Natalie, driving quiet-souled and competently towards the Golden Gate, in her mind's eye saw the grandiose yet graceful Golden Gate bridge again and she yearned to already be on it; she saw its distant, blue-gray waters, which would be, from that height, like hitting cement, and a good contentment blossomed in her. She would soon be over its railing and headed into the water's death far, far below And her fatal disease—she could not say its name and award it stronger strength, even though she'd been an EMT and then a trauma nurse for thirty years and had seen enough to give Superman forty or fifty deep, psychic scars—would vanish under the water. But, at work, she had hardly dealt with that–that disease. She had dealt with mangled accident victims, with still hot-skinned burn victims and with other horrors beyond description. So why couldn't she deal with her disease, see it through to its painful end?
Well she knew why. Michael, with his steady, loving husbandly heart, was dead of viral pneumonia. She'd had no chance even to lovingly nurse him till the end, he'd been gone so suddenly. Her cherished son, Troy, was dead, killed in the Gulf War. And what awaited her in her fatal disease surely couldn't be worse than losing a son. Her beloved sister, Marcene, was dead. Everyone she had loved was dead, gone to memories and gravestones and green grass, six feet above them.
She braked at a red light. San Francisco had so many traffic lights and she'd driven for an hour before crossing The Bay Bridge and descending into the turmoil, noise, tall buildings, racial variety and financial might of San Francisco. Long ago she and Michael had honeymooned here within walking distance of the colorful Fisherman's Wharf. In early married life they'd attended the theaters here and enjoyed the city's Mother Lode of attractions. But those days—gone—gone.
She would not leap from The Bay Bridge; somehow that two-pronged bridge didn't look right for leaping.
Of course she had colleagues at work, neighbors, acquaintances and in ordinary times they comforted her, kept her busy, but what could they do with this disease inside her, growing, growing? She loved them, if in a slimmer way than her beloved dead, but they could not help her now. And soon, if they should need her in any way, she would be too ill to be of any help to them. Soon she would probably have to quit work entirely and wait—wait—for the end?
And why should she wait?
She didn't need those last few days. She'd left a note on the dining room table stating,
I've done this of my own free will. No one is even a trifle to blame, or could have prevented it. I have had a good, full life. Please remember me with fondness. I have appreciated you all.
Love and blessings to every one of you.
She expertly maneuvered through the claustrophobic, noisy traffic. She'd always been good with her hands. She had skilled hands; she had been told that often. To be really good at her profession required skilled hands. And an excellent memory. Her years of training flowered before her. She still remembered the details of almost every class; her future job to do all humanly possible, under various circumstances, to stop an injured's bleeding, do CPR if needed, clear breathing passages, or a myriad of hopefully helpful actions to stabilize trauma victims.
She had worried she'd never pass the tests, though she had never flunked a test in her life. But the classes presented so many acronyms to remember, long ones, and she must never make an error in an acronym's meaning, or in anything. With pinched in breath, she had waited for the results of the final test. Exultation had danced in her when she learned she had passed and would soon get her Certification in the mail! She and Michael, with Troy beside them, had lofted triumphant glasses of champagne and laughed and sipped. After that she'd seldom parted from her private trauma kit, labeled her First Aid kit, which she'd assembled for her Accompanist for all and everywhere. It lay on her car's front passenger's floorboard this instant. But—all done with that now.
She had loved her profession—no, that was not the word for seeing such sights. She had hugged to herself the satisfaction of knowing she was helping those suddenly under her charge—helping for the most part, of course, for there were those, too, who unfortunately lay beyond earthly help. Now all that training, knowledge and experience would disappear under the waves. And that was what she wanted.
She braked so that a white Subaru ahead could safely wiggle into the rarest of delights, a parking space on a street in San Francisco. Another memory surfaced.
They'd brought Troy here to see the Cable Car Museum, the three-masted sailing ship, the Balchutha; to see The Carousel Museum, the Presidio lording its military strength over the Golden Gate, to Ft. Mason nearly under the bridge, built during the Civil War.
Would she shortly see Troy again? Hidden as he was in Four Crosses Cemetery, where the Veterans of Foreign Wars decorated his grave, and battalions of others, every Memorial Day. She remembered how he had waved his last goodbye as he'd left for the Middle East and all its bloody killings. He'd locked a smile on his face for them; he was as brave as his father. And for him, she'd successfully dammed back her fountain of tears. He'd looked what he was, a blond, young Greek God, hormoned for some lovely and intelligent young woman to love him, forever.
If she saw him again shortly, she hoped it would be as that last moment with her and his father, but this time he would turn and run back into her arms, instead of into death.
He had been such a beautiful baby. Memories recaptured her, though she saw the thronged road before her, the red or green traffic lights, the pedestrians, the buildings, and everything before her clearly. They camped again in the High Sierras; they backpacked further up to where the three of them were all alone in the resplendent spirituality of the wilderness; they camped at Lost Lake and marveled at the mirror-like splendor of it, laughed at how awful the canned chicken spread they'd brought with him as a camping experiment looked and tasted; they sat in the evening's coolness around a Sonora Pass campfire and roasted marshmallows and sang This Old Man for Troy's sake, and the fire popped and even the black burns on the marshmallows tasted ambrosial.
After Troy had gone to his tired, early sleep, they, in their sleeping bags, which fortunately zipped together into one, made love. Always they had sought to make love in the outdoors, with the stars above them and the hard ground beneath them. Soon Michael's strong arms would be around her again. The hair on his arms had always felt soft and glossy, unlike the darkening blond hair on his head.
She'd dressed for this reunion with him in a pink and green flowered and flowing dress, and had dabbed on some Chanel #5 perfume that he had given her for a Christmas present.
More memories streamed across her mind's eye. Michael and she had worked together remodeling their first modest house. Wallpapering its living room ceiling with textured white wallpaper. As they'd smoothed one end against the ceiling, the other end had fallen down. After finishing that frustrating job never again had they wallpapered.
Michael snapped Troy's photos at swimming with his friends in the makeshift pool he'd designed, at birthday parties, at–at everything. They'd picnicked, went again, as in every spring, to Mt. Diablo and from its observation tower gazed at the scenery stretching almost to the Golden Gate. They hiked and hiked over green, green hills and amongst and over huge boulders; they swam in sight of the boardwalk of Santa Cruz; they hiked in the Redwoods with cathedral trees about them, raced beaches, fished rivers, swam and canoed in the Russian River and sailed The Bay. Was there any place in California, or in the nearby states, which they had not explored?
They had done so much she could not even think about it all, or she would never get to her destination. The destination where so many hundreds had jumped over the railing to their deaths below. And she must get to that destination of her destiny. To the brotherhood and sisterhood of that jumping. She must let nothing stop her.
Mama and Dad's long-gone faces shone before her; she and her sister Marcene played with their dolls and the two-story dollhouse which Dad had made. On old, nearly-antique, rackety skates she skated on sidewalks; happy years later, with wind in her hair, she and Michael, with his arm around her shoulders and snuggling her close, sped toward Lake Tahoe in Jimmy's red convertible. She picked out her dress, a soft blue dream, for her Senior Prom. In her cap and gown she walked towards her high school diploma.
In shimmering white satin, with Helen beside her in pink, and Michael, with Jimmy beside him, stood before the flower-decked altar to be married. Married, married, oh what joy!
She swelled with Troy inside her, violently kicking her now and then. She walked in the door of home with him. Houses she'd lived in and loved in ghosted past her.
It had been a good life, but no time to think of all of it now. She'd reviewed it over and over lately and loved most of the reviewing. She hummed a bit of Somewhere My Love. Of course there had been bumps and steep hills over the years, but her mind managed not to dwell on them, but fasten on the plentiful good times. When Michael's father and mother had died in a plane crash, that had been a bad time. And when Troy's first girlfriend had broken up with him had been a much-lesser bad time, till he'd found another. Each time any one of their legion of pets had died had been a bad time. But even memories of the inevitable bad times would soon be gone. She was content with that.
Horses galloped before her; rains stormed down; sun warmed her bare arms; her kite lofted high; her bicycle wheels spun; gulls cried; their sailboat nearly heeled over against the waves of The Bay. Her pet dogs ran and played with her; her canary sang.
She gained the ramparts of the bridge. Streams of traffic on it, as usual. Busy, busy, busy! If only she could jump from here, but, one could not. Only rocks below. She paid her money at the toll booth. Hah! All that paying out for this or that would soon be gone too! She went forward. Only a short time now. She would leave her keys and purse in the car. And the photos of Michael and Troy, which lay on the seat beside her accompanying her this last mile.
She drove on and nearly gained the center of the bridge. Watch out! she nearly shouted aloud at the blue car ahead. That driver, with a sole female passenger, gazed too often out over The Bay and talked on his cell phone besides! What a damn fool! This was no place for sightseeing, no matter what the temptation, and certainly not for talking on a cell phone!
Watch out! His car crossed the line and with an explosive grinding noise and moving color, struck a white SUV partly head on. Her foot hit the brake. Brakes screeched behind her from the vehicles behind her and in the other lanes. Hell! How dare such careless and headless people delay her! She and they would be trapped here amidst a rubbernecking crowd for hours!
Someone, or several someones, started screaming. No fire at least! She grabbed her First Aid kit and ran to the blue car. The first thing was to access which person in this car, or the other car, was the most seriously injured, but stood a good chance of survival. Blood covered the neck of the driver in the blue car. She ran to the other car. All three occupants, bloody, white-faced, in shock, looked as if they'd survive. The bloodied driver of the blue car looked unconscious. He seemed the one who needed her most. She sped to the passenger of the blue car who had the car door open now and was struggling out and continuing to scream, "My husband! My husband!" A small, anguished, terrified crowd already had gathered about the car.
"I'm a EMT, a trauma nurse," she said in her voice of authority. "Clear the way and I'll see to the driver." She yanked on her body substance isolation, vinyl gloves. Other hands assisted the middle-aged passenger aside and quickly sat her on the curb and wrapped someone's gray coat about her shoulders.
Natalie crawled into the blue smash of car; the man was breathing surprisingly well. She felt the man's pulse and bloodied the fingers of her gloves. Pulse okay for the situation. She must not move him, in case he had a fractured cervical vertebrae. His right humerus had an open fracture though, she could tell that. That could wait till later; but she must stop the blood spurting from just below his jaw. With a 4 X 4 sterile gauze pad she pressed firmly against the wound, received from who knew where. Accidents were strange, quirky. All kinds of queer injuries happened.
The man moaned. Ah, that was good. Sound from a patient almost-always was a good sign. The pad filled with blood. She pressed another against the first, and another and another. A siren wailed. The ambulance. With all the vehicles packed onto this bridge, it would take that ambulance awhile to get here. In case the man could hear, she stated, "Help is on the way. I'm a trauma nurse. You're being cared for." Cars started up and pulled to the sides of the bridge so the ambulance with its siren blaring could inch through between them and creep nearer. The man's eyes opened. They were a beautiful dark blue. Surprise filled his face. "What&151;happened?" his shaky voice asked. "Who— are you?"
"You've been in a car accident," she answered calmly. "I'm a nurse. Your passenger looks okay." She added another gauze pad.
"You're—saving— my life," the man finally got out.
She'd been told that often. And sometimes it had been true. "I'm just doing my job," she answered.
The ambulance pulled along the railing side of the car. From the ambulance, men in blue raced toward them. "I'm a trauma nurse," she stated to the first of them. They could verify that later if they wanted to, but the man seemed to believe her.
They exchanged places. Outside the car, amidst a clot of people, she stripped the bloody gloves from her hands and tucked them into a zip lock bag. Without disturbing anyone she found her First Aid kit near the door and got it back together as best she could.
She heard the siren call of The Bay's forever-healing waters. Amidst the murmuring, crying, talking crowd she staggered and nearly pushed herself to the railing. Yes, that was what she was, a Trauma Nurse. She gazed at the blue-gray water far below. Even with people surrounding her, she'd heed its siren song. She yearned to be plunging toward it right this instant. Yearned! She listened hard. Only the sounds of the crowd, the ambulance crew and the wails of other ambulances filled the air. Still—she must jump. Below her was The Bay water, some from the wondrous High Sierras, rushing out the Golden Gate.
It was only beauty.
She listened hard again. Nothing from the water. Thank God, she had been near the accident—if only to reassure the man that he was in helping hands. Jump! So there had been these injuries before her and there would be countless other injuries elsewhere. Jump! For any accident victim's sake she must not jump. Must not! But if she did not jump, there would be pain. Well hell, pain might be the price for the wonderful life she had led for the most part. Pain was terrible, but there was morphine and Hospice and quiet endurance, and looking forward to seeing Troy and Michael. She pushed and struggled back to her car and tucked her Kit back inside. She again could buy anything missing. Unfortunately, a world of injuries was out there. She must not desert them. Must not! Till she died, or she could no longer tend to anyone, she must not desert them! "I'm not dead yet," she said aloud "No, Ma'am," a male voice answered and she almost laughed.
Pray God, she would not have to use that trauma kit again today. But— one never knew. Many dangerous miles stretched between her and home.
Between her and home. |