Girl With a Past

by Sherri Leigh James

  This had been our summer of liberation. Prior to this summer, we females depended on the men in our lives to provide the dope while we provided the food. The stereotypical roles of the sexes were a long way from broken down, but Carol and I were beginning to see the possibilities. A couple of the men in our circle were even starting to cook.

  I fought back disappointment that Dave, Elliott and Ron had ditched us. I wanted Carol to get to know the guys in my circle of friends.

  I handed the joint back to her and used my now free hands to remove my sandals. A few more hits, and we both stood to sway to the tunes. Hundreds of raised arms undulated like the tentacles of a mega sea anemone.

  The constant succession of bands eager for an audience kept us moving to the sounds of Big Brother, the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, the Who, Credence Clearwater Revival, Iron Butterfly, and Jefferson Airplane until late into the night when Joan Baez sang us down. Carol and I finally crashed onto the blanket and snoozed to “Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?”

  “Lexi, wake up!” Carol’s hand shook my shoulder. “It’s creepy here.”

  I raised my head, opened my eyes. Wisps of mist drifted through the black moonless night as fog rolled around us. The cold mist muffled scattered voices. “Shit. What time is it?”

  “Late.” Carol looked and sounded pissed. “And we’ve been abandoned.”

  “They probably couldn’t find us in the crowd.” I offered as I gathered clothing, bags, and the blanket.

  “Pul-eeze, stop making excuses for them.” Carol snapped. She tossed her wilted floral crown onto the ground. “We shouldn’t’ve come when we found out it was just those three going.”

  I considered what excuse she might buy, but she wasn’t fond of any of them. I couldn’t offer anything she would see as a redeeming quality.

  “Guess Ron changed his mind.” Carol pulled a sweater over her head.

  “About what?” I shoved an arm into my jacket, fastened my sandals.

  “I heard him say you meet the prettiest girls at Barry Goldwater rallies.”

  “He might have a hard time finding one of those around here.” I slung my stuffed bag onto my shoulder. “Let’s us find a bus stop.” I headed for the edge of the park.

  Carol grumbled but she followed.

  The lawn was damp. The bellbottoms of my Navy surplus jeans flapped wet and cold against my ankles. I barely avoided tripping over sleeping bodies in the dark and mist.

  Carol was right. The murky place was creepy in the middle of the night.

  Ahead a street lamp almost lit a break in thick bushes ringing the meadow.

  I checked to see if Carol had kept up. “Come on.”

  “You better know where you’re going.” She pulled her purse strap onto her shoulder.

  Even though I could barely make out her silhouette, I knew she was giving me her pissed off look. “Fulton Street is right through there.” I motioned.

  “Through those bushes? I don’t see any street. And it’s really black in there.”

  I ignored her whining and slugged ahead. When I reached the edge of the bushes, I waited for her to join me and we stepped into the dark brush.

  Dead center in the gloomy thicket of blurred shadows of shrubs, a dark figure wielding a knife suddenly blocked the gap. A voice muffled by a black mask and hood, cackled a malicious laugh. Without a word, the figure motioned at Carol’s purse with the knife.

  I slipped the strap of my bag off my shoulder and dropped it on the ground. Knives petrify me.

  The dark figure slashed the glinting knife at both of us in one long swoop and bent to pick up my bag.

  Carol swung her heavy leather handbag hard, hitting him on the side of his head. Before he could recover, she knocked the knife from his hand.

  The black clad figure was barely my height, but built like a man.

  I kicked out hoping to catch him in the balls. I missed, flew off my feet, and landed on my ass.

  Carol picked up the knife and stuck it into the forearm behind the fist he had aimed at me.

  He swung at Carol and the knife flew to the ground next to my hand.

  I picked it up as I scrambled to my feet and lunged at the black body.

  He ducked.

  The plunging knife caught him in the neck. He grabbed my hand, twisting the knife from my grasp.

  Then the dark figure, and his knife, lurched out of the bushes, and ran across the lawn.

  Carol and I found our bags and stumbled in the opposite direction, out of the bushes, and onto the sidewalk where we collapsed to our knees.

  "You okay?” I asked. My heart raced pounding in an effort to jump out of my chest.

  "Fucker.” Carol sat down hard and pulled her purse to her chest. “Fucking asshole.”

  We stayed on the ground in the pool of light from the streetlight, breathing hard for several minutes before Carol started laughing hysterical hoots.

  My chuckles were soon followed by me rolling on the ground in hysterics. Tears and snot poured down my face; I tried to catch my breath.

  “You . . . guffaw . . . picked up . . . the knife. I couldn’t believe it,” Carol snorted, then wiped her face. “You hate knives.”

  “I thought he was going to hit you,” I managed to choke out.

  Carol threw her arms around my shoulders. “You do care, don’t you?”

  She scrambled to her feet, picked up my bag, handed it to me. “He didn’t even take the bag with him.”

  The guys weren’t there when we finally got back to my place. Carol stayed with me rather than walk to her house alone.

  The next afternoon, Ron called to apologize. He said Dave had gotten them involved in some kind of bar brawl, and they had spent the night in a hospital emergency room getting patched up. None of the three of them had nerve enough to show up at our house for weeks. By then any evidence of their excuses had healed.

  “Only those assholes could find a brawl in the middle of the center for peace and love,” Carol said when I relayed the apology.

  I bit my tongue rather than remind her that we managed to find a knife-wielding mugger midst the same celebration.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Berkeley, Alta Bates Hospital, March 2008

  The footsteps Steven heard in the hall outside his sister’s hospital room didn’t sound like the crepe soled shoes worn by the medicos. He watched the door open as a man he had yet to meet entered the room.

  “You must be Steven. I’m Detective Schmidt.” He extended his hand to Steven.

  “Detective Schmidt . . . Hello.” Steven got up from the chair he’d pulled to his sister’s bedside and shook the detective’s hand.

  Steven checked his watch. Well after midnight, and the detective was still working. “Thank you sir.”

  The policeman nodded in response staring at the girl whose color barely contrasted with the white bedding.

  “Any word about––” Steven asked.

  Steven was interrupted by a shake of the detective’s head. Schmidt continued to stare at Al for several minutes. Even though the detective was silent, the emotion on his face and in his silence communicated his regret at not having prevented her from being shot.

  “Whadda they tell ya?” the detective asked.

  “Not a lot,” Steven answered.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Berkeley, Fall 1968

  “Lexi, you’re late.” Jeff pounced on me before I closed the entry door to our house. “Carol’s in Cowell Hospital. I’ll drive you over.”

  “Wha-at?” I dropped my bag of art supplies and books.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I’ll explain in the car.” Keys in hand, he raced down the front walk to the driveway.

  “Is it bad?” I ran after him.

  “Don’t know. She was conscious. That’s a good sign.”

  Better than the last time she was hospitalized. It took days for her to come out of the coma when she fell do
wn the cliff.

  I jumped into the passenger seat of Jeff’s VW bug. “What happened?”

  He looked over his shoulder, backed out of the drive, shifted into second gear, and drove around the corner towards the student hospital. “She got burned in some kind of explosion.”

  “Oh my God.” My beautiful friend Carol, please don’t let her perfect face be burned. “Where?”

  “I’m not certain, at her house maybe?”

  Carol lived with two of our girl friends in the second floor apartment in a brown shingle craftsman, on Southside several blocks from the campus.

  “When?”

  “They called an hour ago. I know she’s conscious because she had them call you. You aren’t listed as her next of kin, or anything. Right?” Jeff smiled to show he was teasing.

  His effort barely registered. My mind raced with what-ifs and horrible mental pictures of Carol scarred for life. I took a deep breath trying to calm down.

  Jeff scanned the small parking lot for a space.

  I hopped out. “See ya inside.”

  I ran to the first door I saw. It was locked. I ran around to the lobby entrance and across the worn linoleum. At the curved reception desk, I shoved aside two other students. “Where’s Carol Huntington?”

  “Just a minute. Let me finish with the people in front of you.” An overweight bitch with attitude, Carol would’ve given her––oh God, Carol.

  “Please, my friend’s been burned. The hospital called an hour ago, I was in class––”

  “Go ahead,” Both students stepped back waving me in front of them.

  “Thanks.” I looked the receptionist in the eye. “Carol Huntington.”

  The bitch stared at me without moving.

  “Please, you don’t understand, she wouldn’t have had them call me unless it was serious.”

  Bitch ran her long red fingernail down a clipboard and dialed a phone, “Carol Huntington?” She listened then hung up the receiver.

  “You can’t see her now.”

  “What? Why not?” I wanted to reach across the desk and throttle her. “Where is she?”

  Jeff’s hand on my arm pulled me back from the counter. He smiled at the bitch and asked, “What can you tell us?”

  She returned the smile. “The doctor’s with her now. She’s been moved from the emergency area to the second floor. You can wait in the lounge just outside the elevator.”

  “Thank you.” Jeff continued to hold my upper arm as he moved me to the elevator. “Calm down. You aren’t going to be much help to her if you’re freaking out.”

  I don’t usually freak out. In fact, I’m calm in emergencies. I took several more deep breaths.

  At the nurse’s station near the elevator, I flashed a quick smile before I asked about Carol. “Do you know how bad it is?”

  All the smiles in the world weren’t going to get me an answer to that question. I’d phrased the question all wrong.

  “The doctor is with her now. He’ll talk to you if she wants him to do so.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “There was a gas explosion in her apartment.”

  “Her roommates?”

  The nurse shook her head in a quiet way that scared the hell out of me.

  “Are they alright?”

  “One person was transported to the burn unit at UCSF.”

  I sucked in my breath. Oh, this was bad. UCSF, University of California in San Francisco, was the university’s medical school and one of the best hospitals in the state. It was better equipped than Cowell, the Cal student hospital, to handle serious injuries.

  It took a few seconds to realize it was a good sign that Carol was still at Cowell. It meant she wasn’t that seriously hurt.

  Or it could mean she was hopeless.

  I paced between the elevator and the vinyl sofas in the waiting area and the nurse’s station. Jeff sat reading a textbook he’d thought to bring with him, looking up to smile at me periodically in a manner that I imagine was meant to be reassuring.

  Finally a white clad nurse walked from a room down the hall to the nurse’s station. She asked something I didn’t hear but I saw the seated nurse nod in my direction.

  “Your friend, Carol, asked me to check for you out here. Would you like to come with me?”

  Carol sat on an examining table; her forearms were wrapped in white gauze. The only marks on her face were the tracks of tears, a few of which still flowed. She turned up the corners of her mouth to smile at me, but it was a sad smile.

  A doctor scribbled on a prescription pad, ripped off the top sheet, and looked at me briefly before handing the paper to Carol.

  “You’ll need to come in tomorrow to have those bandages changed.” He nodded at her forearms. “That prescription is for pain. Don’t mix it with anything else, no alcohol . . . or anything else.”

  He looked at the grin of relief on my face. “You here to take her home?”

  I nodded.

  “I’d like to keep her here for observation. But she refuses. Her burns aren’t life threatening, but I’d like her watched for signs of shock. She’s had a traumatic experience. She shouldn’t be alone.”

  “She won’t be. What do I watch for?”

  “Pallor, clammy skin, agitation, dizzy, lightheadedness, confusion, shallow breathing. If she faints or has any of those symptoms, get her in here immediately.”

  I nodded my agreement, “Yes, of course.”

  “She is going to have some pain. If she gets too uncomfortable, bring her back so we can give her stronger pain medications.”

  Carol slid off the table. Cut open, the singed sleeves of her sweater dangled over the white gauze. “Thank you,” she said to the doctor and nurse.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said to me.

  She gave Jeff the same sad smile and followed him to the car without a word. Once she was settled into the passenger seat, and Jeff and I were in, Jeff closed his door and she let out a loud, “FUCK!”

  I waited for an explanation while Carol sobbed incoherently. Jeff turned to gesture to me for instructions as to where to go.

  “Let’s go home,” I said thinking it best not to take her back to the scene of whatever the hell had happened. And God knows what condition her house might be in. I pointed to the north. “To our house.”

  Was this sobbing what the doctor meant by agitation? Crying was not something I’d seen Carol do very often in the twenty years we’d been close friends.

  We walked her up the drive and steps and into the living room. I made her a cup of tea, found a box of tissues, and then Jeff excused himself to give us privacy. I sat with my arm around her shoulders until the shaking subsided and the convulsive breathes stopped.

  I moved to the ottoman in front of her chair. “What happened?”

  “Karen and I came home at the same time. When we walked into the apartment, we smelled gas. She went into the kitchen.” Carol sighed and blew her nose. “I was just about to say, let’s get out of here, when I heard her say the gas is on in the oven, and then the sound of a match striking. And boom. I was knocked onto my ass. And little patches of flames popped up everywhere. In the curtains, on the sofa. Karen was on the kitchen floor, unconscious.” This brought a fresh flood of tears.

  “I . . . I slapped at flames on her clothes . . . grabbed a kitchen towel and beat at spots of fire, but it just kept spreading.” She sobbed a few more times.

  “Karen’s hair, I got it to stop burning. Smothered it with a towel.” She wiped her nose with the tissue. “Then firemen grabbed her. And me. And then when we got outside, they took Karen away in an ambulance. My ambulance was following the ambulance to Cowell. I went inside, but they never brought her in.”

  “They took her to UCSF. That’s what the nurse told me.” I explained.

  Carol looked at me with relief.

  “Oh, I was afraid they didn’t come in because she was dead.” Carol sniffled.

  Jeff came into the room. “
I’ve been on the phone with UCSF. Karen’s parents are there. She’s listed as critical, but stable.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “She’s seriously hurt, but she should be okay.”

  The apartment was toast, but Karen was eventually okay. She went home for a long recuperation and lots of plastic surgery. Denise, the third roommate, moved in with her boyfriend, and Carol moved in with us.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Berkeley, Alta Bates Hospital, March 2008

  “Doctor, she’s been flailing around.” Steven stood up from the chair he’d pulled up to his sister’s bed. He was glad to see the doctor had finally arrived on his morning rounds. “Do people in coma’s usually move around like that?”

  The doctor glanced at Steven, but he didn’t answer. Instead he walked to the bedside and lifted Al’s eyelids one at a time, shining a flashlight into each eye. Without turning to face Steven, the doctor muttered, “The coma patient sometimes awakes in a profound state of confusion.”

  “Is she waking up?”

  Again Steven’s question went unanswered.

  “Occasionally, a patient will suffer from dysphasia,” the doctor said.

  “What’s dysphasia?” Steven asked. When a minute passed without the doctor speaking, Steven repeated his question. “Dysphasia, what is it?”

  “The inability to articulate any speech.”

  “She’s been talking,” Steven said. “Well, sorta muttering.”

  The doctor looked up from his patient to Steven. “A comatose patient does not regain consciousness instantly. They are awake for a few minutes, and then the time gradually increases. She may be speaking during the moments she is awake.

  “She said she was worried about Carol. Maybe because Carol was with her when she was shot. Maybe she thinks something happened to Carol. But that’s probably a good sign, right?”