Stephen Dixon - Interstate

What do you do the moment you know your kid’s dead? You say to yourself you don’t know, she isn’t dead, she might look it but she’s not, all that blood around her and the expression she has and no signs of life anywhere can possibly be, can only mean, they have to be just that she’s deeply unconscious, hit hard on the head when the car suddenly stopped and she was thrown against the front seat, cut in the head too, gashed, torn, scalp bleeds like hell, but not dead, in no way is she. So you think you should do everything you can quick as you can to help her if she’s hurt and save her if she’s close to being dead. That’s what you should do, that’s what you do, even if you think when you look at her again on the floor in back with all that blood around her and her expression the way it is and still no signs of life anywhere, that she’s probably dead, could be, no, isn’t. So you rush her to a hospital in your car. Before that you breathe into her mouth and pound her chest to get her lungs and heart going again if they’ve stopped. You don’t pound her chest. You wouldn’t know how. You’d hurt her before you helped her or chances of hurting her and maybe finishing her off, if she has any life yet, by pounding her chest are greater than not. And her chest has a bullet hole in it, or what you think looks like one — and that was a gun the guy shot — and probably a bullet inside. There’s blood coming out of the hole and has to be the reason for all the blood around her, for she has no other cuts, gashes or tears you see after quickly scanning her from head to foot, and you press your hanky on the hole and when the hanky’s soaked through you pull your shirt off and press it on the hole and then, when that doesn’t stop the bleeding, a little into it, while you breathe into her mouth. Things you don’t think will work but one chance in a thousand or tens of thousands or a million they might. You once heard — you don’t think this then but it probably influences your actions in some underlaid way to do everything you can to help and save her, to do both at once, help-save, help-save, for you don’t know how badly off she is but feel she has to be very badly off since she still isn’t moving and doesn’t seem to be breathing and still hasn’t given a single sign of being alive. Anyway, to do everything you can for her right away and not just give up because she looks dead and start screaming and wailing and beating your head or think the only thing you can do for her is drive her to a hospital, if you can find one or in time. For where are you on this road? What exit was last, which one’s coming up? Are you a mile or ten or even twenty miles from one? And you didn’t hear this but got it from a friend in a letter he sent you more than twenty years ago, or a phone call. He’d settled on the other coast and was in a van with his son around Julie’s age at the time and was high or drunk, he said, when the van got stuck and then stalled on the tracks at a railway crossing when a train was coming — no. He was going too fast around a sharp turn, he said, and the van went out of control and slammed into a wall. It was in fact a motorcycle they were on, boy holding on to him in back, neither in helmets — they weren’t compulsory in that state then, not that he would have worn one himself if it had been the law, he later said, though he would have put one on his son if only because his wife would have made him or she wouldn’t have let the kid on the bike, as he called it — and he hasn’t ridden one since because of that accident and can’t even get himself to be a passenger on one — when he lost control while trying to take an almost ninety-degree curve about thirty miles over the posted speed limit—“I was young, dumb, cocky and sloshed and thought I could make it with mph’s to spare and give the kid one of life’s biggest kicks and make him think his dad was great”—and flipped over a highway barricade and landed in some bushes though the kid hit a tree. The railway-crossing accident was a few years later when he was alone. He leaped out of the front seat when he heard the train whistling at him and the van was demolished. The boy had a hole in his head the size of a lacrosse ball, he said, and he could see the brains and bones it was so deep. There was no breath, wiggling or heartbeat and he blew air into the hole after he gave up trying to revive him by breathing into his mouth and pressing down on his chest. When people tried tearing him off the boy he yelled “Don’t touch me or him, I’ll kill anybody who tries,” and blew and blew into his son’s head and after about a half hour of this the boy opened his eyes and, his friend swore, smiled and said “Hi.” It was a miracle, he said, or a million-to-one shot defying all laws of science and biology and everything any expert knows about them and he only thought to do it because after he stopped trying to resuscitate him in normal ways a fingernail scratched through his shirt into his back and he said “Ouch, whoever, get the fuck away,” and then turned around furiously to see who was still scratching him and there wasn’t anyone even near but he heard the voice of his dead mother say “My dear, the trick’s not to lick or quit but to freshen his intellect with your breath without letup.” So what’s your point? The point’s that though your friend didn’t think this then he went against all odds and didn’t give up when everything seemed hopeless for his son and people were even trying to pull him away — but you’ve said that, so what’s next? What’s next is you do it too, not into the bullet hole but her mouth, not thinking what your friend did but only remembering it weeks later and thinking it must have had an influence. Thinking now that it’s a million-to-one shot she’ll survive but chances of getting her to a hospital in time are even less, so if anything’s going to save her it’ll be this, though you don’t know why. So you breathe into her mouth almost nonstop for about fifteen minutes while Margo, not close to the road because you don’t want her getting hit by anything or the air suck of a truck or bus to pull her onto it, tries to wave cars down though maybe most of them think she’s waving them away or just waving hello at them, when a car pulls over and driver asks what’s up, anything he can do? and takes you in your car, for you don’t want to stop your mouth-to-mouth breathing into her, to what he thinks is the nearest hospital though you have to know, he says, he’s not from around here but has driven through it a number of times. Says he sees an H sign, follows it, no hospital or other H signs after a few miles, stops at a gas station for directions, parks at the hospital emergency entrance, you run in shouting for someone, help, your daughter, shot in the chest, maybe dying, please, anybody, it’s an emergency-emergency, come quick, doctors and emergency equipment to your car outside, feeling by now they won’t be able to do anything for her and maybe you should have tried finding a hospital yourself right after she was shot instead of spending so much time trying to revive her with your breathing but also that there just may still be a chance they will.

What do you do when two doctors or a woman and man in white hospital coats who look like doctors or hospital officials approach you with what you know, by their expressions and slow walk and shoulder slump of the man that you know’s unnatural for him except in situations like this, is the worst news possible? Not “news,” just the worst information — not that, either. Just with the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, could happen to you unless they were about to tell you that both your children died or couldn’t be saved. Seeing your kid shot and then being told she’s dead by someone in a position to know, are two of the — the two worst things that can happen to you, or hearing she was shot or in a terrible car crash or a fire, for instance, and hurt very bad and might not survive and then later that she couldn’t be saved and died. Those two; those are the worst. Or that she’s got an incurable disease and has only two weeks to live, three, a month but no more — two, but that’s all: those might be better to hear, compared to the others, but maybe not. You haven’t experienced those so you don’t know. You say to them “Don’t say anything, I can tell it’s the worst news possible. Not ‘news’—not ‘information,’ either. Just the worst thing, period. I don’t want to hear. See my ears, see my eyes?” You clamp your eyes shut, cup your ears. “For it can’t be, right? Please, for God’s sake say anything to me but what you’re about to, if you have to say anything.” “Well, we…” the man begins. “Look at me in a different way too. That she’s okay — that kind of look and words. Or she’s going to be or chances are still okay to good for her surviving or some other things from you like that,” and the woman says “We wish we could, sir, all of us,” and the man says “We did everything humanly and technically possible for her, Mr. Frey, and with the best medical equipment and professional expertise available in any hospital in the state. And there exists no better equipment and staff anywhere, and they all just happened to be here for a staff meeting at this particular time. But when it comes down to it”—“Didn’t you hear me? What’d I just say?”—“we got her much too late, I’m sorry.” “Much too, much too,” the woman says. “We all share your grief.” You raise your hands — you want to pound the walls with your fists, get down on the floor and bang it, throw things, push people around, scream some meaningless sound loud and long till your breath gives out — wiggle your fingers and keep wiggling them faster and faster in front of you while saying “Oh, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?” They look at your wiggling as if they’ve never seen this kind of reaction to what they’ve just told you. Your daughter, you think. Where’s the other one? “Where is she?” and the woman says “She? The one who succumbed? Still in the room down the hall but we seriously advise you not to go to her just yet. Things need to be done with her, and you’re not—” and you say “Not she, not Julie, but my other daughter, the older one. Why can’t I remember her name all of a sudden? Starts with a what? — I can’t even remember that, the first letter. I’ve never forever — I’ve never forgotten it ever. I’ve called her ‘Julie’ by mistake lots of times when I was intending to call her by her own name. And ‘Lee,’ I’ve called her, which is my wife’s, just as I’ve done to Julie and Lee with Margo’s name and Julie’s for Lee’s and vice versa—‘Margo,’ that’s who. So where is she?” Then “Oh no, I can’t take this, it’s the worst truth imaginable, possible, portable, execrable, inexcusable, none of those, call it quits,” and your head’s dizzy and stomach feels sick as if you’ve got to shit, bowels hot and knees weak and your legs, arms, fingertips, every part of you hurtles and whirls and you want to collapse and spill, when you hear someone yell — your eyes are closed now and you’re going—“Guy’s absolutely green, catch him,” and you’re grabbed as you fall, hit the ground anyway and black out and next thing you’re lying on a soft bench, head up into a metal dish, you’ve made in your pants, kaka, vomit, piss, you don’t care but the mix stinks, smelling salts held close to your nose, your head bolts and chin clips the bottle, “Get it away,” you think and slap at the hand holding it. “Leave me be. I’m all right. I just want to stay passed out for good,” and a man says, not the doc, “Sir, Mr. Gray? Listen to me if you can. Your daughter Margo’s fine, being attentively looked after by the staff. The police, who think this urgent, would like you to answer some very important questions about the crime. I’m only doing what they ask, sir, so may I help you up?” and you say “Get me pants, get me pants, I can’t see people like this.”