen, you take care and I'll be back to check on you in a little while. But if you need anything in the meantime this is the button to push right here. Okay?”
So I laid back and rested awhile before I slept again. But this time I was unaware of the dark place. It was like a vision started the moment I closed my eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
It Hits the Fan
When I heard Irene had overdosed I was devastated, but the mere mention of the wellbeing of her unborn... My God, How could I have been so gullible. They were supposed to be just friends. He said he didn't know what had gotten into her. Well I did. She was perfectly within her rights to even demand that he marry her. Wasn't she?
Them words her “unborn child” wore a whole in the fabric of my love as big as a car breaching a dam. The blood all ran out of the one, the two of us had become, leaving only a zombie love. It seemed real in that it was ambulatory but it was void of life. I felt violated by their sex and couldn't believe he couldn't see that.
“Friends have sex all the time,” he said.
“Strangers too,” I said. “But not while you're...”
“Things happen,” he said unashamedly.
“Good-bye,” I said.
It still hurts. He was just a bull in a breeding pasture. It's nothing personal. Too bad you got pregnant. Take two of these and get a new boyfriend. It's all the same to me. I got someone to marry me. We're just friends. Lucky you. After all we could have been just strangers. To hell with you Mister. I'm out of here, she's still my best friend. I just don't quite know how to look her in the eye these days.
“Hello Irene,” I said. “Really feels like hell, don't it girl?”
“Please, Donna,” she surprised me. “Sit.”
I sat upon the foot of her hospital bed.
“He called me one night. It was about three AM. I could have turned him down. He was lonely and so was I. He never looked at me the way he did that night, before or after, and I never wanted him more.”
“Am I supposed to want to hear this? I know I don't need to.”
“No,” she insisted. Then she said something I can't understand, do not understand, something I won't understand. “He never seduced me Donna. I never seduced him. It just happened.”
“Both of you destroy my trust. And it just happens that way?” I said now aware I was crying. “My best friend and the guy I love cease to be and it was just an accident, just one of those things, an accident of loneliness. Sorry b***h, but that just don't cut it. Good-bye.”
“Donna. Don't go,” she begged as I walked on. Our friendship, the pals we had become blinked out of existence like a fireworks sparkler, just a bright light one minute and ashes the next.
And as the vision exited I saw the same beautiful young girl enter my room.
“Hello. Donna, isn't it?”
“You remember me? That is good,” she said. “anything else.”
“An alcoholic blackout,” I said.
“Is that all this is?”
“No. The blackout is quite old. But I think it's mine.”
“You remember it and it' yours,” she said.
“Is it?” I asked.
“You mean like your relationships of late? Zombies and burned out sparklers, where abouts a groom and a bridesmaid might have once been.”
“What?” she almost shouted. “How do you know about all of that?”
“I hear you coming.”
“What? Was I talking to myself?” she said obviously quite alarmed.
“No. But please let me explain,” I said calmly.
She sat down in the chair next to my bed.
“In the old days, when it was quiet in the woods, we could hear the blue jays cry and we would know somebody was coming. Then we would see the grouse take wing and hear the horses snort and voices in the distance. As time went on we were able to hear what they said. And many times they were talking about us, but for sometime they would talk over how to share some sort of news with us. The point is, we didn't hear anybody, just the ones that were coming. The point is, when the mind is uncluttered I hear people coming with my mind, then they come just like you did.”
“Well, that may or may not be true, but I don't think you should be trying to conjure up visions of others' lives right now, given your condition.”
“I'm not. It just comes to me. I would have to strain if I resisted it.”
“I'll let the doctor know.”
“And just who is the doctor?”
“Don't you know?” she asked.
“No. Should I?”
“Do you mean he hasn't been in to see you yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she said as she left.
“Let me talk to you,” I heard a male voice in the hallway say.
“Let me go! We've already talked. It's been said. And very well said I might add.”
“Donna,” the voice said. “Don't be... like that.”
Is it the young man? Oh, boy! I get to meet the young man, I was thinking as a young doctor entered my room, and I was surprised at how very young he looked indeed. He looked even younger than either Irene nor Donna. But, what concerned me most was the idea that perhaps the young man was my doctor.
“Hey,” he said. “How are we doing today?”
“Keeping me entertained anyway,” I said.
“Entertained?” he said. “Oh, that? Me and Donna? I suppose you were entertained.”
“Oh, it is more than that,” I said. “Doctor? Mind if I come right to the point?”
He seemed surprised as if aware of some impending danger. “By all means,” he said anyway.
“Are you my doctor?”
“Not exactly. I am a physician's assistant. I am sorry. I should have told you. My name is Jereme...”
“I know.”
“How did you know?”
“I heard you coming.”
“No one said my name while I was coming here. How could you hear my name?”
“Actually, Donna used it when she was talking to her grandmother...”
“Was Jane here in the hospital?”
“No. I heard them talking before they got to the hospital.”
“You're completely confusing me,” he said.
“Oh. I don't think you need a whole lot of help there,” I said judgmentally.
“Alright. What is going on here? You seem confused. But you know things you should not. What exactly is your problem?”
We stared at each other a moment.
“Alright,” I said. “Where should I start?”
He smirked, as a long sigh seemed to say, Just get started.
“I know things I should not and I think it is because I have a blank mind.”
He relaxed a bit but the smirk remained.
“I know for instance, Jereme, that you broke it off with Irene...”
“Irene tell you that?”
“No, Jereme, she did not. And, I also know she's pregnant. I know that for all practical purposes your marriage to Donna is off. And I know that you're the jerk that caused it all.”
He was angry I could tell, but he went about checking me over physically until I said, “Would you please stop. I don't have to let you do that. And I will not for long. I assure you.”
“Sir?” he asked , standing straightly and abruptly.
“As far as I am concerned, Physician's Assistant Jereme, you are fired.”
“You don't want me to examine you, Sir?”
“No, Jereme, you've got it wrong as usual: I won't allow you to examine me. Now either get a doctor I can trust to examine me or just leave me unexamined. I don't really care.”
“There is no need. I was pretty much done anyway. You're fine physically. But I do wish you would reconsider. This is going to cause quite a bit of difficulty for me.”
“There you go again, Jereme Baby. It all comes down to you. Doesn't it Jereme? Do us both a favor since you're done examining me. Leave.” Then as he turned and walked away I added, “And don't come back.” And even though my heart was pounding due to the excitement of the confrontation, I leaned back on my pillows and began to relax.
CHAPTER ONE
418
I was alone. Asleep or awake, I do not know. Someone knows. But I do not. It was dark. When I looked out in the darkness I saw that it was only darkness. When I looked inward I could understand nothing but darkness. But I had no fear, nor sense of loss, and no sense that anything would change. And it was warm, but not too warm. And I did not feel any discomfort. But then it all changed.
I was alone. Asleep or awake I did not know. Someone knew, but I did not. When I looked out I saw only darkness. But it was cold and damp. Was I alive? I did not know. For I thought that this might be the afterlife for I felt I once lived.
Don't panic, I thought. Take it one step at a time until you have figured it all out. You don't know how you got here. You don't know whether you can get back where you came from, nor even if you would if you could. Are you in space? Yes. Are you on the ground? Yes.
It sure seemed I was lying on the ground. And besides feeling cold I felt the grass, and how the grass where I laid was warmer than the nearby grass which was covered with dew. I reached out and finding a blade of grass I tried to determine without being able to see it whether it had been cut, but I couldn't be sure. And yet, because it was not very long I believed it had been mowed [not recently but sometime within the last few weeks]. Then I fanned my arms out as if I was to make angels in the snow in Winter. It was not flat land I was on. I laid in what I believed was a ditch.
Maybe I could get out of here alive, I thought. But, I asked aloud, “Where am I?” and then realized I could hear my own voice, so I was not in a vacuum and I laid on the ground so I knew two directions at least—up and down. The other question that came to mind was most sobering—was I injured?
I didn't feel any pain anywhere. I put my hands on my face. There didn't seem to be any blood there was just a cold liquid like cold sweats. Then I held my hand before my eyes, but I could not see it. Was I blind? I sat up, felt of my legs and feet, my chest and stomach. I was evidently dressed and had all my limbs, nothing seemed to be broken, and I was in no pain. I didn't even have a headache nor an upset stomach. Therefore I believed everything was OK but possibly my sight. However as I stood up I found I could walk. So I explored the ditch and discovered which way it ran. And by so doing I reasoned the highway ran the same way.
Then it changed again and I was back in the warm comfortable darkness aware I had just been remembering a place and situation I had been in before already. There was a past! I had not always been like this. Alive or dead, I still did not know. But I was aware. So I opened my eyes.
And all I could see at first was a bright light. My eyes watered. So I closed them and then opened and closed them again to get used to the light. Then opening them another time I realized I was lying down looking up at a false ceiling in a well lighted, all white area. A hospital, I thought. But then I went back to the comfortable, warm dark place I had once been in.
How I had gotten there I was not sure, but I was glad I was not lying in the ditch any longer. But what it had to do with me being in the hospital I did not know. How long had it been since I was in that ditch? I did not recall, but it seemed quite a long time—perhaps years. Was I in a coma? Was that what a coma is like? Had I been in a coma that long? Why didn't I remember anything else? Was I in some unknowable danger, some unknown but knowable danger, some unknown danger that was knowable, some unfelt danger, or some unreasoned danger? I had so many many questions. But I began to wake up again.
“I am sorry,” I heard a young man say, as I felt pain in my heart. “But I don't love you. I—I love someone else. We are just good friends. I thought you understood that.”
All I could sense was a great sadness overpowering me and coming in waves as I cried, unable to stop, and embarrassed that I could not.
“You will be alright won't you? “ he asked.
I nodded I for I thought I would be, grateful for the compassion and obvious concern, but also fighting the tendency to hope he would change his mind as well as the temptation to tell him I was pregnant.
Then when I opened my eyes again there next to my bed on a chair in the well lighted, white, room sat a young woman I did not recognize dressed all in white. She did not notice me and with a tear in her eye she seemed to be playing with what looked like a friendship ring. However as I continued to watch I realized she was trying to get it off, for in the end she did just that. Then once removed, she put it in the pocket of her white smock, bowed her head and sighed a long loud sigh while I closed my eyes, retreating into the warm, comfortable, dark place I had been earlier, whether awake or asleep I do not know.
What had just happened? It had seemed to me I had broken up with a young man, but now I felt I was a man, how old I did not know, but I suspected I was not that young. But when I awakened that last time it became clear to me that the young woman had recently experienced a romantic breakup. Somehow I sensed that I had experienced her breakup just like she had—as if I had been her. Weird, I would have said aloud if I could have, but it did not concern me that I could not yet speak. To tell the truth I never gave it any thought until this very time.
Then suddenly I was back on the road in the cold, damp night with no stars. I realized I had no idea where the road came from nor where it was going. And, though it seemed so real [as real as had it been that I was actually there] but I knew it was only a memory. However at the time I remembered I had, I thought, no way to know whether there was indeed a future to look forward or a past I might want to reclaim.
And at that time in the past, I recalled sitting in my favorite bar, Wayne's Bar and Grill, with my favorite bartender, Jonathan, practicing making me a drink called a Black Russian. I could see Jonathan almost frantically mixing another one and laughed when I told him it had too much or not enough of one ingredient or another. He had no idea it was the first time I had ever drank a Black Russian and that there was no way I should, or could, know when, or if, he got it right. Like most drinks they tasted terrible. But so long as I found fault with them they were free, because he would let me drink his last attempt while he made the next, which I assume he hoped would be a perfect one.
There was only a native couple in Wayne's that night besides Jonathan and I, so he tried to get them to try one of his many concoctions. However they wisely begged off and I thought at the time they preferred cheap beer to free mixed drinks. But, as I now know, they were not unfamiliar with Black Russians at all and that is why they declined.
I had a happy feeling and laughed and joked not only with Jon but the native couple as well until at last I fell off my barstool. Picking myself up off the floor I laughed and told Jonathan I was going home. He all but begged me to stay but I stuck to my guns and walked [though staggered is a better word for it] out of the bar onto the city street.
Then, once again I opened my eyes to see the bright, white , room wherein I laid on my bed and looking around, saw no one. Then wondering if indeed it was a hospital I rolled my eyes back in my head and re-entered the warm comfort or the dark place once more.
This time I remembered a guy and a young boy in a pickup truck and telling me that was where they turned off, that it was best if I just stayed on the highway and I would get where I was going as soon as another car came along. They wished me luck and disappeared down a road perpendicular to the one I was on. Then I remembered stumbling in the dark and falling in the ditch and apparently passing out, only to wake up later and have no memory as to how I got there nor even who I was.
What a relief! I was afraid I had been hit by a car or something and had landed in the hospital awake or asleep, alive or dead I did not know. But at least I began to figure I was alive more strongly now than before. But was I in a coma? Just how does one determine such a thing?
Then it seemed I had been sitting at a kitchen table talking to an elderly lady.
“Grandma. I don't know what to do. I have to work with Irene. But Jereme broke it off with her. They were just friends, Grandma. But it broke her heart. And she's my best friend, Grandma. Was I wrong, Grandma? Jereme says he loves me. And, I-I... Well, I love him too, but...”
“But what?” the elderly lady said and set a cup of steaming hot coffee on the table in front of her grand-daughter I presumed.
“I don't trust men, Grandma.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really. Every man I've had a relationship with... Well, they all did me wrong. I know that's corny but it's the truth.”
“Yes it does sound corny, but it is not only true today it will continue to be true no matter who nor how many you meet. But if you love him, are you going to pass that up because of what someone else did in the past.”
“I am seriously thinking about it.”
“Then go ahead think about it. Just don't do it. I repeat, think about it, if you must, but don't do it or you'll regret it.”
“Okay Grandma, I won't , but what do I do about Irene. She's a great nurse. I would really feel bad if she quit on account of me and Jereme.”
“That's out of your hands. Don't worry about what you can't control. Do you think it would be any easier for her if you quit?”
“Oh, I'm not going to quit.”
“Well then, Donna, you are going to have to make the best of it.”
Once again I tried immediately to open my eyes and there was there a beautiful young woman with one green eye and one blue eye, watching me very carefully.
“You're awake,” she said clearly surprised.
“I am?” I asked, truly questioning it.
“Yes, you are,” she said, patting one lovely hand on my shoulder. “How do you feel.”
That was a simple question. “Fine,” I said.
“Good. Because quite frankly it always amazes me when my patients wake up right when I'm looking at them.”
I must have shown I was curious to find out what sort of dreams it was that I was having happen to me, because she asked me whether anything was wrong.
“Is your name Donna,” I asked shyly.
She was clearly surprised. “Why do you ask? Were you expecting someone named Donna to be here when you woke up?”
I tried unsuccessfully to nod.
“Well,” she said hesitantly. “My name is Donna, but, do you know me?”
“No,” is all I managed then drifted back into the dark, warm place.
Once there I began to remember again and felt proud of myself, but I didn't understand why. All I had done was wake up and talk to a nurse named Donna. What was there to be proud of? Then I realized it was because of what I remembered, the finding of the yellow line in the center of the road that dark night of the black out, or lapse in memory due to alcohol consumption. And, I remembered following that yellow line all the way to a little town, being increasingly assisted by increasing light as the overcast morning settled in upon me, alone there on the highway.
Then I drifted again feeling myself to be very distraught, even suicidal or homicidal one. Damn it I was pregnant. Is this what friends do to each other? How in the hell do I deal with that? Were my thoughts. Then I removed a bottle of medication from the medicine area, walked to another room quite rapidly, but very controlled so as not to attract suspicion. Now once bedside a patient that had been out of it for quite some time I prepared the needle. I swabbed his arm and... poked the needle into my own arm and not his that I might give myself the shot I had just prepared for him. Then I sat down in the chair next to his bed.
My God! I almost screamed in my mind. What had Irene just done? Then I struggled to wake up and when I opened my eyes Irene sat where she had the first time I had seen her. But was she sleeping or dead. I did not know. I fully intended then to yell but I was too weak and slipped back into the dark place, but what had she done by taking my shot? I confess that I was now troubled there in my place of darkness and rest.
Then I remembered walking into town there on that cold overcast day of the blackout. I remembered seeing the brown 1961 Ford, four door sedan start up and drive toward me, stop and its driver ask me whether I needed a ride. I remembered thinking he was going the wrong way. Then finding out he was headed for my hometown I decided to see, if indeed, it was a mistake to go back there one more time.
CHAPTER TWO
Awake
It turned out I was in Laipa, a nice, clean little farming community set in the beautiful harvest fields of Minnesota, the haying nearly done. But the ride I got back to my hometown was far from idyllic. I laugh now when I remember the young man who was a rocker not a farmer and the ride home more in the company of hell than the company of angels. The college kid had a stronger leaning towards fitting in with the fraternity crowd than the Laipan crowd. He was, though he didn't know it, quite ridiculous.
Then it changed, none too soon for my blood. I sat in the chair next to the John Doe in the hospital ward at South Metro Hospital where I worked. I had just taken a load of medication meant for Mr. Doe in an effort to go gently to sleep and never again wake up to the horrible nightmare I called life.
John Doe: I fought. I wrestled. I tried to move. I had to wake up. I had to save her. And it paid off, for as I became aware of my hospital room Irene was there asleep in the chair next to my bed, but my thrashing [my attempted thrashing really] was enough to catch the eye of a passing nurse whose presence was enough to allow me to drift off again, and it changed again.
I was just coming on duty and rushing toward my first charge when I noticed a coma patient attempting, it looked, to jump out of bed. Irene Stackley was seated, sleeping in the chair next to his bed. My God, I thought, Irene's really had it rough tonight. So, I checked the patient who settled down almost at the sight of me. And Irene seemed just to be sleeping on the job. But the patient didn't seem to stay settled down long at all. He stirred again.
John Doe: I was aware again and opened my eyes to see the nurse that had just come in. “Help her,” I would have shouted. “She's drugged herself...”
“No, no,” the nurse assured me. “She's just sleeping.”
I refused to settle down.
“Okay, I'll check her over. See? I am checking her out,” she said taking Irene's pulse. “She's just...” She could hardly find a pulse. “But you're not alright are you girl?” she said to Irene. Then she pressed my button and I again drifted off . And soon I was resting comfortably only to have it change one more time.
The sun shone bright as I sat out on the back porch listening to radio WBAR the local radio station in hopes of getting the local news and forecast.
“In other news, U. C. Poika was arrested again in connection with another streaking event on campus this week. Seeing that it was his eighth offense Judge Harry Poster ordered a psychological evaluation for...”
'Hey, that's the guy that gave me a ride home from Laipa, I thought. 'Amazing.' Then I thought again, ' He sure fits right in now, doesn't he?'
Another change in scene and I was hurrying to get dressed when my little boy came into my bedroom.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped. “Get ready for school.”
“But Mommy,” he pouted. “I am really sick. I got a bad headache, my back hurts and I'm sick in my stomach.”
I felt his forehead. It was hot. So I took his temperature—101.3°. “You are sick,” I said, and I put him back to bed as he said his sister was sick also and had in fact thrown up in the living room. So I went to her room and she was fast asleep, but covered with sweat. Her temperature was not as high as my son's but they were both quite ill. Then as I cleaned up after my daughter I talked my mom into caring for them this one day anyway. Needless to say I was late getting to work and since I had taken the liberty of being a few minutes late just because before, my supervisor was not at all happy.
Then to top it off, I had to help Irene who OD-ed on a patient's medication for some reason. And because we were short on help I wound up with most of Irene's patients. I mean, “Hello?” Where was Donna her best friend when she needed it? I just don't understand those two, chasing the same guy and him such a jerk. Is that any way to maintain a friendship? But hey. All things are fair in love and in war. Maybe Donna won and that's why Irene...?
“You're awake,” the nurse said to the patient Irene had stiffed of his medication.
“I didn't realize,” I said. “Is she—is she...?”
“She'll be fine,” the nurse said waving her hand at me. “Because of you.”
I was glad.
“You saved her life. And the life of her baby. One day she'll thank you for that herself. You'll see.”
“How are the kids doing?” I asked.
“What kids?” she asked.
“Yours.”
“How do you know I got kids?” she asked. “Does it show that much?”
“Oh, no, no. It's not that at all,” I said as I tried to slide myself up a little in the bed that I might take a closer look at her.
She adjusted my pillows a little bit to insure my comfort.
“What is it then? You got esp or something?”
“Not exactly,” I said searching for the proper words to say. “How can I say it? I guess it is fair to say I sort of hear people coming.”
“You hear my kids and I?”
“In a way. I heard the conversation. But it was like I was you taking care of them, getting ready and getting your mom to take care of them for the day again.”
“Aw!” she said wide-eyed. “You do have esp.”
I didn't know what to say.
“And here Irene was getting ready to do herself in because she's pregnant. I mean, 'Hello?' I've got two kids, a boy and a girl, with a little one on the way—and no husband. I'm too busy to commit suicide. It would have been so stupid for her to do that. And right next to her at the time is some guy with esp ready and willing to save her life. Wow,” she said.
“What are their names?”
“Whose names?”
“Your kids.”
“Chucky and Charley,” she said and smiled. “Actually Charles and Charlene. They're twins. Mama's little bundles, I like to think of them.”
I didn't find it funny for some reason.
“Seriously, I know they're not planned or anything but they are in no ways a mistake.”
“And Mama...”
I let her wonder what I would ask. But when I saw she was getting insecure and nervous I said, “Does Mama have a name?”
She smiled more of a smirk than a smile. “Sally,” she said.
“Read your books,” I said.
“My books?”
“The ones about d**k, and Jane, and Sally, and of course Spot.”
“Aw!' she said. “I love those books.” Then she was suddenly finished working over my bed. “Listen, you take care and I'll be back to check on you in a little while. But if you need anything in the meantime this is the button to push right here. Okay?”
So I laid back and rested awhile before I slept again. But this time I was unaware of the dark place. It was like a vision started the moment I closed my eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
It Hits the Fan
When I heard Irene had overdosed I was devastated, but the mere mention of the wellbeing of her unborn... My God, How could I have been so gullible. They were supposed to be just friends. He said he didn't know what had gotten into her. Well I did. She was perfectly within her rights to even demand that he marry her. Wasn't she?
Them words her “unborn child” wore a whole in the fabric of my love as big as a car breaching a dam. The blood all ran out of the one, the two of us had become, leaving only a zombie love. It seemed real in that it was ambulatory but it was void of life. I felt violated by their sex and couldn't believe he couldn't see that.
“Friends have sex all the time,” he said.
“Strangers too,” I said. “But not while you're...”
“Things happen,” he said unashamedly.
“Good-bye,” I said.
It still hurts. He was just a bull in a breeding pasture. It's nothing personal. Too bad you got pregnant. Take two of these and get a new boyfriend. It's all the same to me. I got someone to marry me. We're just friends. Lucky you. After all we could have been just strangers. To hell with you Mister. I'm out of here, she's still my best friend. I just don't quite know how to look her in the eye these days.
“Hello Irene,” I said. “Really feels like hell, don't it girl?”
“Please, Donna,” she surprised me. “Sit.”
I sat upon the foot of her hospital bed.
“He called me one night. It was about three AM. I could have turned him down. He was lonely and so was I. He never looked at me the way he did that night, before or after, and I never wanted him more.”
“Am I supposed to want to hear this? I know I don't need to.”
“No,” she insisted. Then she said something I can't understand, do not understand, something I won't understand. “He never seduced me Donna. I never seduced him. It just happened.”
“Both of you destroy my trust. And it just happens that way?” I said now aware I was crying. “My best friend and the guy I love cease to be and it was just an accident, just one of those things, an accident of loneliness. Sorry b***h, but that just don't cut it. Good-bye.”
“Donna. Don't go,” she begged as I walked on. Our friendship, the pals we had become blinked out of existence like a fireworks sparkler, just a bright light one minute and ashes the next.
And as the vision exited I saw the same beautiful young girl enter my room.
“Hello. Donna, isn't it?”
“You remember me? That is good,” she said. “anything else.”
“An alcoholic blackout,” I said.
“Is that all this is?”
“No. The blackout is quite old. But I think it's mine.”
“You remember it and it' yours,” she said.
“Is it?” I asked.
“You mean like your relationships of late? Zombies and burned out sparklers, where abouts a groom and a bridesmaid might have once been.”
“What?” she almost shouted. “How do you know about all of that?”
“I hear you coming.”
“What? Was I talking to myself?” she said obviously quite alarmed.
“No. But please let me explain,” I said calmly.
She sat down in the chair next to my bed.
“In the old days, when it was quiet in the woods, we could hear the blue jays cry and we would know somebody was coming. Then we would see the grouse take wing and hear the horses snort and voices in the distance. As time went on we were able to hear what they said. And many times they were talking about us, but for sometime they would talk over how to share some sort of news with us. The point is, we didn't hear anybody, just the ones that were coming. The point is, when the mind is uncluttered I hear people coming with my mind, then they come just like you did.”
“Well, that may or may not be true, but I don't think you should be trying to conjure up visions of others' lives right now, given your condition.”
“I'm not. It just comes to me. I would have to strain if I resisted it.”
“I'll let the doctor know.”
“And just who is the doctor?”
“Don't you know?” she asked.
“No. Should I?”
“Do you mean he hasn't been in to see you yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Why am I not surprised?” she said as she left.
“Let me talk to you,” I heard a male voice in the hallway say.
“Let me go! We've already talked. It's been said. And very well said I might add.”
“Donna,” the voice said. “Don't be... like that.”
Is it the young man? Oh, boy! I get to meet the young man, I was thinking as a young doctor entered my room, and I was surprised at how very young he looked indeed. He looked even younger than either Irene nor Donna. But, what concerned me most was the idea that perhaps the young man was my doctor.
“Hey,” he said. “How are we doing today?”
“Keeping me entertained anyway,” I said.
“Entertained?” he said. “Oh, that? Me and Donna? I suppose you were entertained.”
“Oh, it is more than that,” I said. “Doctor? Mind if I come right to the point?”
He seemed surprised as if aware of some impending danger. “By all means,” he said anyway.
“Are you my doctor?”
“Not exactly. I am a physician's assistant. I am sorry. I should have told you. My name is Jereme...”
“I know.”
“How did you know?”
“I heard you coming.”
“No one said my name while I was coming here. How could you hear my name?”
“Actually, Donna used it when she was talking to her grandmother...”
“Was Jane here in the hospital?”
“No. I heard them talking before they got to the hospital.”
“You're completely confusing me,” he said.
“Oh. I don't think you need a whole lot of help there,” I said judgmentally.
“Alright. What is going on here? You seem confused. But you know things you should not. What exactly is your problem?”
We stared at each other a moment.
“Alright,” I said. “Where should I start?”
He smirked, as a long sigh seemed to say, Just get started.
“I know things I should not and I think it is because I have a blank mind.”
He relaxed a bit but the smirk remained.
“I know for instance, Jereme, that you broke it off with Irene...”
“Irene tell you that?”
“No, Jereme, she did not. And, I also know she's pregnant. I know that for all practical purposes your marriage to Donna is off. And I know that you're the jerk that caused it all.”
He was angry I could tell, but he went about checking me over physically until I said, “Would you please stop. I don't have to let you do that. And I will not for long. I assure you.”
“Sir?” he asked , standing straightly and abruptly.
“As far as I am concerned, Physician's Assistant Jereme, you are fired.”
“You don't want me to examine you, Sir?”
“No, Jereme, you've got it wrong as usual: I won't allow you to examine me. Now either get a doctor I can trust to examine me or just leave me unexamined. I don't really care.”
“There is no need. I was pretty much done anyway. You're fine physically. But I do wish you would reconsider. This is going to cause quite a bit of difficulty for me.”
“There you go again, Jereme Baby. It all comes down to you. Doesn't it Jereme? Do us both a favor since you're done examining me. Leave.” Then as he turned and walked away I added, “And don't come back.” And even though my heart was pounding due to the excitement of the confrontation, I leaned back on my pillows and began to relax.
