Another Evening In The Cosmic Pinball Machine

"I could murder a beer right about now," I say to myself as I pull out of the church parking lot. It's been a long day and I have not had a beer in weeks. I pull across the road and into a shopping center. I squint out the driver’s side window as I idle past the doors of the super market, trying in vain to read the store hours. It's 9:15 PM. People are coming and going from the store and I know that I can stop and buy a six-pack of Hoegaarden or Anchor Steam, but for some reason, I drive on past and head for home.

9:30 PM. The doggies are waiting for me. The ratta-tat-tat of claws on the wood floor as they follow me out back into the moonlight to do their business. There's an unseasonable chill in the air and I decide to build a fire in the fire place. It's late, but it will give Lori Beth something nice to come home to. Back inside, the doggies sniff through the kindling pail as I place the splintered flakes of wood piece-by-piece over the tender on the andirons. I wrestle a piece from big-dog before she can munch on it.

9:45 PM. I walk out front and rummage through my wood pile, looking for suitable pieces to burn. I stand up with an armload of oak, poplar, and cherry. Somewhere in the distance, I hear the shrieking agony of rubber on asphalt, punctuated by a sickening crunch. It's just the background noise of modern life. I barely notice it as I walk back into the house.

9:50 PM. The flames burn in Arabic. Leaping tongues spelling strange words along the tops of the logs. I poke at it, rearranging the logs. A flaming piece of bark tumbles out onto the hearth. With tongs in hand, I try and place it back in the fire and as I do so, my phone begins to ring. I fumble with the tongs and it takes a few tries to get the ember back into the fireplace. Setting the tongs aside, I jog into the kitchen for the phone. The caller ID says "Lori." I answer. She always calls when she's on her way. But her voice is not right. It sounds strange and distant at first and I can only tell that she is crying. Immediately, my mind begins to invent scenarios that explain the panic that I am hearing in her voice. It's one of those conversations where you will remember it forever despite the fact that you can not recall the words that were spoken. "Pinegrove," I hear her say. "I'm coming." And that's all I remember saying in reply. I'm strangely calm. I'm on autopilot here. I know I'm leaving the house. I'm watching myself grab keys and put on a pair of flip-flops. It's a serious situation. Of that much, I'm certain. Serious situations always make me think about guns and I move as if to grab my H&K from beneath the pillow on the bed. No. She's fine...sort of...God, I hope so. No one is trying to hurt her. I know emotions are going to be running high wherever I'm going and the last thing I need is a gun in my hand. I've got my fists and elbows, I can dispense justice on the spot if needs be..."What the hell am I saying?!" I half yell as I slam the front door behind me.

10:01 PM. I never speed in residential areas and tonight is no exception. I've had the phone pressed against my ear since I left the house. She's crying but I have to lay the phone in the passenger seat in order to shift gears. I'm as good as there anyways. She's only four blocks away. Only. But twenty-five miles per hour is agony when your love is waiting for you, bleeding and broken in a smoldering pile of mechanical chaos that reeks of antifreeze and brake fluid. "God, I know you are sovereign..." I start to pray as I wrestle with the speedometer needle. "Some things just happen by shear dumb chance, this is just an artifact of the cosmic pinball machine that is the world you created. Right?" This is not the time for this, but circumstances beg the obvious question. That is, how can God allow things like this to happen? Or, more succinctly, surely He doesn't have an immediate and direct hand in causality at this level. Or rather, some things happen by shear chance. I mean, He is sovereign in that he created the world, set everything in motion, and then let things happen without further intervention. This randomness, this chance, is here because He willed it to be this way at the beginning. In that sense, EVERYTHING that happens, by chance or otherwise, still happens according to His will. Thus chance exists in harmony with His sovereignty. I know in my heart that this cannot be so. But it sure makes me feel better, right now, knowing that He wouldn't just deliberately do something like this to my girl. But if He is everywhere and everywhen, then he knew about this before it happened. Because, after all, for God, there is no chance...or is there? Do the numbers that come from a random-number generator remain random if He knows what they will be before hand? What do I mean by randomness? SMACK!!! I slap myself mentally. My wife could be dying and I'm penning a mental treatise on causality. Mailboxes and trashcans file by in the crepuscular cone of my headlights. Ahead I see the flashing red and white lights...north of the intersection where I'm expecting her to be..."God, you are sovereign and you are in direct control of everything and I refuse to believe otherwise."

10:04 PM. I pull onto the grass and turn on my caution lights. Before I can even climb out of my car, my father in law is leaning in the open door with his arm resting on the roof. "Lori's been in an accident." He says. "I know, Dean..." I say as I step out of the car, "...Let's go find her." The crunch of broken glass underfoot as I cross the intersection on foot. I can smell the pine trees and I know that I could hear the wind in their branches were it not for the sound of idling diesel engines and radio chatter. I'm amazingly calm, to the point where I actually wonder if I have a soul at all. Faceless people are milling about. Blinding light seems to be coming from every direction, but their faces seem to be ensconced in shadow. A ring of vehicles with lights shining inward, painting the scene in an eerie spectrum of surreal hues. Crunch-crunch, glass and shards of plastic making tiny explosions under my flip-flops. We pass an old Honda Accord. It looks like it’s dark green in the light. Its guts are hemorrhaging through the crumpled body-panels. Brake-fluid, anti-freeze, oil, all mixing together and spreading out over the asphalt as the engine continues to scream incessantly at a high rev. And somehow, the sound of its racing engine will always remain impressed in my mind. I studied the dying vehicle as I passed. The car is empty, deflated airbags. I turn away. Dean is pointing but I already see her Toyota, silhouetted against the blazing headlights of an emergency response vehicle. My pace quickens along with my heart-rate. The front wheel on the driver's side is set at a severe camber, like the wheels on an overloaded cartoon car. I step up the curb and into the thick sod. Immediately, I'm ankle deep in sandy mud. The slimy grit oozes between my toes but I barely notice it. Her door is open and there is a stout black man standing in it. He's dressed in black and wearing a funny floppy black toboggan on his head. He turns toward me; all I can see are a pair of big eyes that exude compassion and sincerity. I like this guy. It's something in his eyes. "I'm a police officer," he says. I like him even more. "I'm her husband." I say. He takes me by the arm and pulls me past him so that I am face-to-face with her. I've never really seen her cry before. Her face is a mess, mascara slithering down her cheeks. There's no blood. But if there had been, I would not have noticed. It's her eyes that cause me to catch my breath. So full of fear and desperation. She's looking at me sideways. There's a man in the back, reaching over the top of her seat. He has her head in his hands. "Hey...Babe." My words come as a whisper. Say something. "You've got to hold still, ok? You've got to maintain c-spine." I say with a little more confidence. Why am I so calm? I glance at the guy in the back. He's all business and says nothing. Lori's left hand is held aloft as if she's reaching back for her seatbelt. She's just holding it that way, like she doesn't trust the guy in the back seat and she's thinking about pushing his hands away. I take her hand in mine and caress it gently. She sobs softly. Dean is leaning in the passenger side with her other hand in his.

10:08 PM. I'm brushed aside by paramedics. "Here." Dean hands me her purse and keys. The strobe effect of the red and white flashing lights makes everything feel like time-lapse photography. I stare at the purse and keys before turning to take them to my car. I've forgotten about the mud but I'm quickly reminded as my feet sink in. I stagger, fighting to keep my flip-flops. My jerky movements are illuminated by the ambulance whose lights are trained on the rescue scene behind me. Paramedics are rushing back and forth. Someone is calling for a backboard. I wonder if they are going to pull the ambulance through the grass and I feel like I should warn them about the mud. But that's stupid. They would never do that. Why am I even thinking about this? I put Lori's purse in my trunk and return. I'm so calm. There's a swarm of people pressed tightly around her door. I don't know what to do. For the first time, I notice the cold. I notice that I am shaking violently. I hug myself as I bend down to study the damage to her Toyota, trying to piece together what happened, hoping to somehow discover something, I don't know what, that will convince me that things are not as serious as they seem. My stomach twists as I look behind the driver's side wheel. The drive-shaft and all of the suspension linkages are sheared off and hanging in a sludge of lithium grease. It looks somehow like a grizzly football injury or something. I circle the car. A trail of anti-freeze marks the trajectory. She's nearly forty-feet from where the impact occurred. My mind starts doing tentative calculations. I don't like where they are headed. There are no skid marks, only the trail of anti-freeze. "He ran the stop sign,” I heard a voice say. Who? I'm going to kill him. I look up to find Lori staring at me through the wind shield. She's reading my mind, pleading with her eyes. I nod subtly, close my eyes, and swallow. "Take this," It's Dean's voice. He's handing me Lori's phone. "And this," he hands me her headset. I make my way back to my car, forgetting about the mud again. The grit between my toes is starting to chafe the skin. I look up to see a kid. He couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen. He’s black, and he’s wearing black slacks, a nicely pressed white dress shirt, and a black waiter's apron. He’s holding his left arm in a funny way. In his other hand, he has a cell phone pressed to his ear. "...bad wreck," I hear him say. This is the guy. I know but I don’t know either. Kind of like the time I saw the guy who made a cuckold out of me. We walked passed each other in a Wal-Mart one afternoon. I knew it was him...but I didn't know. Kind of like the way a mom knows her kid is doing drugs...but at the same time she doesn't know. This is the guy I almost vowed to kill only moments ago. Across the intersection, another boy in identical clothing stands helplessly. They could only be brothers. I feel badly for them. You can read the fear in their body language. Some kid and his brother, coming home late from work. It was a hard stop-sign to see, especially at night...but to send Lori's Toyota flying forty feet down the road; they had to be going faster than forty-five miles per hour. But I had done stupid things at their age too.

10:23 PM. I returned once more to the Toyota. My brother-in-law, Ralph, is standing next to Dean. I feel naked and exposed with these members of my new family gazing upon me and my tragedy. We are all concerned for Lori, but when Ralph and Dean look into my eyes, I can see this overwhelming sense of pity. Those glances that make you realize how fragile your composure is, the kind that make your throat throb with a stifled sob and your nasal cavity burn the way it does as you try to fight tears. I barely know these people. Lori and I have been married for less than four months. And before that, my ongoing divorce had forced the meet-the-family routine to happen a few weeks before the wedding. But we are covering a lot of ground here tonight. We watch as half a dozen shouting guys move Lori from her seat and onto a bright orange backboard that looks red under the street light. "They say that you can ride in the ambulance with her, but you have to ride up front," Dean says. I nod. As if reading my mind, Dean goes on, "If I were you, I would drive your car, though." I nod again. "That's what I'm going to do," I say. Ralph appears next to me. "Don't worry about the car. I'll take care of all that," he says. "Thanks, Ralph," and I mean it as I try and look him in the eyes.

10:30 PM. I’m almost to the intersection of Wal-Triana and Highway 72, fighting to keep my speed at forty-five miles per hour. I have to beat the ambulance to the hospital. My phone is lost in the passenger side floor boards. But I’ve put Lori’s headset on and I’m dialing Mom and Dad. Not really sure why. It just seems like something that I should do under the circumstances. Mom is concerned. I feel stupid and incompetent for not having more details. The phone beeps. It’s Dean. I have to let Mom go, promising to call her later. “Do you have Lori’s keys?” Dean asks. And I do. They are in the trunk with her purse. “They need them in order to move her car,” he says. I affect a sharp u-turn and head back. Frustration is setting in.

10:35 PM. It’s like revisiting a nightmare as I pull up on the accident scene again. Ralph is waiting for me. I roll my window down and hand him the key. “The state trooper needs to talk to you,” he says with a look on his face that resonates with my frustration. I park my car and walk to the squad car. The trooper wants her license. I retrieve it from her purse. “Does she live on Pinegrove?” He asks. I blink; I’m not really paying attention. “Uh, no….111 Coldsprings Drive-“He cuts me off, completing my sentence as he notices the address on her license. He hands me her license. “You can go,” he says without even looking up from his clip board. Ralph is waiting for me at the car. “She’s gonna be ok. Just take it easy and be safe,” he says. It’s comforting to hear him say this.

10:48 PM. I get on the on-ramp at I-565. It’s late, the interstate is empty, and I’m about to blow my lid from the tedium of adhering to the speed limit. I’ve had enough and the stress boils over. I down shift to forth and drop the hammer. My little red Evo screams as the tach-needle surges to redline. Bam. I knock it into fifth just before the rev-limiter engages. I’m pinned in my seat by the acceleration. One-hundred ten, one-hundred twenty, one-hundred thirty, one-hundred forty miles per hour, I catch my breath. At one hundred and forty-five miles per hour, every hair on my body is sticking straight up. My mouth is as dry as a cup of flower. She could easily go faster, but I dare not try it. What have always been long sweeping turns in the interstate, suddenly seem like diminishing radius hair-pins.

11:00 PM. The freak show that is the ER from 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM. I sign in and they give me a tag to wear that has her room-number on it. A4. I brush the curtain aside to find the room bustling with activity. The cacophony of medical-speak between the nurses, the squeak of sneakers on the linoleum, the beep-beep of her heart monitor, the crackle of plastic wrappers being removed from sterilized instruments. Hoses, tubes, and chords coming out of the walls. My mother in law looks at me from across the room. She’s in the corner and she’s assaulting my composure with her eyes and quivering chin. I go to her and hug her before turning to Lori. “Can she feel her legs?” I ask. Linda nods, “She can feel them and move them.” This comes as a huge relief and manifests itself in the form of an audible sigh. Only one of us can stay. Linda picks up her coat and leans in over Lori to tell her that she will be right outside. I move next to her and put my fingers gently in Lori’s hair. The left side of her face is pink and swollen. The neck brace forces her to look at me out of the corner of her eye. I don’t even know what to say to her. As my fingers slide gently along her scalp, I see the fear and panic subside a little in her eyes. “How ya doin’, babe?” I ask. What a stupid thing to ask. “I’m ok,” she lies. I nod, watching the nurse fiddle with the monitor. Lori’s blood pressure is 117 over 50. I wonder if this is a safe number. I wish I was a doctor so badly. A nurse explains that she is going to have to cut Lori’s clothes off since they don’t want to risk moving her. Lori nods with her eyes. Bit by bit, her clothing is removed. Lori glances sideways at me and grins, “you’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I smile, “It’s the highlight of my evening.”

11:10 PM. We are alone now but for a single nurse. LaGina. She has a kind face and a soothing voice. “Ok, baby?” this and “ok, baby?” that. She’s clearly younger than either of us but with her calm confident actions, I barely notice. “I’m going to have to start an IV and get some blood for the lab. Ok, baby?” she says. Lori’s eyes roll towards me and her face contorts as if to say: “Here we go again.” I smile, causing her to smile back at me. Her voice is weak but she says: “Good luck with that. I’m a hard stick.” “She really is,” I add, “Her veins are shot.” Lori smiles sardonically at the ceiling. Her cynicism is comforting to me. This is my Lori alright. LaGina comes around to my side of the bed and with a pile of glass tubes and an IV needle. Lori offers her her hand dutifully. “Wow,” LaGina remarks after looking the arm over for a moment or two. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m only gonna try once. Ok, baby? Don’t wanna make a pin-cushion out of you.” I force myself to laugh at her joke. Lori smiles. I say a silent prayer, asking God to make this easy for once. LaGina wraps a thick rubber strap around Lori’s bicep and starts flicking her arm all over. She finds vein in Lori’s hand. “Wow, that’s a good one,” I remark. “This is gonna stick. Ok, baby?” Lori’s eyes squint as the needle punches through the skin. Blood appears in the clear tubing behind the needle. “Score,” I say. I’m truly impressed. Thank you, Lord. I’ve seen nurses stick Lori more than a dozen times before calling for someone else to try. With Lori’s BP at 117 over 50, it takes a veritable eternity to fill four viles with blood.

11:20 PM. The curtains are swept aside as Phillip enters. He’s got a grin on his face. He stands over the bed and watches the blood trickle into the vile and remarks on the fact that LaGina was actually able to stick a vein. I nod. “Boy, nothing’s worse than those nurses in the Navy,” he says, “When they stick you, it’s like BAM!” He punches me in the shoulder. I grin. Lori smiles feebly. LaGina can’t fill the last vile and she moves to the other arm and uses a butterfly needle. When she finishes, she tells us that they will be in to do X-rays in a little while. This means in about an hour if we are lucky. But we are more than lucky. After fifteen minutes, a hippy looking X-ray tech wearing cargo pants and a scrub top enters the room. “You guys wait outside,” he says to Phillip and me as he goes through the contents of the cabinet above the sink. I run my fingers through Lori’s hair one last time before complying.

11:30 PM. It could be 11:30 PM. I don’t know. I haven’t looked at a clock since I parked my car outside the ER. Lori’s X-rays are done and we are told that we are now waiting for a CT-scan. It’s just the two of us in the room now. Her eyes are closing and I get nervous. What if she has a concussion? I try to make small talk to keep her awake as I caress her scalp. Her hair feels soft and cool as it falls between my fingers. Hours pass as we wait. Lori begins to cough when the orderly comes to take her for the CT-scan. She almost screams from the pain. “Oh! My back!” her voice cracks as fresh tears stream down her face. I see panic in her eyes. I begin to fear that her injuries may be severe.

2:58 AM. The CT-scan is done and a nurse comes in to tell us that everything looks good and that the doctor will be in to see us before they discharge Lori. I don’t think I’ve ever been this relieved in my life. I return to the waiting room to give Dean and Linda the news. The lights are low in the little private waiting room just off of the ER. Dean and Linda are slumped in their chairs as a news anchor rambles on and on from a flat-screen television on the wall. Dean’s eyes are red with fatigue. We savor the moment together as I tell them that everything is going to be fine.

3:00 AM. The doctor enters the room. Emotionless and impersonal. It’s a perfunctory measure for him. Lori is going to be fine. Take X tablets of Z, Y times daily. She has lumbar and cervical sprains, which is med-speak for whiplash. I jokingly comment that it must be acute because Lori has a lot of whip to lash.

3:33 AM. Finally home. Lori breathes softly in the bed next to me. I pray a prayer of thanksgiving again for the hundredth time as I watch her sleep. Everything is going to be fine. The street lamp outside paints lines on the comforter as it shines through the slits in the blinds.