Becoming Who We Are Ch. 08

Copyright © 2021 to the author

**

The alarm jangled in the darkness. Melina opened her eyes, saw the deep blue December morning outside and considered simply returning to sleep for another thirty minutes. The thought tempted her, but in a show of self-discipline, she threw back the sheet and blankets and got up instead. She made the bed quickly so she would not lose her resolve to stay up.

That task completed, she moved to her chest of drawers and rifled through it, pulling out biking shorts, stirrup pants and the other clothing she would need for her morning bike ride. Three minutes later, she trotted downstairs to grab a bottle of water from the fridge and stuff half a muffin in her mouth before fetching her bicycle.

Raising the garage door, she retrieved her bike and wheeled it outside. Snapping her helmet straps into place, she got on, wriggled into the proper position on the seat and embarked on a ride that would take her around a loop that stretched from one side of the city to the other.

It never took long before the rhythm found her legs and pushed them along. She rode north, around the park and beyond the high school before turning east on the street that would take her past government buildings, then blocks of rowhouses, then project apartments. As usual, she shook her head as she rolled past the housing projects, neat brick apartments set on grassy greens. They didn't look at all like the projects she knew from large cities. The grass seemed lush, even this late in the year, and some people even had gardens. Yet some of her classmates spoke nervously about these buildings and the people who lived in them. Infants, she thought. They knew nothing about real projects!

She rolled past more rowhouses before it came time to make her turn north and then another turn to head back west. She came to a park, the part of the ride she liked best. Here she would take a long drink of water, secure that no cars would try to pass her too closely. Then, all too soon, came the industrial section, the part she liked least. The big construction trucks made her nervous as they roared past her.

After that, she pedaled past block upon block of rowhouses, some well maintained, some not. By now, people had begun to stir. She looped around the city's western boundary and prepared for the homestretch. She saw the little old lady who always seemed to be crossing the street when Melina rode by, but never seemed to notice anything around her, so lost she was in her own thoughts. Melina grinned. Would she one day be oblivious to her surroundings and would people go out of their way to avoid hitting her with their bikes and cars?

She turned south at the park, passed the church, and greeted the groundskeeper.

"God bless you, child!" he called with a smile.

"And you too!"

"All right, all right," he replied, and returned to sweeping up the debris left by the previous night's partiers.

An unfamiliar figure stood on the next corner, a tall, beefy man from what she could tell. He wore a hooded sweatshirt under his bulky coat, with a scarf over the lower half of his face. With the rising sun just over his shoulder, she could not see him clearly, although he seemed to be staring at her. She dropped her head against the sun and gave a mental shrug. Maybe he was worried she'd hit him or something.

The next thing she knew, she had slammed into the pavement, her legs twisted up in the bike's frame. Before she could move, something smashed into her bike, and then her head. She heard thudding footsteps, and then nothing else.

As he clucked over the mess the neighborhood kids made on the church grounds, Jack Curtis heard a crash, then a thud. He dropped his broom. While his youthful strength and speed had left him long ago, Mr. Curtis could still dogtrot as well as he had as a raw recruit. As he jogged toward where the sound had come from, he hoped he had not just heard that nice little bicyclist crashing into something.

He rounded the corner and saw a heap of gleaming metal and a heart-stoppingly still girl lying on the pavement. Quickening his pace, he reached her with a few more steps, looked down, and took a deep, trembling breath. Dear Lord in heaven, she looked bad! Fighting the urge to panic, he knelt and felt her wrist. Her pulse throbbed beneath his twitching fingers. He put a hand over her mouth and thought he felt a breath. He thanked God for that mercy, said a short prayer, and looked around for help.

A car driving by braked sharply as the driver saw the man and girl. She jumped out. "What happened?" she cried.

"The girl took a nasty fall," Mr. Curtis said, his voice quavering. "Do you have a cell phone? Could you call nine-one-one for an ambulance?"

The woman dashed back to her car and fished a cell phone from under the driver's seat. Standing over the pair, she made the call, explained the situation, and nodded twice.

"Do you know if she has a pulse and if she's breathing?" she asked, covering the phone's amplifier.

"Yes to both," Mr. Curtis said, his voice more controlled this time.

"Yes on both counts," the woman said into the phone. "No, she's not conscious. No, I don't know who she is. She looks about sixteen or seventeen. She's all twisted up in the bike frame and her head's bleeding. It looks real bad."

She listened again.

"An ambulance is on its way," she told Mr. Curtis. "They said we shouldn't try to move her or straighten her out because she might have a spine injury and moving her could paralyze her."

Her eyes teared up.

"Poor thing. I'm glad it's not my daughter."

Mr. Curtis bit back several rejoinders to that remark, opting to concentrate on the girl's breathing and pulse. As long as those continued, she'd live.

"Does she have any ID on her?" the woman asked him.

"I haven't had time to look," he said. "Why don't you look in that little pouch under the seat?"

The woman gave him a dubious look.

"I might get my clothes dirty."

"I think if you stand on the other side of the bike and hold onto your skirt, you can do it," he said. You idiot! he thought, then apologized to God for his unworthy behavior. Some parts of creation were a little harder to honor than others, in Jack's opinion.

Giving him another doubtful glance, the woman stepped up to the bike, placed the phone on the ground, clutched her skirt to keep it from touching anything and reached for the pouch. She unzipped it, poked a hand into it and drew out a slip of paper.

" 'This bicycle belongs to the Taylor family,'" she read. "Oh, it's got a phone number!" Her face fell. Using the number would surely bring anguish to whomever she reached. Still, she thought, gazing at the girl's limp form, if it were her child, she would want someone to call. Her fingers shaking, she punched the sequence.

"Hello?" a woman's voice said.

"Uh, hello. Is this Mrs. Taylor?"

"Yes. Who's this, please?"

"Uh, my name's Corinne Baker. I'm awfully sorry to tell you this, but your daughter's had an accident. The ambulance isn't here yet, but I'm with her and so is a man..."

"Jack Curtis," he said.

"Jack Curtis."

"Where are you?"

Corinne gave the woman their location.

"That's just a couple of blocks from here," Mrs. Taylor said. "I'll be right there."

Corinne heard a click and turned off her phone. In the distance, a siren sounded.

"Thank God," she said. "I thought they'd never get here."

"You said it," Mr. Curtis replied, concentrating on the girl's breathing. In, out. In, out. That's right, child. That's right. Keep it up. In, out.

As often happens in crises, when things started happening, they did so all at once. The ambulance pulled up and three blue-shirted crew members jumped out of the rig. As they did so, a slender woman ran up.

"Kate! What are you doing here?" one of the medics asked.

She gulped, stunned at the sight of her younger child tangled in the bike frame, her helmet split in two, her face pale and sweaty where blood did not cover it.

"That's my daughter. That's Melina."

Kate's face crumpled as she turned away. Corinne put a protective arm around her.

"It's all right, honey," she said. "These folks'll take good care of your little girl."

"I know," Kate said through her sobs. "I work with them."

After telling the crew the girl was still breathing and had a pulse, Jack Curtis joined the two women.

"She's good, strong girl," he said to Kate. "I've been holding her hand, telling her to keep breathing, and she's been doing just that."

Kate took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down. Emergency personnel never worked on their own family members if they could avoid it because of the difficulty of achieving the necessary emotional detachment. Nevertheless, she felt silly, breaking down like that in front of her colleagues. She wrenched her eyes away from the scene, knowing she would only replay it ad infinitum in her mind if she watched.

"Thank you so much, Mr...."

"Jack Curtis. I work at the church over there," he said, pointing at the steeple rising behind the houses. He patted Kate's shoulder. "I know it looks bad, but head wounds always bleed a lot. I was an Army medic in the war, and I know all about it."

"I'm glad you were with her," Kate said, touched by his concern. "I'm an EMT, too, and I know these guys are the best."

Unable to resist temptation, she glanced back and saw that the crew had a C-collar around Melina's neck and were delicately working a backboard under her. She itched to help, but knew the crew had everything under control and she would only distract them. She looked away again, wishing she had something, anything, to do.

As they strapped the board to the litter for transport, Melina moaned and her eyelids fluttered. Kate's heart rose back into her chest where it belonged. Perhaps Melina had only knocked herself out. One EMT urged the girl not to move. Another caught Kate's eye and beckoned her forward.

"Why don't you talk to her for a minute? It may help her to hear your voice."

Kate did so with alacrity, gently stroking her daughter's hand.

"Honey? It's Mom. I'm right here with you. You're going to be okay. You fell off your bike and we have to take you to the hospital to make sure you're all right. I know you hurt and you want to straighten out, but it's important that you don't move. These nice EMTs are friends of mine, and they'll take good care of you. I want you to do as they say and don't try to move. Remember, you're going to be just fine. I'll be at the hospital with you."

Melina let out another little moan, but said nothing. Kate stroked her shoulder.

"You want to ride down with us, or follow?" one crew member said.

Kate desperately wanted to ride along.

"I'll follow; otherwise, I'd have to carry her home, and she's too heavy for me to carry these days," she said, making a weak joke.

He nodded.

"See you there, then. And Kate -- she'll be okay."

Kate nodded, feeling the tears rise again. She blinked furiously. She wouldn't do anyone any good by giving in to hysterics. She watched her friends load her daughter into the rig and decided she ought to get home and tell Joe about that accident before heading to the hospital.

She turned to Jack and Corinne, standing quietly to one side.

"Thanks again for your help," she said. "I really appreciate the call and how you stuck with her until I got here. That means a lot to me."

"She's a nice kid," Jack said. "Always says hello when she rides by."

"It's what I hope anyone would do for my daughter," Corinne said at the same time. "I'm just glad my husband got me this cell phone for my birthday."

"So am I," Kate said with a smile. "Thank him for me, will you?"

They said their good-byes, with Jack asking Kate to stop by the church and let him know how Melina was. Kate lifted the bicycle to its wheels, noting the impact had knocked the handlebars out of alignment. She did not see the tall, blond boy in the shadow of the rowhouses, and certainly couldn't have guessed his thoughts. Jeff's brain swirled with pleasure at harming the girl and frustration that his bat had not connected cleanly with her skull. Damn handlebars! If only he'd had more time, he could have gotten in another swing. Still, the bitch's mother looked upset, so he must have done some damage. As the woman passed from his view, he turned and walked away.

Joe Taylor had just emerged from his post-run shower when his wife walked into their bedroom wearing a coat over the sweatpants she had slept in. The look on her face told him everything.

"What's happened to Melina?" he asked. "Where is she?"

"An accident. She fell off her bike and whacked her head pretty hard. The impact broke the helmet."

He sank to the bed, gaping at her.

"How bad is she?"

"In my professional opinion, she looks worse than she is," she said as she stripped off the sweats and donned a pair of jeans and a sweater. "The helmet should have saved her from any serious head injury, although she'll have one hell of the headache for a while. She has at least one serious cut. Other than that, hard to say. She didn't appear to have any broken bones, so it may be that she's simply concussed and a little battered, but no worse than that."

Kate kicked her sweatpants into the heap in the closet, shimmied into a pair of jeans and found a pair of matching shoes.

"So I'm off to the hospital."

"Do you want me to come?"

"Dealer's choice. It would be nice if you did, but the world won't end if you don't. If you have something important going on at work this morning..."

"Nothing's as important as my kid," Joe said firmly. "I'll call in and tell them to expect me around noon. Give me seven minutes, and we can be out of here."

"Yes, sir!" She smiled wanly, thinking how good it felt to have such a solid partner when the going got rough.

Ten minutes later, they jogged into the waiting room and the nurse's station.

"Hi, Kate," said Nadine, the check-in nurse. "Melina's back there. If your husband can give me your insurance information, you can go right back."

"Deal," Joe said, giving Kate a gentle push she did not need.

"Thanks," Kate said to Nadine.

"No problem," the nurse said. "We're a team here."

Kate darted to the nurses' station, relieved to see her friend Kim sitting there. The woman gave her an encouraging smile.

"The docs are working on her now, but you should be able to see her in a few minutes. I gather it's not as bad as it looked at first."

"Oh, thank God," Kate breathed.

"Indeed," Kim said. "Fortunately, there's only one other patient here right now, so Melina's got everyone's full attention. I have to warn you, it'll be a while before anyone will be able to talk to you."

"In other words, have a seat in the waiting room?"

"I'm sorry," Kim said regretfully. "You know how it is."

Kate trudged to the waiting room and sat down. After a few minutes, Joe joined her, putting an arm around her shoulders. She leaned into his body, forcing herself to breathe deeply, as she had learned in a long-ago yoga class, and think positive thoughts.

They sat that way for a long time, paying no heed to the yammering of the television or the other people who joined them in the waiting room.

"Kate?" a kind voice said.

She looked up, grateful to see one of her favorite doctors on the staff.

"Don! Were you working on Melina?"

"You bet," Dr. Williams said cheerfully. He motioned towards a closed door. "Conference room?"

Hearing his tone, Kate and Joe relaxed slightly as they followed him into the small chamber. The doctor placed a folder on the table and opened it.

"I take it you have good news then?" Kate asked.

Dr. Williams nodded.

"Your daughter must drink her milk faithfully, because she has the hardest, toughest bones I've seen in a while. As far as we can tell, she has no broken bones, and no spinal injury..."

"Thank God!" Joe and Kate said at the same time.

"...but she does have a slight concussion. Nevertheless, we're doing a CAT scan to make sure all's well in the skull department, although I'm not expecting any negative findings. Still, keep your fingers crossed. Blows to the head can be tricky."

He paused, steepling his fingers as he decided what to say next.

"She does have one nasty looking knot on the side of her head that I'm at a loss to explain. It's where her helmet should have been, which puzzles me. All I can figure is that the helmet cracked on the initial impact, then her head bounced up and hit the pavement, or maybe her bike, again. If this were an assault, I'd think someone had swung a heavy object at her."

Joe winced. Kate patted his hand.

"But this isn't an assault, so I'll stick to my first theory. Anyway, she also has a few cuts and abrasions -- nothing serious, and natural enough for a bike accident. Good thing she was bundled up, or those could have been worse, too. Pending the results of the CAT scan, we'll want to keep her here for a day or two, but probably not longer. You know how insurance companies are these days. Besides, kids her age heal in no time, as opposed to fossils like us."

Kate rolled her shoulders, willing the tension out of her body.

"Is she conscious? Can we see her?"

Dr. Williams checked his watch.

"She ought to be coming out of the CAT scan shortly. You can see her the moment she's out. I'll come get you then, and we should have the neurologist's report soon after that, seeing's how we have hardly any customers right now."

He rose, flipped shut the manila folder, and reached for the doorknob.

"Oh, one more thing. We have cleaned her up, but prepare yourselves for a shock. She'll look very pale, but then, you know that, given your line of work. We'll transfer her to a regular room later this morning. Will one of you be sticking around today?"

"I will," Kate said.

"I'll be here till eleven or so," Joe said.

"Good. She'll need some old-fashioned love and care," Dr. Williams said, his voice cheerful again. "She's lucky to have a mother and father to supply them. Too many kids don't these days," he added, shaking his head.

"Tell me about it," Kate said, standing.

"Thanks for your time," Joe said.

"You bet," Dr. Williams said. "And if I may say so, you've got a good kid. And a terrific wife!"

"Don't I know it," Joe said, casting a fond glance at Kate.

**

A tide of relief washed over Kate as she looked at her daughter. Melina appeared pale and fragile against the crisp white sheets, but her current state seemed a vast improvement over the last time Kate had seen her.

"How are you, honey?"

Melina's eyelids flickered open.

"Icky. My head hurts like you wouldn't believe."

"I hear you gave it quite a thwack."

"Yeah, I guess so." She frowned. "I don't really remember."

"What's the last thing you do remember?" Joe asked.

"I was riding by the church and the man there said hello. I remember pedaling around the corner and the sun was in my eyes, and that's it."

"Probably just as well," Joe said. "You don't necessarily want to recall every detail of an experience like that."

"I guess," she said, closing her eyes. "Gosh, I'm tired."

"You have a right to be tired. You've had a tough day."

Melina opened her eyes and shut them again.

"Do you mind if I go back to sleep?"

"Not at all," Kate said. "Rest is just what you need."

When their daughter's breathing became deep and regular, the pair tiptoed from the room.

"Mr. and Mrs. Taylor?" a man in a white coat asked.

"Yes," Joe replied.

"I'm Dr. Perelman. I have the scan results for your daughter. Would you come with me, please?"

They followed him to a small room.

"It looks like that helmet saved your daughter from a very serious injury," Dr. Perelman said without preamble. "Her scan shows no bleeds in the brain, and no fluid collection between the skull and the brain. That indicates her brain sustained no serious injury. I do see signs of a little swelling, but that's natural with a fall, and given the absence of other signs, I'm not too worried. We'll want to keep her for a couple of days to make absolutely sure she's all right, though. Any questions?"