At that moment it was all crazy lights and shattered glass – the one time I fell asleep in the car, not behind the wheel that is but in the passenger seat. You see I can never sleep in the car but just that once I felt safe enough, content enough. Everything was going ok for the first time in a long time, free any easy and I was in good hands; just dosed off…
…and awakened, but only for a brief second, by tragic impact, the crash of black entropy from outer space into the bead of calm in the warm car. Probably more excitement than most people get thrown into their dreams.
The next thing, I was sitting in the passenger seat, surrounded by darkness, suspended in space and time, dangling over the timeline of my life. I could have dropped anywhere – saw the whole thing stretched out before me chronologically but could not find myself on it. So many things would happen to me over that stretch of decades, so many traumas. So many men. Which one was this?
The man before me was only a blip on the screen of my lifetime, a face I could not remember even then and certainly can’t now: just blankness except for the glowing orange of his spacesuit. Not a spacesuit, an emergency worker’s uniform. Seems there had been an accident. He wanted me to help somehow; I used to be a lifeguard and knew how to strap a man down to a backboard without twisting his head to control any trauma that might have been caused to the spine. Had seen it one time, or heard about it; it was a nasty business this spinal trauma, could turn you into a vegetable. I offered my help enthusiastically, as if helping to save someone’s life would give me a rhyme or reason, perched here as I was on this precipice of my own being, looking down wondering where to jump back in to the murky brodo of my existence.
But the guy was just getting agitated. I was not saying what he wanted to hear. Fear began to creep up my spine; confusion. My help was not what they wanted. Seems I was the one they were concerned about. He just kept telling me, “Don’t move. Just don’t move. DON’T TURN YOUR HEAD”. I turned my head back and forth, showing him that I could, looking down into the past and into the future, my youth and old age and all my trials and moments of contentment. There were short bursts of excited bliss: I could see myself travelling merrily along the Tuscan coast with a belly full, surrounded by friends and children – but that was surely still up ahead of this. Right now, I must certainly have gone insane. It had been coming for a long time. And now THEY were coming to strap ME down. Searching out there for something familiar, the night blackness just stretched forever. There was no escape, had to go down. “STOP TURNING YOUR HEAD! Matt, let’s strap her to the board right now, she’s confused. She’s going to hurt herself”.
From among the shards of glass the two men strapped me down as I helplessly called out to no one in particular. Slight memory of a possessive boyfriend who would certainly be looking for me; Charles Manson type, prone to fits of drink and drugs and probably wondering where I’d slipped off to. Surely he’d find me. They carried me over the crunch crunch of glass and asphalt and night sky to a waiting ambulance. There was a beautiful long-haired type already sitting in there wrapping and unwrapping his hand with a length of gauze, suffused with a dull yellow glow. Hand, bloody hand. He had a good build on him and gazed at me wordlessly as sirens blared in the distance. Another flash of memory: a skanky old apartment in winter, harsh florescence and smoke. Party. Lots of bad shit going on. I was trying to be noticed by a bearded guy playing acoustic guitar. Was it this same one? Who I thought at that moment was everything – my God, what the hell is he doing here, where’s, where’s what’s his name? … Finally I just came right out and asked (what the hell, I’m about to be locked up for my insanity alone and this is the only man who knows?). “Who are you?”
“Its me, Paul. Don’t you remember anything?”
“No, I’m insane.”
“Me too”
“You too, huh? Is that why you are here? And where’s Jim? I think that’s his name – do you know him. He’s bound to come looking for me.”
Paul fell silent. He began staring down at his hand and wrapping-unwrapping the gauze with increasing intensity. He looked concerned and suddenly I began to suspect that I had been dropped back into the wrong portion of my life – a different place on the timeline from where I had fallen off. Meanwhile, an engine started, followed by sirens, and a Maine State Police car ground off through the loose gravel at the side of the road – holy shit, what the hell am I doing in Maine? Insane in Maine; my throat began to tighten.
So I got up the nerve to ask him, “Who am I…I mean, what’s my name? Where do I live? Why am I in Maine? Does Jim know I’m here?”
He looked worriedly down again and swallowed: “Your name is Hope. I don’t know your exact address but you live in Upstate New York. You came here with me, don’t you remember?” The silent confusion in my eyes must have answered him. “Oh shit, you don’t remember anything do you? You left Jim, you left him for me – you wanted to get far away from him and that whole crowd around him so I took you away up here, away from everyone. We’re right outside Bangor right now – we just drove right into the side of a thousand-pound moose that was standing in the middle of the highway – it came right in through the windshield. I’m so sorry Hope, I didn’t even see it, it was so dark”. He started to cry softly, holding his fist; I began to notice the brown hairs clinging to my shirt.
“So I’m not insane?”
“Sure you’re insane, Hope. You’re just as insane as I am, but that’s not why we’re being taken away in an ambulance. We were really scared for you because you passed out and then when you came to, you didn’t remember anything.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“Oh, its nothing. One of the moose’s bones became lodged in my hand but its ok, they already pulled it out. I should be fine with a bit of physical therapy”. He was trying to sound brave but you could tell in his voice that he was in a lot of pain.
An EMT jumped in the back with us and put an oxygen mask down over my face…things got better after that… We started moving at lightning speed down the highway. As the ambulance roared, I lay there thinking, beginning to remember the things that had happed up to this moment in my life, and those events that hadn’t yet happened began to fade into the snowy white oxygen haze. I honestly couldn’t believe I had run away to Maine, had really run away after dreaming about doing it for so long – good for me. And here I was in a new incarnation and barely alive in the middle of nowhere but at least I was free.
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