Anne

by M. William Phelps

I’m in a hospital, Anne told herself. That is clear to me.

  Looking around, seeing the tubes feeding her veins, Anne knew she had been in big trouble. Feeling achy all over, she experienced a lot of pain in her chest. She looked down and saw a large bandage running almost the length of her torso.

  Immediately, after the blow of realizing she was now awake for the first time after having had major surgery, Anne recollected what had happened back at Jimmy Williams’s house and why she was in the hospital. But still, something about the room struck Anne as unusual.

  A nurse walked over when she realized Anne had opened her eyes. She took the vent tube out of Anne’s mouth and untied her arms.

  “Hello, Miss Marsh. Do you know why you’re here?” the nurse asked.

  “Miss Marsh”? Anne thought. Oh, my goodness, they have the wrong patient.

  She had a hard time talking. Her throat was dry, raw, and scratched.

  The nurse fed her sips of water.

  “Do you think you can speak yet, Miss Marsh?” the nurse said after a time.

  Anne shook her head no. The pain was too much. Her throat far too parched.

  “Miss Marsh”? That name again, so she had heard it correctly.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Miss Marsh?”

  Anne nodded her head affirmatively.

  Within a few more moments Anne fell asleep. Hours later, when she awoke, she could talk slowly, with lots of pain, whispering what she had to say.

  “Where am I?” Anne asked.

  “Do you know why you’re here, Miss Marsh?” the nurse asked again.

  “ ‘Marsh’?” Anne was confused. She let it go, however. Then: “I do know why I am here. I was shot. Where am I, though?”

  “You’re in a hospital ICU, Miss Marsh. You’ve been unconscious for two weeks.”

  It had been two weeks since she’d been driven to John Paul Jones Hospital and transferred to Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Birmingham, Alabama, a day later. Anne learned that she had not been able to breathe on her own for one week straight. It was only on that day when she woke up that she had started to breathe again without the help of a ventilator.

  Anne looked down toward the end of her bed. She saw a chart hanging off the side.

  SALLY MARSH was listed under patient name.

  This confused her.

  “ ‘Sally Marsh’?” she asked.

  “Yes, that’s your name.”

  Still staring at the chart, Anne asked, “Why does it say Johns Hopkins . . . ?”

  “You were transferred here a few weeks ago after your surgery, Miss Marsh.”

  Anne was in a different hospital. She had been airlifted, actually. That first week after Anne was attacked, she was admitted to a hospital in another county, far away from Johns Hopkins, under the alias “Sally Marsh.”

  “No one in either hospital knew me by my real name, except the hospital administrator and his assistant. My immediate family, too. I found out that they do this for surviving gunshot victims to stop the perpetrator from coming after them to ‘finish the job.’ ”

  As Anne lay in her bed, finally awake after two weeks of forced sleep, she felt safer knowing that Jimmy Williams could not find her. As she thought about it, Anne had no idea what had happened to Jimmy. Had he been arrested, or was he on the run? Everything on the outside was unknown. All Anne understood was that she had faced death, beaten it for now, and was in a hospital fifty miles from home, under an alias.

  She tried to comprehend what had made Jimmy, a man she’d dated and trusted, snap and viciously attack her. What made Jimmy turn into a demon that night? As Anne went through that evening and the days leading up to it, she could not fathom how in the world she had survived, or why Jimmy would want to hurt her. What had she done?

  “Someone wanted me to stay alive,” Anne said later. “Someone was watching over me.”

  The scar on Anne’s chest was not made by a small incision. She had been filleted open from the top of her chest, just below her neck, down to her navel. They had folded her chest and abdomen out like opening a book to get inside and see what was going on. That was when they found Anne’s liver had been pierced. So they fixed it and closed her back up.

  “So, for the first week, the ventilator breathed for me,” Anne recalled. “Then they decided to go back in and have another look, because they knew something was still drastically wrong. I still could not breathe on my own. Which was when they found my wounded diaphragm.”

  Anne soon realized that her hands had been tied down because she’d had an allergic reaction to the morphine they gave her for pain. She had pulled all of her wires and tubes out after the morphine injection.

  * * *

  Not long after Anne woke up, Joyce stopped by the ICU for a visit.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m alive,” Anne said. She explained what she could recall about being in the hospital, on top of what they had told her she went through over that two-week period she was in a coma.

  “Thank God,” Joyce said.

  Anne’s mother was there, too. Talking exhausted her. All Anne could really do was stare at them, hold hands, and be grateful for being alive. It was by God’s grace, she believed, that He had allowed her more time in the world—time she would never take for granted or squander in any way from that point on. What other reason could she fathom for surviving such a terrifying and violent ordeal. It had been something out of a horror film.

  One day as Anne sat, waiting to go home from the hospital, and thought about things, she had a hard time understanding how Jimmy had turned into a monster and what led up to that violent night. Something had broken inside Jimmy. He’d gone from zero to one hundred, and Anne was searching for an answer.

  It was, I don’t know how to articulate it properly. . . but it was a nightmare of the most unimaginable kind what happened inside Jimmy’s house. Apparently, as I spoke to my mother and sister and found out some facts from back on the night I was admitted, I learned that not only had I told Deputy Terry Mack what happened—I don’t remember telling him—but I gave specific detail that later checked out.

  CHAPTER 6

  For Anne Bridges, when she goes back to the time leading up to the day Jimmy Williams attacked her, she doesn’t see a villain, some sort of obvious and vicious psychopath, or even a bad man. Instead, Anne looks at the calm and cerebral person she once knew.

  “When I was with Jimmy,” Anne recalled, “he was so very nice. He put women on pedestals.”

  Around Anne, Jimmy had always held it together. Polite, kind, generous, courteous, humorous, even fun. Although they’d amicably split so many years before, Anne had always viewed Jimmy as someone she could count on if she was ever in a jam. It was one of the reasons why she hopped into her car without a second thought, after speaking to Jimmy, and headed over to his Steel Bridge Road home in Shawnee after so many years of not talking to or seeing him.

  Now, as I think back on how this played out, even though there were so many warning signs right in my face, I didn’t see any of them. The first was very obvious....

  When I arrived at his house and saw it, my mind should have been saying, “Warning, warning,” but I was in denial, I guess, because of Jimmy being the man I used to know.

  Anne knocked on Jimmy’s door.

  “Who is it?” Jimmy said in a teasing way, knowing it was Anne.

  “Hi, Jimmy,” Anne said as he opened the door. “How are you?”

  “Come on in, Anne. So great to reconnect. Man, it’s been so long. How great it is to see you.”

  The feeling is mutual, Anne thought.

  When Anne walked into Jimmy’s house, the first thing she noticed was the monitoring device Jimmy had around his ankle.

  That should have told me something right away. But he had been through so much, like me, I just showed up wanting to be nice to him, show him friendship. Let him know that people out in the world still cared about him. That was truly my main reason for being there: provi
ng to him that friends don’t let friends fade into nothingness.

  Jimmy said: “My Anne.” He put his hands on her shoulders. Stared into her eyes. Face-to-face. “It’s so great to see you.”

  Jimmy was dressed “proper,” Anne remembered. He looked great. Clean-cut. Handsome. It was “really weird,” she added. A sentimental feeling underscored the reunion. Here she was whisked right back to when she and Jimmy were in their twenties, dating, taking on the world together. It felt as if no time had passed between them, as if they had both stepped back in time.

  That first night, Jimmy and Anne sat and talked. Jimmy bared his soul. He was upset with how his life had turned out. But so glad Anne was back in it, and she was willing to overlook the things people were saying about him. He swore to Anne that what people were spreading around town had not been what had happened. Rumors, Jimmy explained. Nothing but made-up tales to make the people spreading them feel better about their own pathetic lives.

  “I messed up, Anne, I admit that. But it’s not like they say.”

  Jimmy sounded sincere.

  Anne believed him.

  “It’s okay, Jimmy,” Anne said. “You’re going to be okay. I’m here to help you through it all.”

  The first night went extremely well, which turned into Anne Bridges stopping over to see Jimmy Williams every other day, if not four or five times every week. They’d sit and talk. About old times. Old friends. The 1970s and 1980s. Where their lives had gone, and where they were these days. Jimmy would cook BBQ on the grill. They’d watch videos. Take walks. Hang out on Jimmy’s back porch.

  Anne had worked two part-time jobs then. She couldn’t handle being out of work after leaving the town clerk job, so she’d taken menial jobs to pass the time and make extra money. But any free time she found, which she did not dedicate to her son’s needs, Anne was with Jimmy at his house, hanging out.

  And so here they were, rekindling a relationship at a time in their lives when they both needed some sort of meaningful human touch. Although Anne had a tingle in the back of her mind telling her to run as far away as she could from the guy, she decided to stick it out and see where it all went. She trusted what Jimmy was telling her. He’d never given her a reason not to. Was it a mistake in judgment? Or perhaps Anne was simply not listening to her gut instinct, like all of us do from time to time?

  I believed I received the strength of an independent woman and my love for children from watching her, my mother, as we know children do watch their parents. My father was in law enforcement all of his life, except when he was a part of the U.S. Navy during World War II. Well, he gave to me my morals and taught me how to discipline myself.

  I had graduated high school and continued my education at the University of West Alabama and received my State of Alabama Teachers Certificate, but I never taught school. Instead, I followed Dad’s footsteps and went to work at City Hall as city clerk and later as treasurer and magistrate. A rewarding part of my job was working with the police department, which included being appointed Secretary of the State of Alabama’s 17th Judicial District Drug Task Force.

  I know what you’re thinking right now: Why are you giving me a boatload of your history that I likely have no desire to know? I say this because I think it’s imperative for everyone to remember and understand that we should never classify victims of violent crime due to their socioeconomic class, their education, or anything else. What happened to me can happen to anyone. I thought I knew this man. I trusted him. But I am lucky to be alive and I need to keep saying this.

  Several weeks after they’d rekindled the relationship, Jimmy called one night. He sounded a bit different than he had since Anne had been seeing him. She ignored the butterflies in her stomach and signs that something was off. It was the vibe of the conversation, Anne said later, which had beckoned her to question whether Jimmy was the same person she’d known all along.

  “You . . . stopping by tonight after work, Anne?” Jimmy asked. His speech was slurred a bit, but not enough to make Anne believe he was entirely wasted. Jimmy liked his alcohol, Anne knew. Maybe he’d had one too many.

  She thought about it. Every cell in her body told her to say no. Sleep on the thought and call Jimmy the following day. Let him be alone on this night.

  But she didn’t.

  “I need you tonight, Anne. I’m not feeling well.”

  Anne hesitated. Then: “Okay, Jimmy. I’ll stop by after work.”

  CHAPTER 7

  It was nearly time for Anne to leave the hospital. She felt a little stronger and was placed in a sub-ICU room. She still needed around-the-clock care and could not get out of bed herself. Her body was depleted. She was exhausted beyond anything she had ever experienced or could recall. Nurses were continually pushing Anne to get up and move around, but just the thought of walking seemed almost impossible to her.

  During this time the Linden chief of police and an ATF agent (who had arrested Jimmy on those gun possession charges earlier that same year) stopped in to see Anne and speak with her about Jimmy Williams and the ongoing investigation into what had happened at Steel Bridge Road.

  While she had been battling for her life in a coma, Anne was told, her Good Samaritan, Steve Cochran, was questioned by law enforcement about what he knew. The ATF agent had told Steve during that interview, “Look, if she dies, you are going to be arrested for accessory to murder.”

  Steve was, of course, alarmed by this. He’d taken a call from a friend. Hauled ass over to Jimmy’s house. Got Anne into his car and, against Jimmy’s direct orders, had taken Anne to the nearest hospital. Sure, he did not stick around to answer questions. However, it was because of Steve’s interaction that Anne had been in a position to fight for her life—otherwise, she would have certainly died.

  * * *

  In a statement Steve gave to the sheriff, he recalled it was around 12:00 A.M. when Jimmy called him.

  “Stevie boy, it’s Jimmy. My honey, Anne, has been shot and she needs a doctor.”

  “Call an ambulance,” Steve said. He could not understand why Jimmy was calling him and not 911.

  “Nope, cannot do that,” Jimmy replied.

  “Why the heck not?”

  “’Cause the law gonna think I shot her.”

  Steve dropped the phone and took off.

  During his interview with the sheriff, Steve explained that when he arrived, he saw “Anne and Jimmy sitting in her blue car . . . in the yard.”

  Steve parked. Got out. Ran over to Anne’s car.

  Jimmy stumbled out of the vehicle.

  Steve said he knew Jimmy was “intoxicated and high on drugs because he was holding on to the car to stand up.”

  Steve looked inside the vehicle and saw that Anne was in big trouble.

  “Listen here . . . Steve . . . ,” Jimmy said in a slurred mishmash of words, pointing a finger at him, poking it into his chest, “you take her to the hospital in Montgomery—you hear me on that?” Anne believed that the way Jimmy saw it, if he took her that far away, no one would find out what happened.

  Steve ran around to the side of the vehicle where Anne was sitting. She was barely conscious. “Come on, Anne . . . I got you.”

  “She was bloody and had several blood spots on her back,” Steve told the sheriff.

  They took off.

  “Where do you want to go?” Steve asked Anne, telling her to hold on, stay with him.

  “Camden . . . closest hospital . . . ,” Anne said.

  * * *

  As she spoke to the ATF agent before leaving the hospital, Anne felt a reassurance that Jimmy was not going to be able to hurt her again. She had been terrified and paranoid Jimmy would show up inside the hospital. Nobody was saying much about what happened to Jimmy or where he was.

  “Can you tell us what happened, Miss Bridges?” the ATF agent asked. Anne later said she got a sense from talking to this agent that “he was really on my side, a real tough guy who was looking out for me and cared about me.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, my . . . that is a long story,” Anne said.

  “What about any firearms, Miss Bridges, did you see any at Mr. Williams’s residence?”

  “Jimmy has plenty of guns there,” she said.

  A doctor came in and indicated it was enough for the day. Anne needed her rest.

  While in the hospital those last few days, waiting to go home, Anne developed an intense paranoia. She was going to have to battle post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when she went home, but there it was already, exposing itself in myriad ways. Anne would sit in her bed and watch for hours as people came in and out of her room and through the surrounding area. She was scared Jimmy or one of his cronies would come back to finish the job.

  I had no idea if the guy in the green smock was going to walk into my room with a needle and poison me. That was what went through my mind. I realized I did not know this man Jimmy Williams at all, especially the way in which I had thought I did. So I did not know then what kind of connections Jimmy had—he could have sent someone in there to kill me.

  “Nurse, nurse, come here, please,” Anne said one night. “I saw some people roaming through the hallway there and I just wanted to know who they are. They seem like maybe they were looking at me.”

  The nurse walked over. Stood beside Anne. Held her hand. “You’re safe here, Miss Marsh. I promise you. You do not have to worry.”

  Anne looked at her, scared.

  “I still didn’t believe her,” Anne said later.

  I began to feel safer, or better, actually, when I was moved into the sub-ICU room, because I had a phone near me. Other patients were in there, too—even one woman, who had been badly burned, who had a sitter with her all the time. So I felt a bit better, somewhat safer. This was right before I went home.

  Anne would sometimes sit in bed and think about her mother, who had become a tremendous source of inspiration and strength. She’d think about how hard her mother had worked to raise a family during the 1950s and 1960s. It gave Anne a sense of pause, putting things into perspective, helping her realize that she could get through anything.