Navy Nurse Ch. 10

"My two best and closest friends in the world are my cousin John Winters, who is the son of my uncle that owns the fur store, and Roger Hart, my friend in elementary and high school. John is five years older than me, and I've always looked up to him as my older brother. He is now married for the past two years and has a kid, so I consider his advice even more invaluable. Roger is the same age as me, and he now attends Northwestern. I've known Roger since grade one, and we have each other's back as a result.

"I naturally saw John during our family Thanksgiving dinner as well as during the Christmas holidays, when I also consulted with Roger. I laid out to them all the particulars of the circumstances of my meeting you and my reaction. I was quite candid about my hopes and aspirations. Both of them advised that I was foolish to immediately conclude that I would experience a similar hurt as I did with Sylvia. They also pointed out that I was indeed very foolish to jump the gun on anticipating future problems without any hard evidence that such problems would even occur. They further pointed out that although hindsight is 20-20, I should still have been suspicious of Sylvia when she insisted on going to her hometown without me last summer, considering we had been living together during the entire past school year. So they said there would be no harm in dating you, but go slow until I could with some certainty assess the true lay of the land.

"I was prone to follow their advice, especially since it dovetailed my own inclination. I don't mean to imply that I'm not the master of my own destiny, but it still helps if I have the approbation of my friends for my actions. So, that was the background of my asking you for a date, wherein we had dinner at the Chop House before ending the night at the Sheraton.

"Obviously, I can't discern your mind as to your impression of our time together, but I can truthfully say that this was the best date I've ever had. And I don't mean just for the sex, which, incidentally, was the best I've ever experienced. I'm most impressed that you're going to be an officer in the U.S. Navy Nursing Corps when you graduate. I'm not like the snowflakes on the campus that have an unreasonable animus towards the military. Although I've never personally been inclined to enlist, I have the utmost admiration for those who are willing to serve our country.

"In other words, our conversation during our dinner date confirmed my initial opinion of you. I'm convinced that no matter whatever happens in the future, I will not ever meet a more remarkably laudable woman than you. Equally in the matter of sex, I'm absolutely convinced I'll never meet a more satisfying sexual partner than you.

"Given my honest high opinion of your worth, you might wonder why I disappeared on you at the conclusion of our date and our sexual activity. The truth is that I could not believe my good fortune in having met the perfect woman and having bedded her to boot. As far as I was concerned, the elephant in the room denying the prospect of our mutual future happiness is the fact that I first met you while you had agreed to participate in an outrageously lascivious gangbang, and I was merely one of your countless sexual partners.

"Now, don't get me wrong, as I do not feel any contempt towards you as a result of your participation in the gangbang. I'm the kind of man that deems that the past sexual history of my current serious love interest has no bearing on our current love we feel towards each other. For example, with the case of Sylvia, the fact that she might have had umpteen sexual encounters with Mike while they were in high school presented no problem to our love for each other. It was not until Sylvia wanted to renew her history with Mike that our relationship was doomed.

"So you see in our situation, I've no problem that you might have had sex with many more different men than I had with different women. My problem is wondering whether you would be content to limit your sexual activity to one person i.e. me suddenly.

"After you fell asleep that morning, I was plagued with conflicting scenarios in my mind. I knew that my strongest desire would be to enter into an exclusive, committed relationship with you. My fear, of course, was that even should you honestly agree to such an arrangement, you might internally object to such constraint. In that case, you might be tempted to violate the same to the detriment of my emotional well being. I could intellectually perceive that I was premature considering such options since, in reality, we are in the barest initial stages of our acquaintanceship. Even though I truly had no outward signal that you actually cared for me, still there was no denying that I craved for some ironclad agreement between us.

"At this point, I knew that the advice of John and Roger would be most invaluable to me. Since they do not know you, their opinions would not be influenced by any personal animus towards you, but their opinion would be predicated on what they would consider to be in my best interest. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I wanted input from them. I believed that they would outline a sensible plan forward that I could feel comfortable with to ensure ultimate happiness should everything in my future relationship with you proceed, according to Hoyle. But by the same token, they would enable me to spot the roadblocks that could possibly thwart my serendipity, so that I could act accordingly.

"I have to confess that I lost my common sense and was devoid of rationality. I knew that the drive from Ann Arbor to Chicago was only four hours in duration. So I got it in my mind to drive to Chicago to confer with John and Roger and return to Ann Arbor before the end of the day in plenty of time to attend my Monday classes. So I gathered my stuff and set off to make the trip. The adrenalin produced as a result of the events of the evening had kept me sufficiently wide awake that I incautiously thought I was capable of driving to Chicago without any incidence.

"Common sense and rational thought escaped me. After about forty-five minutes of relatively safe driving, I became very drowsy and sleepy. I would catch myself dozing off a couple of times for two or three seconds. I started to realize that I could not possibly get to Chicago in the condition I was in, so I decided to pull into the next rest area on the interstate and get some sleep before proceeding any further.

"After making such a decision in my mind, the next thing I knew, I felt a jolt to my car, and I came to a stop. I realized immediately that I had momentarily dozed off again, and I had hit something that had awakened me and compelled me to stop. So I climbed out of my vehicle and was sickened to see that a man was bleeding and lying quite still under the front carriage. I looked back and could see another car and a jack and a tire lying on the road. Both that vehicle and mine were on the paved shoulder of the interstate. I went to the other side of my vehicle and noticed a scratching streak on the metal along the whole length of that side.

"So I concluded that by momentarily falling asleep, I had drifted off the lane of traffic and had driven onto the shoulder. Thus, I had scraped the side of my vehicle on the other vehicle before hitting the man who had been changing a flat tire. In horror, I also realized not only had I struck the man, but my vehicle had dragged him for some distance, which I calculated was at least more than fifty feet. I knew then that he surely could not have survived, and so I had killed a man. I had killed a man when I had no business to be driving. Guilt overwhelmed me!

"As I stood there immobile, stunned by the events, the Michigan State Police had arrived on the scene. An ambulance had been summoned, and I subsequently learned that the man was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. When the police officers asked me, what had happened, in a moment of self-preservation, I merely stated, 'I don't know. I lost control of my vehicle, and I'm not sure why. It happened so fast. Maybe I must have hit something on the road to make me lose my grip on the steering wheel momentarily.' I did not have the courage to admit that I had fallen asleep at the wheel. Of course, such weakness did not lessen my guilty feeling.

"I'm not sure that the police officers bought my explanation, but then again, there were no other eyewitnesses to the accident. Even had the victim survived, I believe he would not have had any useful information to impart that would have brought to light a better understanding of the cause of the accident. Therefore, I'm sure the police probably had no choice but to accept my explanation as at least a plausible cause for the accident. They did ask me to consent to a breathalyzer test to rule out the question of alcohol consumption as a contributing factor to the accident. I had no problem complying, and I thank my lucky stars that you had expressed a desire to refrain from alcohol during our dinner date, and I followed suit as a result. The one glass of wine we had at the hotel room was not sufficient consumption to register adversely against me.

"The one thing though, that proved to be my undoing in escaping immediate adverse consequences of the accident was the fact I had produced an Illinois driver's license instead of a Michigan one. For that reason, the police took me into the custody of the county jail in Kalamazoo, pending a bail hearing as pending charges would be introduced. The whole point of the bail hearing was to ensure I would appear in court despite my presumed out of state residence. No one paid any attention when I tried to protest that I was a student at the University of Michigan, and thus, actually a resident of Michigan.

"In any case, my bail hearing was set for the following Tuesday afternoon. I had the chance to get a hold of my father, and he was able to engage a local Michigan criminal lawyer upon recommendation of our family's Chicago law firm to represent me. I met him Tuesday morning before the bail hearing, and I felt very confident that I was in good hands. I was granted bail on my own recognizance, and the next Court hearing was scheduled for a month later. So rather than going on to Ann Arbor, I went home to Chicago to confer with my parents. I knew I should have contacted you at this time, but I was obviously overly concerned about the serious peril I found myself.

"I returned to Kalamazoo the following Monday to meet my lawyer, who had by then examined the full police report and had talked with the prosecutor handling the case. I was advised that the bad news was that the story I gave to the police at the accident doesn't seem to bear up with the physical evidence. There was continuous scrape damage along both the sides of the victim's car and mine. There were no skid marks until after the victim's automobile to the resting point of my car. This would indicate I had been probably driving on the shoulder of the highway before I even came into contact with his car. Thus it was clear I had not applied my brakes until I struck the victim.

"My lawyer indicated that the prosecutor was seriously considering charging me with reckless driving causing death. That offense is a felony that carries a maximum penalty of fifteen years imprisonment and a maximum fine of $10,000. My lawyer then advocated on my behalf, pointing out that I had no prior driving violations either in Illinois or in Michigan during the four years I had possessed a driver's license. There was no drinking involved, nor was there any indication I had been speeding. The inclement winter weather conditions were probably a major contributing factor to the accident, notwithstanding that the interstate was cleared of snow and thoroughly salted. Of course, he touted my character, with a potentially bright future after graduating from the University of Michigan.

"Given my lawyer's submission, the prosecutor made an offer that I plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of moving violation causing death so long as I would agree to the maximum sentence of one year prison time. The offer was open until my next court date in February. If I don't accept the offer, the prosecutor would be proceeding with the reckless driving charge.

"Of course, since the future of my life is at stake, it is my decision, as to how to proceed. My lawyer pointed out that there was no possible defense to the lesser charge. Driving on the shoulder of the interstate is a moving violation, and my victim did die as a result of my driving. There could be an argument to be made on lesser jail time, but the man I killed was in his mid-thirties with two small children and now a widowed wife. Considering that he was well off the driving lanes of the interstate, he did not in any way contribute to the cause of the accident.

"My lawyer believes that there would be a good chance of beating the reckless driving charge, but in that eventuality, I would still be subject to the misdemeanor charge. Given all the circumstances, avoiding the maximum penalty of that charge is not likely. And of course, being found guilty to reckless driving would put me in much greater jeopardy. My lawyer doesn't think I would be sentenced the maximum fifteen years, but a five-year sentence could be the most likely outcome. In any case, no matter the sentence, the fact that this offense is considered a criminal felony would prove to be a serious obstacle in obtaining worthwhile employment in the future, never mind even getting into law school.

"As far as I could determine from my lawyer's assessment of my legal problems, there were virtually no upsides for rejecting the prosecutor's offer, but there were sure as hell lots of downsides. I knew then that I would accept the prosecutor's offer, but I naturally wanted to confer with my parents, especially my Dad. I knew I would also want to talk it over with my cousin John as well. The lawyer had no problem with my response, as the offer was open until the next court date. As long as I decided by then, he would know how to proceed on my behalf.

"After my conference with my lawyer, I then drove on to Ann Arbor. I withdrew from this semester, and I did that early enough so as not to damage my academic record. I imagine when I've completed serving my forthcoming sentence that I'll transfer to a Chicago school to complete my B.A., most likely Northwestern. I do apologize that I was too much of a coward not to have contacted you during the days I was in Ann Arbor. I was just too ashamed to see you.

"In that regard, I find it cruelly ironic that my current woes have occurred as a result of my concern or apprehension of the quality of your character. Such came to question when I first met you engaged in sexual activity that society's general consensus would deem tawdry. But instead, my character is now truly suspect as I was instrumental in snuffing out the life of a truly innocent man. My heinous crime easily outstrips your innocuous transgressions. Paradoxically, I have enough confidence in myself to form the conclusion I would have been successful in seducing you into a committed relationship. Luckily for you in that, you've dodged a bullet and avoided me, a man with feet of clay.

"Bless you, Diana! I'll forever cherish you as the happiest memories of our brief acquaintanceship.

"Brad."