Tom Barbash: Stay Up With Me

At the sink in the women’s room you splash cold water on your cheeks, then pat dry your face with a paper towel. You look like you always look. You have no record of unsafe driving, not even a speeding ticket.

An image through the windshield flashes in your mind. The girl’s eyes are less scared than bewildered, as though she’d seen not a car coming at her but a UFO.

“You all right?” There’s a woman at the next sink; you don’t remember her walking in.

“Fine,” you say. “I thought I lost a contact.”

After a second coffee you feel more jittery than sleepy, and nervous, though this doesn’t distinguish you from anyone else in the waiting room.

You can be whatever you need to be here, which is something you’ve always been good at. It was your inborn empathy, your drama teacher said. You’d starred in three plays in high school and another in college for which you’d earned a fawning write-up in a regional newspaper.

For now you focus on your role here. You locate a plastic soup bowl and fill it with water for the dog. It isn’t much, but it feels good to watch him drink.

A couple in their midforties wearing heavy coats and scarves arrive and run to the desk. They have kind faces, you think, and are tightly gripping each other’s hands. You recognize them from when you worked as a cashier at the Price Chopper. You realize you’ve seen their brown-haired daughter before, and vaguely remember slipping her a packet of gum her mother had denied her. The girl was eight or nine. Her mother had been fumbling through her purse and didn’t see the exchange, but the girl’s face had opened into a smile. At that thought a chill crosses your skin. You consider slipping away now, but then the nurse is pointing the parents over to you, and you rise from your chair.

“Thank you so very much for driving Eden here,” the mother says, and then glances at the dog, “and look, you brought Lemon here too.”

The parents thank you for driving their daughter to the hospital and for taking care of Lemon. They are so appreciative you realize they don’t know anything more than that you might have saved their daughter’s life.

You tell them how you worked at the hospital as a candy striper in high school, mostly in the pediatric ward. And then you report what little you’ve heard about the condition of the girl.

At some point in the conversation you tell them — because you have to, and because you figure you are as sober sounding as you are likely to be—“I’m the one who hit your daughter.”

Your declaration confuses them.

“I’m so sorry. She came out of nowhere. I never saw her.”

“It was you ?” the father says.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Dear God,” the mother says, and she sits down.

“It was all ice out there. I wasn’t going very fast.”

“You were going fast enough,” the mother says. “How long have you had your license?”

“I’m twenty-three,” you say.

“Then there’s no excuse.”

“No, you’re right. There isn’t,” you say. “I wish more than anything in the world that I could do something. I wish I could go back wherever she is and do something.” You feel yourself growing upset. “I really don’t want to bother you. But I’d like to stay here until Eden wakes up.”

The father studies your face, then looks over at his wife. They are registering the fact that you look quite a bit like their daughter.

“I want to make sure she’s all right,” you say.

He purses his lips and nods.

“I’m just so very, very, very, very sorry this happened,” you say, close to tears.

His expression softens. “I believe you,” he says.

A doctor emerges with an update for the parents. The good news, he tells them, is that the CAT scan showed no skull fracture and no evidence of internal bleeding.

“She isn’t awake yet,” he says, “but her pupils are reactive, which suggests she might simply have a concussion.”

“So she’s going to be all right,” the father says. He’s trying to read the doctor’s face, which reveals only an affable competence.

“We’ll have to wait and see. There could be some things the CAT scan didn’t catch,” he says, and adds that they may need to take her to another hospital for an MRI. They’ll have to keep watching her closely.

Eden’s left kneecap is shattered, he adds, probably from the impact of the car, and her left shoulder was dislocated, “but we did a pretty good job of putting it back in place.”

The father nods. “We appreciate all you’re doing for us,” he says, and from your seat you nod too in thanks.

It is a record night for accidents, someone at the nurses’ station says. Already there have been three other serious ones in and around town, including a fatal, which is why the police are so slow in getting here. If enough terrible things happen out on the roads, they may forget about you, though you know it’s wrong to hope for this, and really, all you want is for everyone to be fine and healthy and sleeping in a bed, which is where you should be right now. Your headache has eased and your buzz feels weaker now, almost not even there.

Over the next hour and a half there is a heart attack and a bar fight, more people being wheeled in, and more waiting. You talk with the girl’s parents about Eden, who they tell you is an accomplished gymnast, swimmer, and amateur comedienne. She performed stand-up at a school talent competition. “She’ll have some good material about this,” her father says.

He is a short sandy-haired man with the build of a wrestling coach. His eyes pucker at the corners with appealing little wrinkles. You think of your unnervingly handsome father who left when you were eight, and who’d stop in on the odd year to take you out to dinner, then ask you to pay half, or for all of it, explaining in a fatherly voice that he would pay you back next time.

“She goes out every night with that dog, for an hour or so,” Eden’s father says. “She likes to get on the back roads past the edge of town and let Lemon find their way back. One time they were away until midnight. A force of nature, that one. She’s going to need some rehab, I guess. Maybe a lot, but she’ll be better than ever after that. One of our others I’d worry about, but not her.”

It would be nice to have someone worry about you, you think.

“I’ll bet you’re a great father,” you say. It feels as though you’re auditioning.

“Not always,” he says. “But it’s kind of you to say that.”

By two thirty they still haven’t heard anything, which the father says is a good sign. If it was bad news, they would have already heard by now.

“Do you think that’s true?” the mother asks you, as though you know about these things.

“I think so, yes,” you say, because there’s no reason not to believe it. You kneel down and rub Lemon’s belly, and he makes high-pitched happy sounds in response.

It is the sweetest family moment you’ve had in a long while.

At around three A.M. the mother tells you you should go home and get some sleep, and come back later in the day when Eden is awake if you would like. The mood is hopeful, though no one has come out to give you an update. The police arrive, finally, and ask you questions about the accident. Their faces show the strain of a difficult night. Perhaps it is because you were talking warmly with the girl’s parents when they walked in, or because the dog is resting his head on your lap. Or maybe they’re bad at their jobs, but it’s all quite casual. They take down your phone number and address, and they leave. Nine out of ten times they would have administered a Breathalyzer. This is the tenth time. When they’re gone, you almost feel disappointed.