The Care and Feeding of Bears, Part V
I got them both in the Caddy and
Heidi began to calm down, her sobs becoming the more controlled fits and starts
and hitches. I drove them both to the
hospital where I worked as it was the closest, and I knew and trusted the ER
staff on duty. They would take good care
of Heidi, and unfortunately, Karl too.
As I drove, I listened to the wind
whistling through the hole in the driver's side door made by my tanto
and me. The sound almost drowned out
Heidi's soft weeping.
Heidi had been to this ER before,
her chart full of her “accidents.” What
a clumsy girl she was; falling down stairs and walking into doors, smashing
bottles over her own head . . .
The ER staff knew me, as I said, and
they knew Heidi, of course. They'd never
seen Karl before.
Suzanne, a nurse whom I had dated a
while earlier, saw the abrasions on my hands; saw my crime on my boots.
Like most medical professionals, she
abhorred violence of any kind. She
placed a suture tray on the dressing table and told us that the doctor would be
in shortly. Karl was in some other room
getting X-rayed and prepped for surgery.
Suzanne took a quick sniff as if she
smelled our story on our scent. Her
stern face softened and she whispered to me on the way out the door. “Good for you . . .”
But all I felt was shame again. And that Goddamn pride. Defending Heidi was right, but my methods
were wrong.
A few minutes later the trauma
surgeon came into the room and sewed Heidi's left eyebrow back on. I told her she looked like Spock from Star
Trek, and when she laughed it tugged painfully at the sutures in her lip. “Highly illogical, and Fuck You, Captain,”
she said.
How could I kiss her wounded mouth
without hurting her? I stayed put on the
stool.
The cobalt blue of her eyes stood
out against the ever-blackening bruises of her battered face. They kept her overnight to watch for
ill-effects from the concussion. I held
her hand all night to keep her from falling asleep. I told her stories from work and we
reminisced about algebra class and world history and the time when I Love
You ruled our world. I sang to her
softly, like a prayer, I suppose, and I stared out the window long after that
pretty sunrise.
Karl's shoulder was dislocated. His jaw, orbital socket, four teeth, three
ribs, and a distal radius were broken.
His spleen was ruptured and removed overnight in surgery. Before we left, Heidi went to visit him in the
Recovery Room. I liked hearing that word
and associating it with Karl: Recovery.
Heidi told him he had been hit by a
truck. A simple hit and run and there
were no witnesses. Karl knew that this
was my hospital, that my friends all worked here. Karl knew I could quite easily come
back. Karl nodded to Heidi in agreement.
We took a cab back to my apartment
where Heidi finally fell asleep. I made
myself a sandwich and a pot of coffee and watched her dream. Her tears and her blood mixed pink on my
pillow.
I changed the pillowcase when she
woke up and went to the bathroom later that day. I made sure she didn't see what she had left behind.
I filled the tub with hot, soapy
water and bathed her gently. I washed
her hair, rinsing away the dirt and blood. She was bruised all over. I changed out the water and filled it again,
this time rubbing her feet. They were
the only parts of her that were not sore.
“Son of a bitch kicked my ass,” she
said, trying to make a joke. The eyebrow
eye had swollen shut, and I cleaned away the oddly-colored fluids that oozed
from it. Our gazes met, and in hers I saw
shame. I do not know what it was she saw
in mine.
Later, drinking our coffee in
silence, and exhausted.
She winced at the hot on her swollen
lips. Of course I didn't have any
drinking straws.
We left the Caddy at the hospital
and I left my bike at Heidi's trailer. I
called another taxi.
I stood by my bike after getting her
front door to close, kind of. I told her
I'd get her another one and bring it over in my truck, when I got it
fixed. Or borrow someone else's, maybe.
Before I got on the Kawasaki, I
asked her a question. “Will you move in
with me?” “No,” she answered. My heart hurt, and I hated it for that. I always pay dearly whenever I love
someone. Love exacts a staggering fee.
“You'd be my Number One Choice,
though. You know my heart the best.”
One week later and the knock on my
door. “Can you help us?” one of the
detectives asked.
Heidi's bruises hadn't even faded
when Karl showed up at her trailer for the last time. He shot her in her wounded face then blew
most of her torso away with the next four shots. He tried to burn her trailer down before he
ruined his own brainstem with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In my line of work we call that FBBP:
Failure to Be Bullet-Proof.
A neighbor had heard the shots and
had come over to the trailer, saw the small blaze, and put it out with the
garden hose. Then he called the cops.
The police had found my phone number
in Heidi's half-melted wallet. It did not surprise me that I was listed as her emergency contact. I am never surprised.
“Are you a relative?” the homicide detective asked me,
her voice barely audible over the humming noise in my head. After a moment I answered the only answer I
knew was true: “No,” I said, “I am just the one who knew her best
. . .”
Am I like the detective, cold and
jaded, dispassionate, tardy and powerless?
Am I not the Bodhisattva Of Compassion? Does the detective feel more or less than I?
Am I the tanto, long and
cold, deadly, more a weapon than a tool?
Am I the car door that it pierces, marred and broken? Am I not the Bodhisattva Of Wisdom? Should I not already have these answers?
Did whatever I have in the way of
Compassion even help Heidi? Did whatever
I have that passes for Wisdom ease her suffering? Did she ever not hurt, or ever not feel
fear? Did she ever love? Did she ever feel loved? Did she ever feel loved by me?
One of the detectives asked me how
old I was, and I told her. “Seventeen,”
I said.
“Same as Heidi.”
Rewrite for
this blog, 10 September -13 September, 2013
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