Al Steiner: Doing It All Over

Jack drinks as much beer as he always has and he's had no further heart problems. He was seventy-three years old on his last birthday but looks fifty due to frequent exercise and outdoor activities. When Viagra first came out I asked him jokingly (after several beers on the fishing boat) if he wanted me to ask Nina to write him a prescription for some.

He looked at me lecherously and said, "I certainly don't need any of THAT shit youngster. I ain't that old."

So that's how our lives have gone, how things turned out differently with pre-knowledge. I didn't change the world, just a few lives in it. Fate has seemingly accepted us, made allowances for us. We have left a wake of passage in the smooth fabric of what was supposed to be but, as I've seen, the wake has mostly closed up behind us leaving only a few ripples to mark our passage.

Only a few ripples.

On a beautiful April afternoon in 1998 I had to drive to Spokane to pick up the new fish-finder I was planning to get Jack for his birthday. Laura, who was almost three, and Jason, who was seven months, were with me since it was a day that Nina worked.

As always when I found myself in Spokane on such days, I stopped at the trauma center for a brief visit. Nina, as well as her co-workers, enjoyed seeing the kids for a few minutes and I enjoyed seeing my wife doing her job. I got the most enjoyment when we snuck in while she was in the middle of a procedure and I got to observe her at work. It was then that I could contrast the Nina that was with the Nina that should have been. It was then that I could feel how I'd thwarted fate, how I'd defied it in the control of a life.

We spent about twenty minutes in the doctor's lounge, the kids sitting on their mother's lap. Laura was babbling about something or other, using her fifty or so word vocabulary while Jason and I were munching on some chips from a dip tray that someone had brought in. Most of the crumbs from Jason's chip were tumbling down the front of Nina's scrub shirt, which was just starting to bulge outward at the abdomen from the presence of the as-yet-unnamed Megan, who was four months along in her belly.

Finally a nurse poked her head in.

"Nina," she said, "we got an ambulance three minutes out with a twenty mile an hour auto-ped. Positive loss of consciousness and repetitive questioning. Obvious tib-fib fracture too."

She sighed, "Thanks Jen," she said sourly, handing the kids over to me. "Oh well, duty calls."

We exchanged kisses and I took the kids and went outside to the ambulance bay, hanging out until the ambulance of which they'd spoken backed in.

I looked at the ambulance with nostalgia, as I always did when I found myself in such situations. It was amazing how much I remembered from my former career, how much I missed it at times. The ambulance was the 96-240.

I remembered that it was the rig with the bizarre electrical problems that sometimes caused the radios, the power windows, and the power steering to just die until you shut off the engine and started it again. The EMT that jumped out of the driver's seat was Rob Forehand, an aspiring fireman that had been my partner for a short time once. The paramedic that jumped out of the back was Jim Corgan, one of the oldest employees that we'd employed. He was number one on the seniority list and always had his choice of shifts when we bid for them. He was also cursed with a chronically sore back, a hazard of the business, and typically took off four months of every given year on work comp. I knew these two well but they had no idea who I was.

I smiled as they gave me a disinterested glance, probably figuring I was the family of a patient out for a smoke or something. They pulled their patient out of the rig. He was a street person dressed in scraggly clothes and smelling strongly of alcohol. He was strapped to a backboard, a cervical collar around his neck, two IVs plugged into his arms. They started to move him towards the entrance doors.

"Hey Rob," I said to the EMT, smiling. "Hope you get hooked up with the fire department soon."

He looked at me strangely, trying to place my face, trying to figure out if he knew me.

Before he could say anything I turned to his partner. "How you doing Jim? Good to see you. How's the back treatin' you these days?"

He gave me the same expression, finally answering, "Uh, it's okay."

"Good," I nodded, shifting Jason in my arms and grabbing Laura's hand once more. "I'll let you get back to your work."

I disappeared back to my Toyota four-runner, leaving their puzzled expressions behind me. Sometimes I just couldn't resist doing things like that.

We left the trauma center and headed for better parts of town. We picked up the fish-finder and I decided to treat my two children to some greasy fast food from a drive-through. Nina would most definitely not have approved but Jason couldn't talk yet and Laura lacked the vocabulary or the memory to rat me out.

We took our contraband to a nearby city park. Had I known something was going to happen? Had I been led there by fate for unknown reasons? Maybe. Maybe not. If so, fate does have its kind side.

The park was one that I'd once taken my daughter Becky to when she was young. Did I stop there out of nostalgia? Did I stop there because I remembered it was a good park to take kids too? I honestly don't know. I don't remember the vision of Becky coming to my consciousness at all in the decision to stop there. Thinking of Becky always made unpleasant feelings of guilt and loss to surface so my mind worked hard to keep those thoughts suppressed.

But whatever the reason, Laura, Jason, and I soon found ourselves sitting at one of the picnic tables beside the playground area. Ten or so kids of various ages and sizes were playing on the monkey bars, on the swings, on the slides, while their parents, mothers only for the most part, sat at benches or tables and kept an eye upon them.

The kids chowed down their chicken nuggets and french fries. They slurped their orange sodas dry. Finally Laura headed off to play on the jungle gym with the other kids. I carried Jason over to the swings and installed him in the baby swing. His little fists gripped the chain tightly but his face was all smiles as I began to push him in ever increasing arcs.

Then it happened.

"Swing me Mommy, swing me!" A girlish voice demanded from behind me.

I froze, waves of gooseflesh traveling up and down my entire body. I felt myself go clammy. I knew that voice, knew it well. It had been more than fifteen years since I'd last heard it. I had fought hard to keep it out of my conscious thought. But I never doubted for an instant, even before I turned around to look, that the voice was Becky.

I let my head pivot on my shoulders until I was looking at the little girl. She was about three years old, her dark hair tied into pigtails that bounced up and down as she skipped towards the swings. She was wearing a pair of blue jean overalls and sandals. It was Becky, no doubt about it, none whatsoever. Her face was slightly different than it had been, different in only the subtlest ways, ways that probably reflected the difference in paternity. But she had the same brown eyes, the same brown hair, the same upturned nose that she'd inherited from her mother. I was inundated with stark feelings of merging realities, with a horrid sense of deja vu unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

This feeling was intensified when I saw Lisa coming up behind her. She looked exactly the same as she had when I'd last seen her. Exactly. She was wearing a light summer dress that came to her knees. It was white with blue patterns upon it. I remembered that dress, had seen Lisa wearing it many times when we'd switched off Becky according to our custody arrangement.

Becky came running up at full speed and jumped onto the swing next to mine, one of the big-kid swings, landing on her stomach. Her feet came up off the ground and her forward momentum set her swinging in that position. She didn't even notice the man next to her, staring at her, not breathing as he did so, his mouth agape in surprise. Was her name still Becky? I knew that it was, I simply knew it.