Girl With a Past (12 page)

Carol and I found our bags and stumbled in
the opposite direction, out of the bushes, and onto the sidewalk
where we collapsed to our knees.

"You okay?” I asked. My heart raced pounding
in an effort to jump out of my chest.

"Fucker.” Carol sat down hard and pulled her
purse to her chest. “Fucking asshole.”

We stayed on the ground in the pool of light
from the streetlight, breathing hard for several minutes before
Carol started laughing hysterical hoots.

My chuckles were soon followed by me rolling
on the ground in hysterics. Tears and snot poured down my face; I
tried to catch my breath.

“You . . . guffaw . . . picked up . . . the
knife. I couldn’t believe it,” Carol snorted, then wiped her face.
“You hate knives.”

“I thought he was going to hit you,” I
managed to choke out.

Carol threw her arms around my shoulders.
“You do care, don’t you?”

She scrambled to her feet, picked up my bag,
handed it to me. “He didn’t even take the bag with him.”

The guys weren’t there when we finally got
back to my place. Carol stayed with me rather than walk to her
house alone.

The next afternoon, Ron called to apologize.
He said Dave had gotten them involved in some kind of bar brawl,
and they had spent the night in a hospital emergency room getting
patched up. None of the three of them had nerve enough to show up
at our house for weeks. By then any evidence of their excuses had
healed.

“Only those assholes could find a brawl in
the middle of the center for peace and love,” Carol said when I
relayed the apology.

I bit my tongue rather than remind her that
we managed to find a knife-wielding mugger midst the same
celebration.

18

Berkeley, Alta Bates Hospital, March 2008

The footsteps Steven heard in the hall
outside his sister’s hospital room didn’t sound like the crepe
soled shoes worn by the medicos. He watched the door open as a man
he had yet to meet entered the room.

“You must be Steven. I’m Detective Schmidt.”
He extended his hand to Steven.

“Detective Schmidt . . . Hello.” Steven got
up from the chair he’d pulled to his sister’s bedside and shook the
detective’s hand.

Steven checked his watch. Well after
midnight, and the detective was still working. “Thank you sir.”

The policeman nodded in response staring at
the girl whose color barely contrasted with the white bedding.

“Any word about––” Steven asked.

Steven was interrupted by a shake of the
detective’s head. Schmidt continued to stare at Al for several
minutes. Even though the detective was silent, the emotion on his
face and in his silence communicated his regret at not having
prevented her from being shot.

“Whadda they tell ya?” the detective
asked.

“Not a lot,” Steven answered.

19

Berkeley, Fall 1968

“Lexi, you’re late.” Jeff pounced on me
before I closed the entry door to our house. “Carol’s in Cowell
Hospital. I’ll drive you over.”

“Wha-at?” I dropped my bag of art supplies
and books.

“What happened?” I asked.
“I’ll explain in the car.” Keys in hand, he raced down the front
walk to the driveway.

“Is it bad?” I ran after him.

“Don’t know. She was conscious. That’s a
good sign.”

Better than the last time she was
hospitalized. It took days for her to come out of the coma when she
fell down the cliff.

I jumped into the passenger seat of Jeff’s
VW bug. “What happened?”

He looked over his shoulder, backed out of
the drive, shifted into second gear, and drove around the corner
towards the student hospital. “She got burned in some kind of
explosion.”

“Oh my God.” My beautiful friend Carol,
please don’t let her perfect face be burned. “Where?”

“I’m not certain, at her house maybe?”

Carol lived with two of our girl friends in
the second floor apartment in a brown shingle craftsman, on
Southside several blocks from the campus.

“When?”

“They called an hour ago. I know she’s
conscious because she had them call you. You aren’t listed as her
next of kin, or anything. Right?” Jeff smiled to show he was
teasing.

His effort barely registered. My mind raced
with what-ifs and horrible mental pictures of Carol scarred for
life. I took a deep breath trying to calm down.

Jeff scanned the small parking lot for a
space.

I hopped out. “See ya inside.”

I ran to the first door I saw. It was
locked. I ran around to the lobby entrance and across the worn
linoleum. At the curved reception desk, I shoved aside two other
students. “Where’s Carol Huntington?”

“Just a minute. Let me finish with the
people in front of you.” An overweight bitch with attitude, Carol
would’ve given her––oh God, Carol.

“Please, my friend’s been burned. The
hospital called an hour ago, I was in class––”

“Go ahead,” Both students stepped back
waving me in front of them.

“Thanks.” I looked the receptionist in the
eye. “Carol Huntington.”

The bitch stared at me without moving.

“Please, you don’t understand, she wouldn’t
have had them call me unless it was serious.”

Bitch ran her long red fingernail down a
clipboard and dialed a phone, “Carol Huntington?” She listened then
hung up the receiver.

“You can’t see her now.”

“What? Why not?” I wanted to reach across
the desk and throttle her. “Where is she?”

Jeff’s hand on my arm pulled me back from
the counter. He smiled at the bitch and asked, “What can you tell
us?”

She returned the smile. “The doctor’s with
her now. She’s been moved from the emergency area to the second
floor. You can wait in the lounge just outside the elevator.”

“Thank you.” Jeff continued to hold my upper
arm as he moved me to the elevator. “Calm down. You aren’t going to
be much help to her if you’re freaking out.”

I don’t usually freak out. In fact, I’m calm
in emergencies. I took several more deep breaths.

At the nurse’s station near the elevator, I
flashed a quick smile before I asked about Carol. “Do you know how
bad it is?”

All the smiles in the world weren’t going to
get me an answer to that question. I’d phrased the question all
wrong.

“The doctor is with her now. He’ll talk to
you if she wants him to do so.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“There was a gas explosion in her
apartment.”

“Her roommates?”

The nurse shook her head in a quiet way that
scared the hell out of me.

“Are they alright?”

“One person was transported to the burn unit
at UCSF.”

I sucked in my breath. Oh, this was bad.
UCSF, University of California in San Francisco, was the
university’s medical school and one of the best hospitals in the
state. It was better equipped than Cowell, the Cal student
hospital, to handle serious injuries.

It took a few seconds to realize it was a
good sign that Carol was still at Cowell. It meant she wasn’t that
seriously hurt.

Or it could mean she was hopeless.

I paced between the elevator and the vinyl
sofas in the waiting area and the nurse’s station. Jeff sat reading
a textbook he’d thought to bring with him, looking up to smile at
me periodically in a manner that I imagine was meant to be
reassuring.

Finally a white clad nurse walked from a
room down the hall to the nurse’s station. She asked something I
didn’t hear but I saw the seated nurse nod in my direction.

“Your friend, Carol, asked me to check for
you out here. Would you like to come with me?”

Carol sat on an examining table; her
forearms were wrapped in white gauze. The only marks on her face
were the tracks of tears, a few of which still flowed. She turned
up the corners of her mouth to smile at me, but it was a sad
smile.

A doctor scribbled on a prescription pad,
ripped off the top sheet, and looked at me briefly before handing
the paper to Carol.

“You’ll need to come in tomorrow to have
those bandages changed.” He nodded at her forearms. “That
prescription is for pain. Don’t mix it with anything else, no
alcohol . . . or anything else.”

He looked at the grin of relief on my face.
“You here to take her home?”

I nodded.

“I’d like to keep her here for observation.
But she refuses. Her burns aren’t life threatening, but I’d like
her watched for signs of shock. She’s had a traumatic experience.
She shouldn’t be alone.”

“She won’t be. What do I watch for?”

“Pallor, clammy skin, agitation, dizzy,
lightheadedness, confusion, shallow breathing. If she faints or has
any of those symptoms, get her in here immediately.”

I nodded my agreement, “Yes, of course.”

“She is going to have some pain. If she gets
too uncomfortable, bring her back so we can give her stronger pain
medications.”

Carol slid off the table. Cut open, the
singed sleeves of her sweater dangled over the white gauze. “Thank
you,” she said to the doctor and nurse.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said
to me.

She gave Jeff the same sad smile and
followed him to the car without a word. Once she was settled into
the passenger seat, and Jeff and I were in, Jeff closed his door
and she let out a loud, “FUCK!”

I waited for an explanation while Carol
sobbed incoherently. Jeff turned to gesture to me for instructions
as to where to go.

“Let’s go home,” I said thinking it best not
to take her back to the scene of whatever the hell had happened.
And God knows what condition her house might be in. I pointed to
the north. “To our house.”

Was this sobbing what the doctor meant by
agitation? Crying was not something I’d seen Carol do very often in
the twenty years we’d been close friends.

We walked her up the drive and steps and
into the living room. I made her a cup of tea, found a box of
tissues, and then Jeff excused himself to give us privacy. I sat
with my arm around her shoulders until the shaking subsided and the
convulsive breathes stopped.

I moved to the ottoman in front of her
chair. “What happened?”

“Karen and I came home at the same time.
When we walked into the apartment, we smelled gas. She went into
the kitchen.” Carol sighed and blew her nose. “I was just about to
say, let’s get out of here, when I heard her say the gas is on in
the oven, and then the sound of a match striking. And boom. I was
knocked onto my ass. And little patches of flames popped up
everywhere. In the curtains, on the sofa. Karen was on the kitchen
floor, unconscious.” This brought a fresh flood of tears.

“I . . . I slapped at flames on her clothes
. . . grabbed a kitchen towel and beat at spots of fire, but it
just kept spreading.” She sobbed a few more times.

“Karen’s hair, I got it to stop burning.
Smothered it with a towel.” She wiped her nose with the tissue.
“Then firemen grabbed her. And me. And then when we got outside,
they took Karen away in an ambulance. My ambulance was following
the ambulance to Cowell. I went inside, but they never brought her
in.”

“They took her to UCSF. That’s what the
nurse told me.” I explained.

Carol looked at me with relief.

“Oh, I was afraid they didn’t come in
because she was dead.” Carol sniffled.

Jeff came into the room. “I’ve been on the
phone with UCSF. Karen’s parents are there. She’s listed as
critical, but stable.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“She’s seriously hurt, but she should be
okay.”

The apartment was toast, but Karen was
eventually okay. She went home for a long recuperation and lots of
plastic surgery. Denise, the third roommate, moved in with her
boyfriend, and Carol moved in with us.

20

Berkeley, Alta Bates Hospital, March 2008

“Doctor, she’s been flailing around.” Steven
stood up from the chair he’d pulled up to his sister’s bed. He was
glad to see the doctor had finally arrived on his morning rounds.
“Do people in coma’s usually move around like that?”

The doctor glanced at Steven, but he didn’t
answer. Instead he walked to the bedside and lifted Al’s eyelids
one at a time, shining a flashlight into each eye. Without turning
to face Steven, the doctor muttered, “The coma patient sometimes
awakes in a profound state of confusion.”

“Is she waking up?”

Again Steven’s question went unanswered.

“Occasionally, a patient will suffer from
dysphasia,” the doctor said.

“What’s dysphasia?” Steven asked. When a
minute passed without the doctor speaking, Steven repeated his
question. “Dysphasia, what is it?”

“The inability to articulate any
speech.”

“She’s been talking,” Steven said. “Well,
sorta muttering.”

The doctor looked up from his patient to
Steven. “A comatose patient does not regain consciousness
instantly. They are awake for a few minutes, and then the time
gradually increases. She may be speaking during the moments she is
awake.

“She said she was worried about Carol. Maybe
because Carol was with her when she was shot. Maybe she thinks
something happened to Carol. But that’s probably a good sign,
right?”

The doctor nodded.

“Is she aware of me being here?” Steven
asked.

A shrug from the doctor, “We don’t know all
we could about comas. But patients recovering from comas have said
they heard people speaking to them.”

“I think she’s dreaming, but once it seemed
like she was trying to tell me something.”

“Often patients wake and don’t know where
they are or how they got there.” The doctor continued to examine
Alexa, tapping parts of her body, placing his stethoscope on her
chest. “It’s almost as though they’ve been some place else.” The
doctor listened to her chest. “Perhaps reliving a memory.”