The Other Fish in the Sea (33 page)

She shot me a look and when the light turned green, she turned her focus back to driving but answered, “Well, that’s actually something-----”

That was the last thing I remember hearing before glass was shattering and the deafening and grotesque sound of metal crushing metal was ricocheting off my eardrums and everything went black…

16.

A Baby’s Story

I don’t think I was out very long but I was definitely not coherent because when my vision started to clear and my uber-confused fog was permeated by my surroundings and the rain, I realized I was being moved away from the atrocious car wreck I’d just been in,
and
I was walking on my own two feet. I looked around in what I swear was slow motion and saw the Camaro, now unrecognizable and upside down, Kate’s mangled car partially on the sidewalk completely facing the wrong way, and another car that might’ve been a Buick, sitting sideways in the street all smashed up as well.

Jillian was out of the car, but she was bent over, kind of half in and half out of the broken driver’s side window and that’s when I realized Kate was
still
in the car. My first instinct was to run back to the car my best friend was in, but the person guiding me away wouldn’t let me go. I also realized that one of his hands was over mine, holding something to my head.

“But Kate…” I managed to croak out and I almost didn’t recognize my own voice. It was so shaky and weak.

“I know, but you need to sit down, and there’s nothing you can do for her anyway…your sist—”

His words were cut off by the most horrifying sound imaginable. It was the sound of excruciatingly pure anguish being brutally ripped from Jeff’s soul. I’m figuring the guys must’ve just seen what happened as we’re a stone’s throw away from Beef-N-Bun, and he was literally
FREAKING
out trying to get to Kate. I could see it was taking
everything
both Pete and Tristan had to hold him back and then I realized
why
they were doing that. They thought she was dead and didn’t want him to see her.

I felt myself begin to sob, but I couldn’t get my voice or legs to work. However, when Jillian heard Jeff’s broken cry, she immediately corrected our mistake by holding up her hands in a pacifying manner and hollered, “She’s okay, she just can’t get out!”

That was all it took for Pete and Tristan to let Jeff loose. The second their hold on him lessened, he shot away like a cannon ball, with more force and speed than I’ve ever seen someone exhibit in real life. Pete was actually knocked backwards to the pavement.

Then I became aware again of the guy who’d been guiding me away. He was forcing me to sit on the ground and as I did as I was told, I tried to take in and process the chaos around me, but it seemed like I was watching an old black and white TV show from the ’50s on a television that was getting really crappy reception. There were so many people all excitedly talking on cell phones, the rain was still coming down and I could just barely make out the sound of sirens in the distance. When he knelt down directly in front of me, I had to blink a couple of times while trying to focus so I could remember the name of the shirtless guide guy.

It was Zack.

“Zack, what are you doing out here without a shirt? It’s raining…aren’t you gonna get wet?” Honestly,
that’s
what I asked him. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure it was the concussion talking.

“Camie, you’re
holding
my shirt on your head, remember?”

I immediately realized that I
was
holding something to my head and pulled it away to look at it. It was covered in blood. My vision swam a little and I wobbled on my butt when it dawned on me that it was
my
blood.

“Whoa…dude, I think she’s gonna pass out,” Zack said holding my shoulders, but I don’t think he was talking to me. After all, I’m not a dude. I do have a dude’s name but I have a vagina and boobs too, so I think that counteracts the name. Would you agree?

Just then, Tristan replaced Zack in front of me but black spots were falling all over him and I couldn’t help wondering since when did rain drops become black?

“Camie? Baby? Are you seeing spots?” I must have wondered that aloud, but I nodded in the affirmative while Tristan looked carefully at my eyes. “I’m gonna lay you down, okay? Get behind her and hold her head in your lap so her head is higher than her heart and keep applying pressure to that…I’ll be right back. Oh! Keep her still and awake…ask her questions.” And before I knew it, Tristan put my head in Zack’s lap and his shirt on my head again.

He couldn’t have been gone long but by the time he got back to me, the rain was letting up and a fire engine had arrived on the scene; it was closely followed by the paramedics. My loopiness was considerably better since laying down and I think I was able to answer all of Zack’s random questions accurately. I saw Tristan clearly this time when he handed Zack the hoodie he’d taken off his own back which left him in a t-shirt, and then without pausing to even look at my wound, he quickly replaced Zack’s shirt with what I’m pretty sure was ice wrapped in Jillian’s clean “Hitchhiker Towel,” which I felt him press even more firmly against my head than how Zack had been doing it.

“Thanks for takin’ care of her, man…how ya doin’, Baby?” He said sincerely to Zack and asked me with tender concern as he sat down next to us, not lessening the pressure he was applying to my head in the least. Yes, I’m a little surprised. My massively jealous boyfriend is, at the moment, completely okay with having his girlfriend’s head in the lap of his archenemy.

“I think I’m okay but my head hurts a little…so does my wrist.” Huh. I didn’t even notice I had any pain until just now, but yeah, I sort of hurt.

“Dude, I didn’t know what to do…I saw the whole thing happen. I went to the Camaro first but I couldn’t even get to those guys, so when I saw she was getting out, I went to help them instead. Is Kate really okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. Her door is just jammed really good and her seatbelt won’t budge.”

Tristan took over the third degree and we sat there for however many minutes before the paramedics and a cop came over to us. As an EMT checked me out, the cop took Zack’s eyewitness account of the accident and I heard him explain how the Camaro had sideswiped Kate’s car when he cut her off and then the driver lost control of his car which resulted in the rollover. The third car hit us as well so we were spun all over the place. I also discovered that I’m going to be treated to my first ride in an ambulance. In addition to several head lacerations, a couple of which apparently need some stitches, it is suspected that I might have a broken wrist along with a concussion. Oh yeah, the more aware I became, I realized that the impact of me hitting my head on the window and then the airbag, knocked one of my fillings out so I
get
to go to the dentist hopefully this week too. I’m such a freaking mess.

It could’ve been
so
much worse though…

When Pete marched an irritated Jillian up to the EMT who was loading me into the ambulance to have him clean and bandage the small gash on the underside of my sister’s forearm, which I learned she’d received post accident while leaning into the car to calm Kate, we were all appropriately subdued and reminded of how precious life is as we watched the passenger of the Camaro being zipped up in a black bag.

Jillian rode with me in the ambulance and told me she called our dad who’d been golfing up north today, and that he was stuck on the freeway because of the rain and another accident, but he’d get to the hospital as soon as he could. Being treated will probably take forever anyway so there’s really no need for him to rush. She called my mom too, just to let her know what happened and that we were, for the most part, okay. My mom coming to the hospital isn’t an option today, though, because she’s sick. So, I’m pretty much prepared to spend the majority of my Sunday evening in the emergency room but thanking Jesus that I’m still alive to celebrate His birth seven days from now, even though His birthday is really probably sometime in early October. That's a whole other tangent involving a Messianic Jewish Rabbi, homeschool and Hebraic Bible history, so, I won't get into it right now. Oh, those were some of Tristan’s questions by the way…what day is it, when is Christmas, when is my birthday…stuff like that. Zack had asked me things like what’s my favorite color so that’s why I’m pretty sure I got them all right.
 

Kate was taken in an ambulance as well and Jeff, who I swear looked worse than she did, accompanied her so that left Tristan and Pete. Pete opted to stay behind with Zack and Kate’s car. He was gonna wait so he could collect all our personal belongings before it was towed so Tristan chose to follow us to the hospital.

As I suspected, the ER was kind of busy but my wait time didn’t feel that long. I was taken to radiology for x-rays and a CAT scan and when I got back to my little curtained room, Tristan had joined my sister who’d used the time I was gone to hunt down a couple of magazines and an abandoned game book. We also had a TV and lucky for us, a re-run of
Friends
was on. I love that show. I was reminded again of how MFEO Tristan and I are while watching the episode where Phoebe is trying to explain that Rachel is Ross’s lobster, which is one of my all-time favorite episodes of the show ever, even though the thing about lobsters mating for life is a fallacy. When I mentioned that, I wasn’t too surprised to learn that Tristan already had that knowledge. He also knows that one of the very few sea creatures that does mate for life is the seahorse. I just love him. Anyway, the only problem with waiting was that the longer I laid there, the more sore and stiff I got. Plus, my head was freaking killing me.

“So! Who does this little lady get to thank for the excellent first-aid before the EMTs got to her?” A second(?) doctor asked, walking through my curtain while reading something medical looking on a clipboard. I say second(?) because I’m not entirely sure out of all the people who’ve looked at me how many were actual doctors, but I
think
there was only one before.

I looked at my sister and my boyfriend and managed a small smile when Jillian didn’t even look up from what she was reading, pointed to Tristan and said, “I only supplied the towel.”

“You trained?” He asked Tristan while reading, nodding and flipping over papers on my chart.

“Yep, being a lifeguard I’ve seen enough kids slip and smack their heads on the pool deck to know what a concussion looks like. Is it a three?”

The doctor set the clipboard down, pulled on some gloves and then spoke directly to Tristan while he looked at my head. “Mm-hm, but it’s not bad. I’m only calling it that
 
instead of a two because she lost consciousness at the scene…after we get these lacerations sutured we’ll probably let her go home…”
 

Now mind you, I’m sitting
right here
but they’re talking about me like I’m down the hall or something, which is irritating beyond belief. Also, I didn’t know I was a possible candidate for a sleepover here and I really don’t want that, so I was considering whether or not to tell the doctor how bad my head hurt and then realized with a start how stupid it would be if I didn’t.

“My head is
really
killing me and my wrist still hurts,” I admitted to the doctor.
 

He took out his little penlight, checking me out like the half-dozen other people who’ve been in here, and finally addressed me. “Mm-hm, I’m sure you have a whopper of a headache and you can expect to feel all kinds of aches and pains in the next few days, but your CT came back normal, your pupils look good and the rest of your diagnostics are fine so unless you start vomiting, I don’t see why you can’t go home tonight. I
will
want someone who knows what to look for watching over you for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours or so and if any symptoms reappear or worsen in the next seven to ten days, you are to high-tail it back here…your x-ray doesn’t show a break so we’ll just immobilize your wrist for now and you can ice it for twenty minutes at a time…so, no known allergies aside from hay fever and you aren’t a fan of Vicodin…well, not to worry, you don’t need narcotics…how does some plain old Tylenol sound?”

“Sounds good…” I guess. As long as it doesn’t make me nauseous like Vicodin does and the pain goes away, I’ll be happy.

“Alright, I’ll write this up and someone should be in here soon to fix you up.”

You know, it always amazes me how little actual time doctors spend with patients…not that I’m complaining, but still.

The doctor left and Jillian excused herself to go call my mom and dad. I think she’s bored out of her skull and she’s just using that as an excuse to get out of here for a while. I mean come on, can you blame her? We’ve been here for something like three hours already and if I wasn’t forced to be here, I’d take off with her.

Someone did, in fact, show up relatively soon to “fix me up,” but let me just say, getting stitches in your head is
far and away
from being the most pleasant experience. I’m just thankful both the cuts needing to be sutured were right above my hairline and they didn’t have to shave away any of my hair to do it. I got nine stitches on one cut, five on the other and a butterfly bandage under my chin that had been split open without me even knowing it. Eventually my hand was wrapped all the way to my elbow in an ACE bandage and I was good to go. I was starting to wonder again about how Kate was doing when Tristan walked back in with my dad on his heels.
 

My dad looked sort of haggard and none too happy to see his daughter wearing bandages and bloody clothes, but he gave me a smile and told me Tristan was going to stay the night to watch over me. It was that second doctor who’d spoken with him and my dad out in the hall and he’s the one who recommended my lifeguard friend for “Camie Watch” because Tristan is CPR and first aid certified, knows all the warning signs to look for and can drive me back to the hospital if need be.
 

We were waiting for my dad to get all my recuperative instructions and sign all the discharge paperwork at the counter when Tristan’s parents appeared from around a corner heading towards a trauma room. Tristan barely noticed them at first but then he did a double-take, swore under his breath and muttered something like “lost it.”