The Legend (39 page)

16.
          
Impact Failure – Sway

 
Impact Failure – A type of valve damage that occurs when the valve
seats to hard or hits the piston.
It can occur due to a broken timing
chains, faulty keeper installation, or operating the engine at excessive rpm.

When I was
finally alone, Nancy was with Emma and Alley, and I could breathe
...
but then again, I couldn’t breathe.

My head
fell back against the wall in the bathroom. I tried to count the holes in the
ceiling as a comfort but they blurred from my tears and followed with sobs. My
throat constricted again, the emotion surfaced.

I cried. I
let myself cry alone where I wouldn’t be forced to talk or be comforted.
Sometimes, to deal with a loss, it’s better to be alone. It’s better to be in a
place where you don’t feel the need to apologize or care that you’re crying
like a lunatic or blubbering so badly you can’t breathe.

I kept
thinking, between blubbering like a lunatic, that Jimi’s memory seemed so hazy
now.

It was an empty
seat at the dinner table. It was a distant photograph that seemed as if it was
taken years ago when it was only last week. Why was it that as soon as someone
is gone, that when you think about them, they feel so far away?

Deciding I
didn’t need to wallow forever, I needed to be there for our family, I got up.

When I
splashed water on my face, I heard someone talking in the hall.

“I feel
bad for her. They’ve been through so much over the years with the loss of her
parents and now his dad…I can’t imagine.”

Feel bad
for me?

Why would
someone feel bad for me? Feel bad for Nancy. Feel bad for their children who
lost their father. Feel bad for Jameson’s children who have to watch their dad
endure such crushing physical and emotional pain. Don’t feel bad for me.

I intended
to leave the bathroom but I didn’t. Instead I sat there looking through a
magazine and waited for whoever it was outside.

Flipping
through the magazine, I tried anything to get my mind from thinking all the
bad. And there, next to an ad for condoms, was a picture of Jameson standing in
a cloud of smoke, his fingers curled through the holes in a chain link fence,
his eyes on the camera. I was drawn to the photo just like I was to the magic
behind his eyes. The same captivation his presence held, that photograph held.

I blinked
at the memory, like an old legend, his impact on me, on the world, would
forever be with us.

I stared
at the photograph as if it held the answer, empty and weightless, it did
nothing but make me cry harder.

I wanted
him here to comfort me. I wanted to hear him whisper “honey” in my ear with the
slow raspy tenor he had with teasing words and playful touches. With the
magazine pressed to my chest, I cried. Wearing pajamas on the floor of a
hospital bathroom trying to count tiles, I cried.

You can’t
cry forever. Believe me, after the death of my own father, I would know.

Eventually
your body will give in and you fall asleep. Those of us who have children may
disagree with that statement but at some point, they do go to sleep. When they
wake up in the morning and realize they had been crying, they start again, and
you wonder if they had ever stopped. My point was, eventually your body knows
when enough is enough.

My mind
drifted to the families of those lost in the plane crash two years ago. We’re
their families asking themselves these same questions?

And then I
was asking myself questions. I thought of the practical stuff. What happens in
real life?

What do I
tell his sponsors? What if he does die? What happens to his sprint car team?
What happens to the Cup team with Jimi gone? Would his sponsors pull out of
their agreement if he was in the hospital too long? What if he could never race
again? What if he didn’t remember me? Would our medical insurance cover this?
Could we afford this if Jameson wasn’t racing? What about the kids? Would they
be okay? Should I call the school and tell them Casten needs some time off?
What should we do about a hotel room? Should I get everyone food? And the
media, what do I tell them? They would want answers.

His fans,
would they stand by him? Would they help him through this?

Everything,
every thought I could possibly wonder about was present. I don’t know if it was
my minds way of dealing with the stress but I thought about all that. I had no
answers though.

I
eventually removed myself from the bathroom to sit in the hall outside the
intensive care unit. I knew Jameson wasn’t in there but that’s where I was when
the doctor found me before so I thought maybe he would know where to look when
he needed me again.

Axel was
there by himself with his head bent forward resting on his arms that were held
up by his knees, still wearing his racing suit. I watched him closely. His eyes
met my gaze evenly. His expression was calm but the pain in his eyes was
unconcealed.

A child’s
innocence provides them with a security of not knowing. They can only
comprehend so much about death and reality before their innocence takes over.
They would never truly understand the magnitude at their young age.

When my
mom died, I had that security of not understanding. Everything was still a
fairytale for me.

When
Charlie died, that security wasn’t there any longer and I was forced to deal
with it as an adult. I wouldn’t say I dealt with it real well but I did eat a
lot of ice cream and that was comforting. All I could say was at least I was
dealing with the shit and didn’t hole myself in my room. It definitely sounded
appealing but I didn’t.

Eventually,
with the distraction of a new baby, Axel, Jameson and I were able to slowly
recover from Charlie dying.

With Jimi,
this wouldn’t be as easy. For one, my support system, my other half, was lying
in a hospital bed hanging onto his life by machines. And two, I think in a
sense, I prepared myself to a certain extent that Charlie was dying. With Jimi,
the detonation was instant.

When the
doctor spoke the words, “He’s gone.” I silently begged him to take back his
words. This couldn’t happen. Not to our family. Not to a family that has had to
overcome tragedy so often.

When the sun began to rise that morning in Iowa, I
sat in the lobby next to the coffee stand watching the snow fall. Emotionally,
I was completely drained. I wanted to shut down and sleep, pretending this
wasn’t happening, but it was. I had my kids, my husband and our entire family
to think of right now. Shutting down wasn’t an option.

Nancy was outside sitting on a bench by herself,
watching. If you looked close enough, you could see her lips moving as if she
was either praying or talking to Jimi. Either way, I decided not to watch as I
felt she needed this time alone. 

They wouldn’t let us up to the fifth floor where
the
Neuro
-ICU was. Instead, we had to stay in the
Intensive Care waiting area they had until Jameson was stable enough to be
removed from the ICU.

I had arrived around three in the morning on
Thursday. By now, it was nine on Friday morning and no one had left the waiting
room, No one.

Nancy briefly stepped out with Spencer to discuss
arrangements for Jimi and she of course got to see him. She still hadn’t cried
that we knew of and even after she saw him in the morgue, she still didn’t cry.

I did. I found my place on that bathroom floor
again and my magazine, and cried. Matter of fact, I still had that magazine and
the picture of my husband next to the condom ad.

Mostly everyone had cried including my kids, all
aside from Nancy. This also wasn’t something you cried and it was suddenly
over. It was a blow that kept coming.

With the arrival of morning, more family and
friends had arrived. Andrea was now here with Lucas and Macy. Ami, Lily, Kyle,
Mason...pretty much our entire family and extended family of our sprint car and
Cup teams.

We all waited.

Casten and Axel left for an hour and when they
came back, I realized just how special my boys were. These kids had just lost
their grandfather hours ago, their father was being kept alive by machines, but
they found time to bring everyone food.

They stopped off at a nearby diner and picked up
an assortment of food for everyone and coffee for me and Tommy.

Shortly after ten, Dr. Howe returned for me to
sign a form on our medical insurance and authorize further treatment on
Jameson.

“Any change?”

“He’s stable but still listed in critical
condition.” Dr. Howe said. “He had two more seizures and I had to go in and
control some of the continued bleeding around his brain due to swelling. He’s
lost a lot of blood so we had to give him a blood transfusion.”

Reaching for my magazine, holding it close, Arie
reached for me when I swayed but the gravity of him being here, though it was a
fucking magazine I was holding, rooted me here.

“Can I see him yet?” My voice trembled with the
shaking of my body. Flashes of Jameson healthy and happy before he left the
other day caused me to start crying. “Please?” I begged. “I just need to see
him. I won’t go inside the room. I just need...to see. I’m begging you; all I
need is a peak.”

It was if I had this false pretense that if I saw
him, I would feel better about it.

The doctor paused, his eyes scanning the twenty
some people gathered in the room. Our faces all the same detached frozen gaze.

He looked back at me seeing my pain, feeling my
pain. “I can let you back there for a minute, but only you.”

Everyone seemed to understand, so I went alone. I
also didn’t want to kids seeing him like this. I had no idea what he looked
like right now but I knew I didn’t want our children to have a memory of him
like this if it was our last one.

Outside the doctor the doctor stopped me. The room
he was in was all glass so I could see him in there, lying in the bed but it
didn’t look like him at all.

I just kept telling myself, repeated actually.
“Keep it together.”

The doctor touched my arm, “I want you to be
prepared. He doesn’t look good. His condition isn’t good but don’t get
discouraged. I’ve seen people pull through a thing like this before. He’s in
the best care around.”

“Thank you.” I whispered as my eyes focused on
Jameson’s body through the glass.

The doctor pressed a button to the left of the
door that made a beep and then another. It slide open after that and we walked
inside as it closed behind us. I wanted to fall to my knees. I wanted to
breathe but couldn’t. My heart pounded and my breathing seized. I couldn’t put
one foot in front of the other. Images flashed of Jimi and Nancy and the pain
Nancy felt. The pain we all felt. Tears surfaced but didn’t fall, the lump in
my throat rose with each second that I thought this would be the last time I
saw him. Would this be my last memory of him?

That could be us. I could lose him. I knew that
this was possible each time he got into a race car. I always knew that from the
very beginning but it didn’t make the thoughts any easier.

You can prepare yourself all you want but when you
see it happen; nothing helps.

The room was dim, a large screen on the wall
showed all his head and spine scans and it appeared to be chest x-rays as well.
Machines, devices and electronics were scattered throughout the room, beeping,
vibrating and humming. Strangely I felt a touch of relief knowing these
machines were keeping him alive.

 A low whoosh sound peaked and then flattened
before beginning again.

When my eyes finally focused on my husband, his
head was wrapped in gauze and bandages; his wild hair peaked through on the
right side. There was a tube down his throat that was taped to his lips. His
eyes where completely purple and black, and swollen shut. There were tubes and
wires everywhere.

He was covered from the neck down in a thick white
blanket. There was another tube under his arm, connected to a machine filled
with fluid. When my eyes focused once again on his face, I noticed a small tube
attached the side of his head under the bandages. It was hooked-up to a monitor
above him, gauging the pressure in his brain along with additional wires
connected under the blanket somewhere. More tubes were surrounding his chest
and the breathing tube.

He didn’t look like my Jameson, he was lifeless.
So pale...so still.

“Will he wake up?”

“Slowly, when we feel his condition has improved,
we ease him off the anesthesia but it has to be slow. After that, we remove the
ventilator and let him breathe on his own.”

I think there’s times when your brain can’t fully
absorb what happening. It’s almost like it’s protecting you from damage. It’s
kind of like breaking your leg and still being able to walk on it. Your body
knows there’s damage but your brain knows that you could be in trouble. The
next day, you can hardly move with excruciating pain from the broken leg but
for those few hours directly following the blow, you’re mobile. It’s your brain
protecting you. When tragedy happens, so much goes through your brain it’s hard
to focus on anything. Look at me. I was carrying around a magazine.

The doctor stepped beside me after making some
notes and looked down at me.