Anniversary to remember

04-25-19

Anniversary of that car crash long ago, a moment in time that woke me up from a dream Louise and I could go on after we came back east, and I straightened everything out with the law.

The car crash in distant retrospect seems funny but seemed tragic at the time since it was prelude to the breakup that transpired two weeks later.

hank and I routinely had a night out together, while Louise stayed home with the baby. in exchange I stayed home to care for the baby while Louise went out with Garrick’s girlfriend, Jean.

I did not know at the time that Jean encouraged Louise to see other men during these nights out with the girls. but even Jean was surprised by how far Louise went with them.

Of course, our nights out were hardly innocent since Hank's goal was always to pick up girls and since he always cheated when he was dating someone, he assumed I would too.

Until the night of the crash I managed to keep this from happening despite Hank’s persistent efforts.

On this night however hank stopped to pick up two underage hitch hikers on our way to the rock clubs in Greenwood Lake.

The girls wanted to get drunk and make love and Hank expected me to do my part to accommodate them. But I didn’t want to cheat on Louise. So, when Hank made me pull the car over to buy beer on the chance, we could not get the girls into one of the clubs, I went to the toilet where I actually prayed for a miracle to keep the inevitable from happening.

Since I did not like driving at night, Hank climbed behind the wheel. He was in a hurry to get to the lake and find a private where we could park. We did not see the other car making a k turn on the blind side of a curve until we hit it.

Nobody in our car wore a seat belt.

As a result, Hank plunged into the windshield with only the steering wheel to keep him from going through it.

Weary before the crash, I had leaned back in the front passenger side seat. Instead of hitting the windshield, my face hit the dash board breaking my nose, blood blinding me for a moment so all I heard were the moans of the girls, one of whom said her legs were crushed by the front seat moving back with the impact.

I was out of our car first where I saw someone from the other car, a passenger, I think, yelling at me and asking how fast were we going?

I went around to help Hank out. He was shaken but bleeding the way I was. He seemed in a daze and stared at the back seat where the two girls were trapped.

I heard sirens. Hank remembered the beer and had me fetch it out of the car to toss away in the woods before the police arrived. Someone from the other car did the same.

Nobody wanted to get caught with booze in their car even unopened.

The police arrived; then came the ambulances, one for each car.

We piled in. Someone put a bandage on my nose to stop the bleeding. One of the girls complained about an injured leg.

EMTS treated us then asked questions about who we were, where we lived and how old we were at which point we learned both girls were 16.

Hank looked pale but not about their ages. EMTs worried we all might go into shock. they kept asking us questions.

blood type?

O positive.

weight?

165.

height?

5 foot 11.

married or single?

Married.

At this point one of the girls cried out: "you didn't tell me that!"

An embarrassing silence followed and might have lasted an eternity had Hank not picked that moment to go into shock.

At the hospital Hank and I got put in one part of the ER, the girls in another while the victims from the other car in a third. But there were no doors and we could hear everybody including family members who had rushed there from some remote location.

Orderlies and nurses came and went taking our temperature and such. but when they came to take blood, Hank balked.

He refused to let any son of a bitch stick a needle in him -- the one and only thing that kept him from ever becoming a junkie.

The fact that he fainted during the army induction blood test kept him from going to Vietnam.

An orderly got a nurse, and a nurse got a doctor to tell him if he didn’t permit the blood test the hospital couldn’t treat him, and he would have to sign a waiver of service to get discharged.

Hank signed then made a phone call to get Pauly to come and drive him home.

I had no dread of needles and wanted someone to fix my nose which had started to throb.

But when I heard the roar of a father of one of the girls asking where the fuck we were I decided to sign myself out as well.

Fortunately, Pauly found us before the father did.  Hank and I crowded into the back of Pauly's girlfriend's blue VW bug for the long bumpy ride home, unaware until later that Hank had suffered a hairline fracture in his neck from the crash and any minor jolt - like the many we got on the rough road back - could have killed him.

Pauly’s girlfriend didn’t want to drive all the way though Paterson to drop hank off at home and so deposited both of us at my place where Hank could stay until the morning when his mother could retrieve him.

The baby was asleep. So was Louise.

When I woke her up to tell her I almost died, she yawned said "that’s nice" then went back to sleep.

Now all these years later the memory still haunts me, that moment when I came to realize she did not care if I lived or died. Two weeks later she and the baby were gone and slowly like slow torture l got reports of how she'd cheated on those wild nights out with the girls. So, I could not later appreciate her kindness when she called finally to see if I was okay.

I was just too bitter.

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