Roll Me Away: A Smokey's Roadhouse Novel (12 page)

I knew he was right, but God help me, I couldn’t accept it.

I
hadn’t seen
Zach in a couple of weeks, and Rose hadn’t heard from him either. We both worried, but at least I had the distraction of my new job to keep me functioning. I’d been hired as an assistant patient accounts services manager.

Before I could perform my assigned duties, I had to train in each of the jobs done by the people I’d be supervising. The first week of my job was spent in the training sessions given new registrars.

Seeing it from the side of the people who did the work was enlightening. I knew all about the reasons for the careful documentation of who’d referred the patient, what their insurance was, the exact procedures they were there for, and the rest. Dealing directly with the patients or their families during the second week, I wished every day that I’d had more classes in how to serve distraught or hurting people.

It didn’t take long for me to learn which of the new registrars would burn out and quit within their first few months, and which had the coping skills to withstand anger misdirected at them. I’d have been among the first group, frankly. I could deal with it for a week, though. Watching my co-workers talk down the hysterical patients taught me a lesson I might not have been able to learn in a classroom environment. By the end of the second week, I was looking forward to training in the billing department.

Signs of the coming holiday season began to show up around mid-October. Cubicles decorated with Halloween themes, and employees who didn’t deal directly with the public coming to work with purple or green or orange hair. Management was fine with it, as long as it didn’t impact patient care. And it did lighten the atmosphere in the hospital. I was thoroughly enjoying my new job.

Then I got a phone call that no one ever wants to get.

C
arl’s voice
on the phone startled me. I’d answered while walking from my office toward the training room, where I’d started learning the hospital’s billing system two days ago. For a moment, I couldn’t place why I even knew the voice since I’d never heard it on the phone before. The disconnect between my brain and the call made me miss the first few words.

“…no insurance. Will your hospital take him? He’s on the way by ambulance.”

“Wait, what? Carl? Is that you? What are you saying?”

“Cricket, there’s no time! Zach’s been hurt. He has no insurance.”

I almost dropped the phone. With difficulty, I focused on remaining standing as I asked with my throat so tight I had to squeeze out the words. “How badly hurt is he?”

“I don’t know yet. Got a call from his mom. They’re bringing him in from Smokey’s, and wanted to know which hospital would take him without insurance. I’m trying to find out where they should send him.”

My training took over even as my whole body went numb. “To the nearest one, always, in an emergency. That’s us. We’re closest to I-80 coming from the west. We’ll deal with the finances later.”

“Thanks, Cricket. I’ll get Rose there in a few.”

Paralyzed with indecision, I stood in the hallway as people passed and turned to stare at me. One of them was my direct supervisor, and she stopped.

“Cricket, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What is it?”

“My, uh. There’s been an accident. I have to go.”

Her tone sharpened, as did her gaze. “Family?”

“Not exactly.”

“You won’t be able to see … him? A boyfriend?”

“His mom, my landlady, needs me. Please. I have to go.”

Her expression softened. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you? You know you don’t have any personal leave time yet, right? Will you be able to come in to make up the time on Saturday?”

I stared at her. How was I supposed to know that? And what difference would it make if Zach… No, I couldn’t think about that. “Yes.”

“Okay, go then. I’ll sign you out for the rest of the day. Keep me in the loop.”

With a vacant nod, I looked around. Where exactly was I? Were the elevators behind me or ahead? She put out one hand and grasped my arm, giving it a shake. “Elevators are this way. Come on, I’ll walk you.”

She kept her hand around my arm to guide me as we made our way back to the bank of elevators. She pushed the button and waited for the car to arrive. She urged me to walk into it, pushed the button for the ER floor, and then stepped out. “Good luck, honey. Hope he’s okay.”

I
spotted
Rose as soon as I stepped out of the elevator. She looked lost. Her devastation served to shake me out of my daze, and I went to her right away. I was going to hug her anyway, but she threw herself into my arms before I was ready, and it took a second to regain my balance and steady her.

“My baby!” she wailed.

From somewhere, I found the strength. “Rose, settle down. We don’t know anything, yet, do we? Did they tell you the extent of his injuries?”

“They said a car sideswiped him while he was riding a motorcycle. He was thrown off, into the bar ditch, and the bike landed almost on top of him.”

“Okay. He may have serious injuries, but if they had time to call around for the right hospital, chances are they aren’t life-threatening. When will they be here?”

“They were an hour out. It’s been …” She looked at her watch. “Forty-eight minutes.”

The precision almost made me laugh. Then I remembered hearing people say exactly what they’d been doing and what time it was when they heard about the 9-11 tragedy. It was a common trick of the mind, to register everything about a traumatic moment and be able to recall it.

“They should be here any minute then. Why don’t we sit down and try to be calm until he gets here. He won’t want to see you so worried, Rose. Pull it together, for him.”

My inane reasoning must have made sense to her, because she made a visible effort to calm herself, though tears lingered in her eyes. “All right. Can you stay with me? You don’t have to work?”

“I have the day off.” It seemed easier than explaining my own breakdown upstairs. Rose didn’t know there was anything between her son and me other than friendship. Now wasn’t the time to reveal it. It was beginning to dawn on me that my job could be in jeopardy if I showed too much personal interest in an outlaw biker. On the other hand, I couldn’t think about the job for worrying about Zach. How broken was he?

F
unny
, how seconds can change your life. I sensed it even as it happened, even as time slowed almost to a stop. The car looming in my rear-view. The instantaneous acceleration as it connected with the back of my bike, sending me on a trajectory I couldn’t control. Even that was agonizingly slow while my brain, racing with adrenaline, registered each consequence. Flying off the bike, still in slow motion. Tumbling through the air to crunch sickeningly against the hard ground. Seeing the bike floating toward me, but helpless to get out of the way. And then blackness.

I woke up disoriented, but understanding movement. Tried to sit up, only to have hands push me back down. “Stay calm, buddy. You need to let us take care of you. Don’t move.”

The voice was strange, and in a moment, I forced my eyes open. Until then, I didn’t know they weren’t, and the darkness sent terror spiking through my veins. As soon as light seeped in, I relaxed. Not blind, then. Or not totally. Everything was blurry. The light hurt. I closed my eyes again.

“That’s it, buddy. Help us help you. You’ve been in an accident…”

No shit.
I missed the rest of what he was saying. Tried to ask, but something blocked my throat.

“Settle down, dude. You can’t talk. We’ll be at the hospital in a few minutes, and the docs will fix you up. Meanwhile, just let go. Try to relax.”

That’s when the pain introduced itself. Everything hurt. My head. My chest. My arms. But not my legs. Oh, my God! My legs…

Everything went away again.

T
he next time
I woke up, everything was white, except for some silvery equipment above me. Beeps and swooshing sounds were prominent, along with muffled speech I couldn’t understand. The pain was gone, but I still couldn’t speak, or move. The beeps sped up, and suddenly there were people in my vision. They looked funny.

“Mr. Hayes, glad to see you back. I’m Doctor Wang. Yes, I know it’s funny, but try to remain calm. You will blink once for yes and twice for no, please. Do you remember what happened to you?”

One blink. Then two.

“You remember some, but not all?”

One blink.

“Very good! You have some serious injuries, but we think you’re going to make a full recovery. You were intubated in the ambulance because your airway was compromised. That’s why you can’t talk. Do you understand?”

One blink.

“Good. We’ll go over your injuries in detail later, but first we need to stabilize your blood pressure. Did you have high blood pressure before?”

I couldn’t blink for that. He hadn’t given me a code for ‘I don’t know.’

“Mr. Hayes, did you understand the question?”

One blink.

“Does your lack of a response mean you don’t know?”

Good guess, Sherlock
. One blink. In the midst of this painfully slow interrogation, it occurred to me that my ability to reason and be sarcastic was a good sign. At least I had an intact brain.
Don’t think about your legs.

The beeps sped up again.

“Mr. Hayes, please stop worrying. Do you hear your monitors?”

Monitors. The beeps? One blink.

“When the signal speeds up, it means your heart is beating faster than we want it to. You’re on very strong pain medication, so I don’t think you’re in pain. Are you?”

Two blinks.

“Good. That means, however, that you are thinking about your accident, or worrying about your injuries. I want to assure you that they are not life-threatening. Does that help?”

One blink. Then two.

I had to hand it to Wang for his patience. He did his best to interpret my yes-no answers, and he did a pretty good job.

“You are worried about specific injuries?”

One blink.

“All right. I’m not ready to catalog them for you, but let me take a guess. Are you worried about your legs, back or head?”

One blink.

“Your legs?

One blink.

“You’ve suffered a spinal cord injury. We don’t yet know the extent of it. As soon as we can get your blood pressure stabilized and get a slot, we’ll do an MRI. Can you calm yourself until we know more?”

Could I? I needed the ‘I don’t know’ code again. Or maybe one that meant ‘I’ll try’. The beeps sped up, and I made a conscious effort to slow them. I needed that MRI yesterday.

Wang was waiting for my answer. One blink, very slowly.

“Excellent. Keep being a model patient, Mr. Hayes, and we’ll try to have you good as new in no time. Now there are a few people who’d like to see you. Are you up to a visit from your mother?”

One blink.

“Excellent. She’ll be glad to see you awake.”

While I waited for Mom to come in, I puzzled over how long I’d been asleep, based on the doc’s last comment. I also wanted to see Cricket, and had no way of asking for her. Figuring that out would be a challenge.

Or not. Mom’s face swam into my vision from one side, and Cricket’s from the other. My eyes snapped to Cricket’s, and to my everlasting embarrassment, I felt tears on my face.

“Oh, Zach, thank God you’re going to be okay!” Cricket said. She gripped my hand. I blinked once, hoping the doc had clued them to the code.

“Are you kids…” Mom.

I swung my eyes toward her. One blink.

Her hands appeared and covered her mouth, while her eyes grew big and round. “Oh, my God! Oh, honey, I’m so glad. I love you.”

It wasn’t the way I’d have told either of them, if I’d had the chance to tell them first. As they reached across me to hold hands with their free ones, both of the women I loved now knew it. I’m not sure my mother wasn’t the happier of the two. I squeezed their hands, and they jumped back, squealing. “You can move your fingers!”

That’s when I knew I had a long road ahead of me, and not on a bike. The beeps went nuts.

A
s soon as
the monitors started the high-pitched whine, Dr. Wang rushed back in.

“What happened? Why did his blood pressure spike? Mr. Hayes, you must calm yourself.”

Rose and I looked on, and if her expression meant what it looked like, she was as bewildered as I was. A nurse bustled in and shooed us out of the room.

After a several long minutes, Dr. Wang came out. His voice was an octave lower as he gestured for us to sit. Rose gripped my hand when he started to speak.

“We are trying to stabilize Mr. Hayes’ blood pressure so we can get an MRI to determine the extent of his spinal cord injury. He is worried about his legs. I would guess, more specifically, he is worried he may not have the use of them when he is as fully recovered as he will be. We honestly cannot tell him that he will, without the MRI. Therefore, we cannot allow anything to interfere with his progress with regard to his blood pressure. Can you tell me what happened immediately before it sparked?”

Rose shook her head. A frown creased her forehead, and her eyes held deep despair. “Do you mean he could be paralyzed?”

“We do not like to speculate at this time.”

I was thinking hard. He’d somehow conveyed to his mom that we had a special connection, and she’d been so happy, which made me happy. We reached across him and grasped hands. Then he squeezed ours – that was it! We’d expressed joy that he could move his fingers. He must have thought we knew something he didn’t, and it was bad. I blurted it all out to Dr. Wang.

“Yes, that could be it. Let me go back in and assure him that nothing is known yet, one way or the other. I thought I had made him understand that.”

Rose hadn’t said much since Zach was brought in. I supposed she was as overwhelmed by his body being almost completely mummy-wrapped as I was. It was agonizing waiting for the full report for us – what must it have been like for him? I squeezed Rose’s hand.

“He’s going to be okay. He has to be.”

“Cricket, do you love him?”

“Yes, ma’am. I believe I do.”

“Then he’ll be okay. Thank you so much for loving my son.”

I smiled. “Thank you for approving. You know we’ve got a rough road ahead and not only because of his injuries. Right? I mean, it may not work out.”

“It will,” she answered. “I know it will.”

I wished I could have been so confident.

C
arl came
in around lunchtime and persuaded us to go to the hospital cafeteria. I’d been eating lunch there once a week and knew the food was surprisingly good. Much better than all the jokes about hospital food would have made me expect. Of course, those jokes were about the patients’ food, so maybe that was just as bad here. I’d know soon enough, because I intended to be at Zach’s side, feeding him if necessary, when his tube came out.

Rose wasted no time in filling Carl in. “Honey, did you know Zach and Cricket were in love?”

He turned a baleful look on me. “No. Not exactly.”

“What does that mean? Oh, never mind. There’s other good news. He can move his fingers! He squeezed my hand!”

Carl continued to stare at me as Rose chattered. I had a feeling he’d have something to say to me, but didn’t want to say it in front of Rose. She’d made it clear she was delighted with the news. Carl made it just as clear he wasn’t. I couldn’t help but wonder what he had against me. He’d always been nice before.

Back on the ICU floor, we discovered Zach had been cleared for his MRI and was there now. Rose paced and wrung her hands. I watched her helplessly. Nothing I could say would help because I was just as worried.

I didn’t want to borrow trouble, but I couldn’t help but wonder how he would take it if he had lost the use of his legs. Not well, I had no doubt. How would he ride a bike without his legs? His club was his life, and it meant riding. Without meaning to, I began to mourn his loss before we even knew it was true.

Carl stepped off the elevator not far from the open waiting room where Rose and I were camped. She went to him, and he comforted her for a minute. Then he said something that made her look at me, a slight frown on her face. My heart sank.
Please don’t turn her against me! We need each other.
I stood to face whatever he had to say.

Surprisingly, he didn’t want to talk right there. “Walk with me,” he said.

“But…”

“It won’t take long.”

I followed him down the hall, and as soon as we were out of sight of the waiting room, he turned to me with purpose.

“I told Zach before that you were no good for him, and he was no good for you. I don’t know if thinking about you somehow contributed to his accident, but if it did, you’re no longer welcome in our home. My wife loves her boy more than anything. More than she loves me, for sure. And I love her the same way she loves him. You hurt her, or you hurt him, and I’ll break you with my bare hands. If you’re going to hang around, make sure it’s for better or worse, you got me?”

Stunned by the vehemence in his words, all I could do was nod. I certainly understood the threat. What I didn’t know was whether I’d be strong enough for Zach if…

With my heart breaking, I knew I’d have to decide today, right now, whether to stay to hear the news. Not only because Carl was serious in his threat, but because he was right. If I couldn’t love and support Zach no matter the cost to me, then I wasn’t worthy to be here. It would be better to disappoint him now than let him down later.

U
nable to concentrate
, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make any progress on my training at work, even if they weren’t almost done for the day. I didn’t want to take my agitated state into the waiting room with Rose, either. The hospital was a maze of newer wings pasted onto the original building, with all sorts of nooks and crannies, some of which had been turned into small ‘quiet’ rooms, or chapels. I stumbled into one of them after almost running away from Carl, and shut the door.

I was grateful for a place to sit and think without the hullabaloo of the ER or the busyness of the ICU, with medical staff hurrying here and there. The decision I made today would change the trajectory of my life. I didn’t want to make it the way I’d made the last one.

Things were better with my parents. They were still hurt, of course. After I’d let them know I was okay, but not where I was, they sent text after text begging me to come home. I couldn’t do it, though. They could have decided to accept my decisions and
me
just the way I was.

Instead, they judged me. I wasn’t ready to go home to them, but I was speaking to them. They were happy I’d landed a job and would be independent soon, even though they didn’t know where. But then, they didn’t know of my growing relationship with Zach.

If I left now, I knew I’d have to find my own place immediately. That might not be far enough to go. Rawlins wasn’t that large a town. It was likely I’d run into members of the club, Zach’s parents, even Zach.

However, if I left my new job with only two weeks of experience, I’d better decide on a different career. That’s if I could even land on my feet somewhere else. Denver wasn’t far off, but it was expensive to live there. I’d end up at the Y, probably working a low-paying job, rather than landing a good job with upward mobility like the one here.

But it wasn’t even about what I’d do if I didn’t have the support of Zach’s family. It was about what kind of person I was. What kind of woman would drop a boyfriend, even an undeclared one, at the first sign of trouble? I didn’t want to be that kind of person, but I also didn’t know what I could be in for. Would I be able to handle it? In fact, what was the worst-case scenario, and how would life with a paralysis patient be?

Scenes of unbearable horror raced through my mind. Caring for the intimate needs of someone who couldn’t get himself to the bathroom on his own, for example. I’d never even slept with Zach. Would that even be possible now? If it wasn’t, was I prepared for a lifetime of no sex? Because if I committed, it was for a lifetime. I didn’t believe in divorce. I’d seen it destroy too many of my friends. I knew I was lucky to be one of the few people I knew whose parents were still married and still in love. Zach’s certainly weren’t, though his mother’s second marriage seemed strong.

Only seemed, my subconscious insisted. Rose knew nothing of Carl’s side business. Would she still be with him if she did? Would she even still adore Zach as she did if she knew he was a felon? Which made me realize I did. What he’d done made no difference. I wished he hadn’t, assumed he’d do it again, and still loved him. Maybe Rose would be the same, if Carl’s criminal activities ever came to light.

But reflecting on Rose and Carl wasn’t getting me anywhere in my quest for clarity. I decided that educating myself about what I could be accepting, if I stayed for Zach, might help. I wandered back into the ICU, and spoke to the first nurse I saw. Did she know of someone I could talk to about living with a spinal cord injury patient?

She told me to wait, and she’d send someone to me. While I waited, I looked around for Rose, hoping not to see her, and worrying about why I didn’t. My counselor startled me by approaching from the opposite direction from where I was looking.

“Ms. Baxter? I’m Helen. I understand you have questions about a loved one’s condition?”

“Potential condition. We don’t know yet,” I corrected.

“Come with me, please. Let’s find some privacy.”

Helen was kind but direct. “Any degree of spinal cord injury is going to produce changes that impact both function and self-perception. If your man does have a complete or incomplete spinal cord injury, you, as his caregiver, will have to overcome fear, despair, and, in some cases, revulsion. The first question I ask of people who aren’t married to the patient is, how deep is your commitment to the relationship? The next is, what is your main area of concern?”

She paused, waiting for my answer to the questions, I assumed. I fought to verbalize my position. “That’s the problem. I care about him, but love is just recently entering the picture. I don’t know how deep my commitment is, much less his. If I have trouble adjusting to reality, will it hurt him? I don’t want to hurt him, especially if everything else he loves is taken from him.”

She fixed me with a steady regard. “Sympathy is no substitute for unconditional love. In the long run, sympathy wears thin. You’ll do more harm than good staying out of sympathy. Can you answer the second question?”

“Physical issues,” I answered promptly. “Two areas of concern. I’m aware that paralysis requires intimate care that would … embarrass … most people. The patient has to get used to it, but I would imagine it’s humiliating. How do spinal cord patients relate to their caregivers on an intimacy level, when the caregiver must essentially handle other issues like she would for a baby?”

“You’re talking about bathroom assistance,” she stated.

“Yes. But that’s not all. I’m young, and I have a healthy sexual appetite. I also want children. What about all that?”

She set aside the caregiving question for the moment to assure me that total inability to have sex or father children was rare, even though certain realities required compensation. “I can give you a pamphlet with more details if you get that far,” she said.

The information about bathroom assistance gave me pause. Dear God, could I handle that? As if she’d heard my thought, the counselor finished by bringing me back to the most important question.

“In the first hours and days after a spinal cord injury, a person’s self-image compels them to stand by their loved one. Then the days and weeks of healing, therapy and ongoing care begin to wear away the social veneer. You think right now that if you left him, your young man would be devastated and maybe wouldn’t even fight for his life.

“You’d be wrong in the majority of cases. A spinal cord injury focuses a person’s attention inward. Even with the best of attitudes, they are too busy finding a way to cope with the profound changes in their lives to even notice if a casual relationship ends.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“Believe it. You said it yourself. You don’t even know if you’re committed, much less if he is. Do this. Unless you can’t – unless your concern for him
drives
you to be with him – stay away until he asks for you. That distance will give you the clarity you need.”

I thanked her and returned to my first retreat. I wasn’t sure I could take that advice. Staying away would lead Rose and Carl to the conclusion I didn’t care and was leaving him. With a sigh, I went to wait with Rose.