Bless you

It was dark and he was driving. He couldn’t only drive when it was light out, that’d cut way into his arrival time. And he really needed to be on time.

Trees, trees and more trees. Ponderosa pines. When you were that far north in the Western United States it was hard to understand all the talk of deforestation and saving the trees. There seemed to be more than enough up there to go around.

He was a damn good driver, he knew the distance between his front right tire and the white line down to the inch. Never been in an accident in seven years of trucking. He chuckled and patted himself on the back.

He was approaching a little blue Honda Accord. He didn’t feel like passing, he was making good time as it was. He slowed up, leisurely.

The clock read 12:11 AM. He should stop soon. He still had about an hour in him though, he knew his limits. He turned up the radio. Daytimes he’d listen to a book on tape to better himself, but nights he liked to daydream and listen to music, let his mind run wild. He was tuned to a top 40s station, “What if you had it all, but nobody to call,” which sent his mind wandering. “Wow if I had it all I wouldn’t be whining like this kid,” he chuckled to himself again, then rolled down the window a bit for some fresh air. He was speaking out loud to himself now, “If I had it all I’d get the first flight to Cancun and start fresh there. Maybe Hawaii actually. But man do I love tacos...” he felt a tingle in his nose and tried to catch the sneeze before it left him. He inhaled sharply.

“He’d been driving a truckload of produce to Seattle. Onions and potatoes mostly, things that don’t need to be refrigerated. They’re saying it happened when he sneezed, you know how your eyes close when you sneeze to keep your eyes from shooting out of your head? Well sometimes you get these muscle spasms as well, apparently he’d accidently pressed harder on the gas. He’d been driving just a hair too close to you, son, and well, here we are.”

Jake had just woken up in a hospital bed with his mom and dad beside him. His mom had been crying softly into his father’s shoulder. When she saw him wake up, she winced and went back into his father’s shoulder. His father was trying to explain to him what happened.

He remembered he’d been driving home from a party, one of the first his parents had actually allowed him to go to. He’d had just one drink. He wasn’t a saint, but he certainly wasn’t reckless, either.

He felt fine. Well honestly he didn’t really feel anything, but he wasn’t in pain so that was something. He wondered how long he’d been there. How long he would be there.

His dad had said the insurance company was going to be giving him $20,000. Wow he thought, he should’ve gotten into a wreck sooner.

A nurse came in, followed by the doctor. The doctor had a very round head with a bald spot on top that reflected the light so strongly it made you squint, like looking straight into the sun. The bald spot was surrounded by a ring of flat brown hair. His glasses lenses were perfect circles with tortoise shell rims. Jake couldn’t be sure, he’d been so hazy all day, but he distinctly felt there was a layer of dirt around the outside edges of the doctor's face.

The nurse took the clipboard from the bin at the end of Jake’s bed and proceeded to check things on the monitor and make notes. She read numbers aloud, wrote them down, and the doctor nodded, watching her, then shifting his gaze to Jake, then back to her. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning, his expression seemed to just be floating in between.

The nurse started bantering with Jake in the way that nurses do, saying he was strong, calling him handsome. He smiled, and she wrote something down. He wondered if “make patient smile” was on her clipboard to be checked off.

The doctor hadn’t said anything the whole time. After he’d been in the room a couple of minutes he’d pulled out a little black journal from a deep pocket on the left side of his coat. It didn't look like hospital property, in fact it looked like a Moleskine. He made some notes in there, then put it back in his pocket.

The nurse left and the doctor stepped forward. Politely, he asked Jake’s parents to leave, he had some things he’d like to talk with Jake about in private.

“Jake,” he said “I’m Doctor Mulligan.”

“Nice to meet you, doctor,” Jake did his best to smile genuinely.

“Jake, I’d like to get to know you on a personal level. If that’d be ok with you.”

“Sure, doc”

“From around here?”

“Sure, just about 30 minutes south east. Nooksack.”

“Ah, grade school?”

“Yes sir, junior in high school.”

“Mmm,” a pause, then “ What do you love about life, Jake”

“Well doctor that feels like a very loaded question considering the circumstances,” Jake nodded down to the rest of his body on the hospital bed and tried to chuckle.

The doctor continued in earnest, “Well it doesn’t have to be. Here let me give you an example, see, I love photography. I love capturing a moment in time and making it immortal. Lately I’ve been experimenting with exposure. See, there’s a way to expose the film so that it looks just like what the human eye can see. But, what’s much more fun, is to expose the film the way you want the world to look. Less exposure can turn even the sunniest of days into stormy overcast weather. See--” he shifted in his seat and reached for the pocket on his left side. Then he stopped. “Oh we’ll save that for another day,” he said with a grin. “Moving right along, next question then, what do you plan to do with the money,”

“Sir?”

“The money. From the insurance company? Young boy like yourself must have lots of plans.”

The nurse walked in, “Doctor you’re needed in room 204.”

“Ah,” He stood and gave Jake one last deep look. He smiled with only one half of his mouth. Then he turned to go.

“Wait doctor, what’s wrong with me? Am I going to be ok?”

The doctor turned back. He had an odd expression on his face, almost like that of a kid in elementary school who was called on to answer a question even though he hadn’t raised his hand.

“I certainly hope so,” he said.

Days passed, Jake was in and out of consciousness. Once he woke up in the middle of the night to the steady beeping of his heart monitor, he saw his mother sleeping in an armchair in the corner.

The next time he woke up it was the middle of the day and he was alone. His eyes wandered outside his window where there was a squirrel deconstructing an acorn, holding it in it’s two little hands, almost like it was praying with it. When the squirrel felt Jake’s attention on him, he froze. Jake froze too, trying to imitate the squirrel, not moving, not blinking, opening his eyes wider and wider.

“Um, Jake?” Madeline stood in the doorway. Rainbow striped top, blue jeans, blonde hair in a high ponytail.

“Maddie!”

“I’ve been here a bunch of times when I wasn’t in school but you were always sleeping,” she’d come over now and was sitting beside him. She touched his hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine! Well, I mean honestly, I don’t really feel anything”

“Well that’s better than being in pain” she said.

“How’re you? What's new in the outside world?”

“Fine fine everything’s the same as it ever was. Worried about you of course. I still don’t really know what’s wrong or what’s broken. I tried to ask that doctor of yours but he’s a weird guy.”

“Tell me about it” said Jake.

“Yeah I mean he even took my picture.”

“He what?”

“Yeah I was asking him about you and he said we should go to the waiting room to talk about it. Then he asked if he could take my picture and I thought why not he’s your doctor and everything.”

She paused. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t stop picturing the doctor, alone, at home on his couch, looking at the picture of Maddie.

“Hey whatever you’re doing stop, I can see here that your blood pressure is rising. The nurses told me how to read these things. So just stop it’s no big deal.”

But somehow it was.

He tried to calm himself down, he looked out the window. The squirrel was gone, but some of the remnants of the acorn were still on the branch.

“What ever happened to the guy who did this to me?” he asked her.

“Apparently it was an honest mistake, could’ve happened to anyone. Had great insurance from the trucker’s union, though. But he was devastated. He sent you these,” she held up a bunch of blue balloons. “He moved to Alaska”

“Alaska? What’s in Alaska?”

“Trees I guess” they both laughed. As Jake laughed the tears started and he couldn’t stop them.

His mind was doing funny things. He was lost in an image of the globe-headed doctor holding a photo of Maddie in that rainbow striped shirt at the top of a mountain in Alaska. He almost felt like he was there with him.

When the doctor left the hospital that day he turned and looked back.

“Easy now,” he said to himself, “start from the left.” One by one he went over the windows of each of his patients rooms and stated aloud the patient's name and one defining characteristic. He got to Jake, “Young,” he said. “No, no that’s not specific enough. Hungry. Yeah I think that fits better.” He took out the black journal from the pocket of his coat, scratched something out, and wrote something in.

He took his white coat off and put it in his trunk, he drove a 1977 Volkswagen Beetle in teal blue.

The sun was setting as he was driving home. He pulled off the road to take a photo. He only had one shot left in his camera. He moved around, squatting, walking a few yards to the left then to the right. He wanted it to be just right, the light glancing sideways off the late fall leaves.

He took the shot, then got back into his car.

He stopped at the gas station. He didn’t need gas, he went into the store and bought a pack of Marlboro Lights and a bag of Snyder's Honey Mustard pretzel pieces. He counted out three pieces into his hand. He thought about lighting a cigarette, then thought better of it.

Mrs. Webster had died that day, Room 204. Stomach cancer. He’d sat in the room on one side of her, her husband on the other. He’d been there as her heart beat monitor slowed, then stopped. The nurses rushed in, coaxing the husband, taking their notes. He’d needed to move on to the next patient.

He thought about the kid with the pretty girlfriend. He wondered if there was anything he could do. No one deserved that, especially not a kid. But none of it was up to him. Not really.

He leaned on the hood of his car. The light was almost gone now, like an eyelid closing in slow motion. If he’d had one more shot in his camera he’d have caught it, that haziness right before darkness descends over everything.

He decided he did need that cigarette after all.