Holding Still for as Long as Possible (27 page)

The worst thing is being the only one to see it all from above. The driver feels a sudden empathy for God, an idea he hadn't believed in until he felt the impact of bodies against the grille of his U-Haul. This morning, he had moved his family to the city from Kingsville. He had been given a promotion, bought his first house. He'd made so many choices today — where to get dinner for the kids, to keep the truck for another few hours — all leading up to this moment. Before he left, his wife had kissed him and said, “I'm so proud of us.” It was something she had never said before.

Just before the truck struck, Pink Dress's eyes said one thing:
Oh fuck. I had a feeling about tonight
. She was thinking about her earlier vision. In that percentage of a second before the collision, she was resigned to what would happen.

If you were there, you would go to the girls. Press your sweatshirt to wounds. Call 911 on your cell phone. Recall Grade Nine life-saving training. You wouldn't be able to control the volume of your voice.

Two trucks are dispatched to the accident. The medics know this is a shit-hot call. They're not fucking around. This is probably the one call tonight that is a life-or-death emergency.

Diane counts to three before she lifts the stretcher. As her partner, Mike, rolls the patient into the truck, he finally puts his finger on how he knows her.
Fuck
. His heart sinks. The young kid on Blue — Josh. This is his girlfriend.

Mike has a feeling, wheeling her into the
ER
, that this girl's not going to make it. Uneven pupils. Projectile vomiting. He's seen it a dozen times before. Bad, bad signs.

Afterwards

AMBULANCE CALL REPORT

Date:
06-05-06

Surname:
Stevenson
Given Name:
Hilary

25, F

Pick-Up Location:
Dundas and Ossington, SE Corner

Cyclist struck; unconscious

Pt found lying NE corner of Dundas and Ossington. Pt was travelling through intersection on bike when struck by U-haul truck travelling approx 50 km per hour

History:
Unknown

Medication:
Unknown

Allergies:
Unknown

TFD, TPD:
On scene

MECHANISM OF INJURY / DIRECTION OF FORCE:

General Appearance:
Pt unconscious, GCS 3, S&S of head injury

Head/Neck:
abrasions to left side of face w bleeding from nose and mouth, no signs of periorbital ecchymosis, possible left side skull fracture at temporal lobe

Chest:
no instability, ribs intact, pt w cheyne-stokes respirations, clr breathing sounds, bilaterally apices to bases

Abdomen:
bruises and distention, left upper quadrant

Back/Pelvis:
pelvic stable, abrasions present lower back

Extremities:
present, pedal pulse present, good circulation, left wrist with deformity and swelling at joint

[ 28 ]

Billy

Billy is mashed up on the stretcher in the back of the
sw
8734 truck. The same ambulance in which she made out with Josh only a few weeks back — but no one here knows that. Her faded eyeliner runs like an extra vein under each bruised eye, and her pink dress is a shred. Her brain had rattled inside her skull on impact. The head came to a stop against the Ossington Street pavement, but the brain kept travelling. Go figure — Billy's brain, always going going going. It slammed into the inside of her skull, bounced off, and hit the other side. Like a ping-pong ball. If this had been Josh's call, and he had been driving, he would have sent her a text from the hospital:
Young chick, bike accident, probably not gonna make it. Totally gorked.

According to Billy's brain, she is sixteen again. Someone is fussing over her terrible style.

“You have terrible style,” says the girl with plastic-looking cheeks, picking at the sleeve of Billy's cherished army jacket, with its Jane's Addiction patch stitched onto the breast pocket. “Grunge is over. Did you not get the memo?”

“I was raised to think style was a distraction, a way to pacify the masses.”

“That's a tragedy,” Plastic Cheeks says, her hands cupping Billy's waist. “At least you are thin. We can work with you. Jason! Run to wardrobe, stat.”

A pale and sweating assistant appears clutching a clipboard. Billie is a guest on a breakfast show, and her call was at 4:30 a.m.

When Billy had woken up in the hotel, she had consulted the paper itinerary on the bedside table to remember where she was. Her handler and tutor, Carlie, knocked on the door with two cups of coffee. Carlie hadn't been to bed and smelled like beer.

Now there is a highlighter running over parts of Billy's brain. The brain has separate left and right cerebral hemispheres. Billy experiences semantic memories of her first television appearance. Flashes of Maria walk gently over the outer layer of grey matter, the cerebral cortex. Maria is allergic to shellfish; the seven digits of Maria's home phone number from 1988 to 1998. The scraps of acquired knowledge come in and out like radio waves.

Billy took her mid-term Grade Eleven history exam backstage before a concert.
When did women get the right to vote in Canada
?
asked Carlie, deadpan —
1921, 1901, 1975 or 1936?
She kept picking at her face, saying things such as
Your skin really changes on the road. Fuck. I look fifty. Do I look fifty
? To sixteen-year-old Billy, fifty was a senior citizen. Fifty didn't even make sense. Fifty was: may-as-well-be-dead. Billy took a swig from her bottle of iced tea. She was allowed to pour rum into it after four o'clock. Carlie looked in the back of the textbook and then X-ed in the answer for her.

Neurotransmitters and receptor subtypes: A memory of Maria, Grade Nine, the perfect line of eyeliner, a lesson in the green industrial bathroom. Tube socks. Algebra. Maria's lips, eyes, mouth. How much school will you miss? Can I come with you? Will you still go to prom with me if no one protests? The man who said, You look just like my daughter. Will you meet my daughter in the hospital? The doctors give her less than a year. But oh, what a year we're going to have.

Singing with Sheryl Crow at Lilith Fair, being patted on the head a lot. Backstage at the place in Toronto, near the water: Sarah decorating the ceiling with saris. Prince over by the buffet with his mother. He wouldn't make eye contact. I was born to do this, she thought, looking out over the empty chairs at sound check
. This is my calling
. Maria on the phone later,
You didn't miss anything. Just high school, same old bullshit.

Everything is just a cell talking to another cell. Consciousness is just this. Beep of a machine. The result of several actions. Her reaction. The harmonies in her brain, the hemispheres in A minor.

Somewhere those cells are chatting it up, have been engaged in debate since Billy was able to decipher death. As a child, she had seen the body of Mrs. Roades in the middle of the street after the snowplow didn't notice her. Billy had asked, after eating one careful bite of casserole at Mrs. Roades' wake,
But where do we
go?

There were answers in Sunday school she found unsatisfying. As she grew, she realized there are people who can live without knowing or understanding their mortality, and people who cannot. Billy could not. “We become worm food!” Billy's mother said. “We go to Heaven,” her grandmother said. “As long as we live righteously.”

There were people who could have a good time without nagging, useless worries at the edges of all their thoughts. Billy admired them. She felt like she might spend the rest of her days angry at the unknowable, trying to control all she could.

On stage, singing to her first crowd of thousands, she briefly broke through the worry. She was singing six verses and the chorus of a song she'd sung thousands of times, so that she no longer had to be present. Her ribs broke open and she soared above it all, rich with purpose.

Later, she counted, sorted, placed carefully the things that could be contained and understood.

Billy's head aches, but she can't feel it. All around her, hands are wrung, eyes are closed. There is the clicking on and off of lights and the angry beep of monitors. Sirens approach. An intercom voice speaks, disembodied. Memories run through her brain like the soft strokes of a watercolour brush.

[ 29 ]

Josh

“Billy's in rough shape.” When things happen like this, you report the news to almost everyone in a pragmatic deadpan. I am standing in front of Amy, who closes her eyes in response. Her mother and father are by her bedside in the intensive care unit at St. Michael's Hospital. Amy's face is a puzzle of scrapes and bruising. She's on an
iv
drip of morphine, her broken leg propped up. Her red hair a shock against the white pillow. “She's in surgery.”

We are waiting for Amy's
mri
results to come back, but they should be clear. The doctors are just being cautious.

This is all I tell Amy, because she's still pretty banged up. I don't want to worry her with the fact that Billy might not live.

Amy can talk, form sentences, make sense. When they said, over and over, “You've been in an accident,” she understood. She has no significant head trauma, just some small fractures and a broken leg. She'll be home tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest. She won't remember this conversation, likely, but she's here now, in front of me. All of her. Not like Billy.

There is almost nothing worse than the feeling of not being able to do something constructive when all you want to do is be useful. “I'm going to check in with Roxy and see if Billy's family is here yet,” I tell the O'Haras.

Amy's mother dabs her eyes with a stiff Kleenex she pulls out of the front pocket of her cardigan. Mr. O'Hara pushes Amy's hair out of her eyes. I'm not sure they've heard me.

“What a piece of crap hospital. I want to get Amy transferred to Sunnybrook. It's a better hospital, right, Josh? You would know these things. You would know all the insider secrets.”

I nod, though I doubt what I know about the health care system would be at all comforting. I know Mr. O'Hara needs to do something in order to feel valuable. “Amy is going to be fine. She's lucky. You can relax.”

It's hard to be sympathetic to Amy's parents, because I know she's going to fine. Of course she would be the one wearing the helmet, even though Billy is usually the most cautious of any of us. I back out slowly and go back to the Quiet Room, where Billy's family is starting to show up and gather.

When I first got to the
er
and couldn't find anyone, the bitchy triage nurse with braces tried to give me attitude and I just let her have it. She stopped and stared at me for a minute, like she couldn't believe anyone would dare to yell at her.

“Redhead in Trauma 4,” she said. “And the blonde is in the
or
already.”

Pacing outside the Quiet Room is a tall woman with short blonde-brown hair in dark skinny jeans, a sweatshirt, and orange Converse sneakers. She's pressing madly into a cell phone. When she sees me approach, she reaches out to touch my arm.

“Josh? I'm Maria. Listen.” She looks into my eyes. “You need to do something for me. Can you? ”

She's using paramedic voice on
me
, speaking in such a way that I can't help but agree to do whatever she says.

“I need you to pick up Billy's mother and sister from the airport. They get in at noon and they'll need someone to get them here fast. They don't know the city. Cabs are expensive. Can you do this for me? I need to be here with Billy when she wakes up, and Roxy is still too drunk to drive anywhere. Plus her father will be arriving any minute and I know him and want to make sure I'm here.”

Maria hands me keys to her car and a piece of paper with Billy's mom's name scrawled on it in Sharpie.

She has thought of everything. “Red hatchback parked on Victoria.”

“I have my own car.” I don't want to leave Billy. I'm the one who can understand the jargon, read between the lines of what the doctors manage to communicate.

“But it's not here, is it?”

Of course, I left my car at the station. I was out drinking. It's almost morning already. How did all this time pass? My cheeks burn. I close my eyes.

“Drive like a fucking maniac, Josh,” Maria says. “I mean it. You know how to do that, right — like you're driving the ambulance.”

I feel like smacking her when she says this, she is so condescending, but when I look at her I see she's starting to cry. She's doing the best she can.
Stop judging
, I tell myself.
Be still
.
Be calm
.
Just start walking
.

“And, Josh, Amy is still stable, right? She's okay?”

“Yes, she's going to be fine. Just a broken leg.”

Maria smiles. “At the very least, this is good news.”

Walk
, I tell myself.

If it were an ordinary day, Billy would be painting a new coat over the chipped polish on her toenails, sitting on the pink yoga mat, feigning a regimen. Billy would be contemplating calling in sick to work again. She'd be wondering if the faint headache were an impending aneurism.

I calculate that I have time to stop at home and get in uniform before coming back to the hospital. They might let me in to see Billy this way. I'm deciding whether or not to do this when I run into Roxy, who is pacing outside the
er
doors, smoking and circling, driving herself into the ground. She smells like alcohol. She looks at me like I'm vermin.

“What the fuck, Josh? What the fuck? You should've showed up earlier, when they were still there. Maybe they were fighting. Maybe they were yelling at each other and that's why they didn't see the truck. You could've resolved this.”

“
It's nobody's fault, Rox. It was an accident.”

“This wouldn't be happening if you could just make a fucking decision, man. That's all I'm saying.”

“It's not that simple. And there is no decision, Roxy.” Roxy doesn't know how much I love Billy, and how much Billy knows it. For some reason, she thinks Billy's the victim of my uncertainty when it's the other way around.