Rewind

Ortho Ward

Baby

the ICU

The angel

"What do you want?" a woman asked me. 

I was in a room but I couldn't see the woman. It was cold and kind of
hazy looking. 

"Do you want to live?" she asked. 

"What about my baby? What about D?" I asked. 

"Do YOU want to live?" she asked. 

"Yes," I said. 

My First Boyfriend

My first boyfriend was D, we met in high school and stayed together
for four years. He was very smart and extremely funny and suicidal and
dependent on any mind altering substance you can name... including me.
He saw me as the only person who would have sex with him. He thought I
was severely flawed to be with him. We lived this weird jumbled mix of
highs and lows. 

He didn't like curly hair, I had curly hair. He didn't like fat girls
and he thought I was fat. I wasn't skinny but I certainly wasn't fat.
We were teenagers and we were flawed.  I think he liked me because I
would have sex with him as long as he pulled out in time. 

Every weekend he cleaned his father's optometrist office. I would
'help him' which meant I got to lay on the cold hard tile floor while
he got off and he wondered why I wasn't' t thrilled about sex. After he
used his tee shirt to clean up after, I got to help him clean the
office. We had to make sure there wasn't a butt mark on the floor. This
was the price of a boyfriend. 

We went to movies, and out to eat and smoked pot and partied with
friends. Everyone thought we'd get married but we didn't really talk
about it.  

The week after my graduation I went to Europe with my German class.
Six weeks to learn German and see Europe. European guys didn't think I
was fat and they liked curly hair and when they flirted they acted like
they liked me. 

I was blown away. I'd never felt like this before and I didn't know
how to hide it. 

Everyone was getting letters from home. I heard from my parents but
not from Doug. I thought he was busy or maybe he lost my address or
maybe it got lost in the mail. I was very good at making up excuses for
him.  One of the letters from my parents said: I guess you already
know about Doug's accident....

I didn't. I was mad. I decided I was done with him and that night I
went out with one of the Austrian guys. We had to check out of the dorm
in pairs so we'd stay safe. Didn't work. My friend and I both got
pregnant that night.  I'm not sure why I thought having sex with this
guy was a way to get back at D. I don't know why I believed he had a
condom, he was really bad at faking it. I don't know why I always ended
up in awkward uncomfortable places to have sex. The back seat of a
fiat is nearly as bad as a cold hard floor. 

I felt nauseated the whole trip home but I didn't put two and two
together. I wanted to stay in Europe. I dreamed of running off and
letting the group go home but I didn't. 

D wanted to go out as soon as I got home.  His first words were, "why
don't you change your hair and put on some makeup."  I was home. 

By now I was pretty sure I was pregnant.  I didn't have a plan of
course, that would have been too logical. My sister had a baby a few
years before and my mother wouldn't talk to her. She took down all her
pictures and made life pretty awful until she had the baby and then she
changed. I didn't want to go through that so I needed to move out. My
sister lived in Portland so we agreed I could live with her. 

D knew. That was one of the strangest things about our relationship.
We told each other about everything. He said he didn't care that I went
out with other guys but he did. He didn't break up with me. He helped
me move and then we decided to move in together. We still had no plan
and I was six months pregnant. 

D's life was smoking pot, taking LSD or anything else that was
available.  Things were worse for him. He was depressed and I knew I'd
hurt him. I had feelings for him again but I know he thought I was
using him. Maybe I was, I was a mess. 

We found an apartment in downtown Portland. He got stoned and I tried
to cook. Mostly I got food that didn't need cooking.  

A friend of his came over and the two fo them got very very stoned.
They wanted something to eat so we went out to find food. D had a brand
new VW bus and he loved it. He could drive stoned with no problem but
his friend wanted to drive it. So we got them hamburgers. I wanted a
hot fudge sundae but none of the drive through places had any. We drove
around town looking for one and then D let his friend drive. He drove
up on the curb and swerved into the wrong lane and nearly killed us and
D finally made him stop. We went home. 

After his friend left left, D said, "How would you feel if I called
suicide hotline?" 

"I think it would be a good idea," I told him. "They could probably
help you."  I didn't realize that he meant right tnen. But by then he'd
changed his mind. We didn't have a phone yet and he would have had to
use the phone by the manager's office and he didn't want to do that. So
he went to bed. 

He stayed in bed the next day. I hate to admit that it was a relief.
It was a rainy day and I spent the day reading a book and eating some
cookies. It was cozy and nice and as long as he was asleep, there was
no tension. 

He woke up around six. He seemed happy. "Let's go out and get you that
hot fudge sundae," he said. 

I was over that craving by now but he was trying to make up for last
night so I said OK.  It was still raining hard and we were still not
sure where to go to find ice cream. We crossed the bridge but the one
ice cream parlor we knew of was so full there was no place to park. So
we drove back across the bridge. There was another one on that side but
we weren't sure how to get there.  We needed to make a left hand turn.
The first street was 'no left turn' so we turned at the next one but
it took us into a dark, industrial area. There were no stop signs or
even yield signs at each intersection. 

I have no memory of what happened next. 

Thoughts on the Side

I learned a few years back that I'm technically not a paraplegic. i
can't remember what they classify me as now. Had the accident happened
now, I would probably be able to walk unassisted. My injury was in the
lumbar so quite low which is the best. If you have to break your back,
the lower the better. I never spent much time in a chair. I have one
just in case I need it (like if I break a crutch which has happened
more than once but because it happened so many times, I have lots of
singles so I don't need the chair). 

I dont' remember if I mentioned that I stayed married for twenty
years. Laziness I guess. Easier to deal with the devil you know. 


So if this first section was in a book, would it make it more
interesting if I broke it up to tell in little pieces? Or would it lose
some momentum?  I know I don't need make those decisions now. I'm
looking at this as a first draft and in my case, I think just getting
it all out is what I need to do. I've started various versons of this
story but I get stuck trying to create a style first.  

Thanks for reading this. I am a ham, I like an audience. I think it
helps me to stay focused.