On The Bridge

by Ada Uzoije

  Norman was different then, very caring and happy, as she recalled. He was so fond of his son and could not wait to teach him all the interesting things the world held. He couldn’t wait to watch Douglas try everything he taught him. Jean found herself smiling through her tears now. She wondered what had changed in him, what it was that made him so distant, so abrupt. It seemed as if he carried the world on his shoulders. She wanted her old Norman back, and that happy family full of awe and adventure they used to be.

  The awful event resurfaced again in her mind, the reason she was sitting next to a hospital bed, worried for her son. Doug’s mother felt sick at the whole thing, not only the effect it had on the boy, but the entire bloody affair left her contemplating life and mortality and how such a thing could happen to a man who appeared to be so successful. She shrugged it off as her own plight reminded her that appearances were at best fickle and she made a conscious decision to let it go for the moment and cheer herself with reminiscence of her Doug. Granted, he was only nine years old at the time and there were no such things as ego and street cred back then to maintain. He could just be a boy – and he was—carefree.

  She remembered when they vacationed in the South when Doug was eight or so. She smiled to herself remembering how they ate watermelons in midsummer after taking a dip in the pool, and how Doug would stalk her while she was sunbathing.

  The stickiness of the watermelon rind smearing, his prime attack of her and his subsequent squealing stayed vivid in her memory. She would chase him right into the pool and wash off the sticky juice by tickle match. Doug’s little voice, laughing, swam in her thoughts and she did not realise that she actually uttered a giggle out loud. It jerked her back from her day dream and she shook her head sheepishly at the lady across the corridor who smiled at her involuntary joy.

  Jean could only have one child and she always told her sister that this one had to make it count. At the time it was a joke, but the more he grew, the more she feared that he might succumb to his father’s hostility and become the mirror of Norman. She had to hold on to the little boy who smelled of watermelon, she had to keep him safe from the onslaught of her husband’s cold fathering and ridiculous pursuit of manliness, when he himself could not be held an example thereof. It was there in the hospital that Jean realised that for now, she hated Norman. She hated him, but she was no shield maiden who could battle dragons bound to her by marriage. Her mother made sure she knew the place of a woman – by her husband’s side and without opinion. Her father made sure her mother knew that too.

  Sometimes she would wonder what Norman would do if she rebelled. He had never lifted a finger to her. But these days it felt as if he was facing some midlife crises. He was not himself; had not been for months now. He had become…meaner, she thought, but could find no exact explanation for it and when she tried to address it with him, the meanness would show. Norman had a better way of dealing with disobedient wives. The predator would hone in on the young to ensnare the mother. That was Norman’s newfound wicked way. And it worked quite well in reverse too. If young Douglas displeased his father without grounds and Norman simply felt like an asshole, he would find something to pick at with Jean, and when he had managed to belittle his wife to tears, he’d always give Doug a stern look and shift blame.

  “Look what you’ve caused now, Douglas. This is your fault and you should man up and own it, but no, you hide behind your mommy. Blasted nancy.”

  This infuriated her, but somehow she was so conditioned to the unspoken rules her parents dictated, those her husband seemed to unwittingly follow as well, that she never had the stomach to challenge him when he used Doug and her against one another to feed his involuntary megalomania. She hung her chin on her chest now, ashamed of the fact, her smile taken from her. Yes, she wanted her old Norman back and she thought to find out where he was hiding and retrieve her happy husband of old.

  She looked up at a family of three in the waiting room. There sat a young woman in her twenties and a man of similar age next to her on the couch. In between the two of them bobbed a little boy of about three years old, unaware of the seriousness of his surroundings and the parents tried their best to accommodate him when he addressed them or asked a myriad of senseless questions. Jean was about to entertain a small measure of disdain for their happiness, their new life still unperturbed by more mature problems, but the little boy wrapped his mother’s lacy cardigan around his head like a bonnet and stared at Jean, as if posing to entertain her. He looked like a little girl with the pink crochet work fringing his face and Jean burst out laughing, giving the little actor an immeasurable thrill at her reaction. As he continued to amuse the laughing stranger, Jean’s thoughts were directed to another lovely memory of her son, evoked by the image of the boy in the bonnet.

  When Doug was twelve his voice broke and it was an unending source of giggles between them, as he would deliberately say things that would provoke his voice to twist. She had to fetch her tailored garment from the boutique for her sister’s wedding and had to pick up her son from school on the way there, leaving the poor boy no choice but to be dragged through the boutique at the amusement of the older women there.

  Jean collected her dress and went to fit it in the fitting room and told Douglas to wait outside her dressing cubicle, but this was Douglas – Douglas the Jester – and she knew not why she was even surprised when she emerged from her dressing room to find her son in a bridesmaid dress, giving her a proper curtsy and having the entire store in stitches. Douglas had chosen a salmon colour for his ensemble and could not zip up the garment all the way, leaving the excess material to fall awkwardly from his one shoulder and the hem tripping him every time he turned to his mother’s delight. He would invite her to high tea in a shrill voice that bent and changed pitch under puberty, leaving the entire shop holding themselves and applauding.

  This was her Douglas.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was 8pm when Doug’s ears allowed him in and he heard a hollow murmuring of orders, announcements and footsteps as he woke slowly through the portal of sleep into his alien surroundings. His eyelids weakly gave way and before him he saw nothing but white. For a moment he lay without stirring and then his eyes focused better on the white material that appeared to be hanging over him like some sort of tent. As his hearing improved he realised that he was in hospital, the calls for doctors over the intercom reverberating around him. Doug noticed that the white fabric draped down from a steel rail around his bed and was drawn to hide him entirely from the rest of the ward.

  He found it impossible to recall what had happened and why he was here, but in searching his memory found some jigsaw snapshots that could not quite fit. There was a van with a screaming driver. His father was crouching next to their car and his mother pointed to a valley. It was all so obscured that he wearied from the concentration it took to recollect all the information. Then he remembered a roaring Italian sports car and a man with a suit who leaned over the side of the bridge. Doug frowned as he scanned through the images one by one, but the red car lingered longer every time he thought of it. The red car. Red. Red. Red blood! The blood! He saw blood on his shirt and blood on the screaming driver’s van, but he knew the blood was not his, so he wondered how come he was the one in hospital.

  How had he come to be in hospital? He was an extremely clever and inquisitive youngster, so he tried to find out what was wrong, if he had perhaps broken something. He moved his feet and legs, then slightly elevated his arms and twitched his fingers. There was no pain or trouble moving them, so he moved his head carefully from side to side and then pushed his hips up to test his torso. Nothing seemed to be wrong at all. That was odd, as something must have put him here. He had not been in a hospital since he was born, but the eternal education offered by daytime hospital soaps on television had taught him about how things worked in such an institution. He could find out best from someone who actually knew what he was there for, so he searched for that bell button he always saw pa
tients use and found it almost out of reach from the grasp of his hand, above his head on the pillow stack he was propped on.

  He pressed the button with the figure of a lady on it to summon a nurse. A faint ringing ensued a distance away in the ward and it was then that the reality of the matter hit him. He would soon be told what had happened to him. He would soon be told that the blood was not his own, but that of his parents. If they were alive and well, then where the hell were they? The panic started growing from a tiny seed of doom lodged in his stomach, gestating into a bigger worry as the arrival of the nurse approached and Doug was reluctant now to learn the truth he so desired a few minutes before. He didn’t want to know anymore and he wished he could reverse time and just lie in the dark for a few minutes longer to compose himself.

  A few moments later, a pretty young woman in a white uniform, light on her dainty feet, floated swiftly into the room. Her face lit up in surprise and she smiled as she nodded to the other patient and she drew aside the privacy curtain and said, “Oh, you’re awake, are you? We were beginning to worry. It’s been 36 hours since you came in.”

  Doug knew this was to be the nurse to break the news to him and he swallowed hard, attempting to be pleasant.

  “Where am I?” asked Doug.

  “In Charity Central Hospital in the Intensive Care Unit,” she answered while deactivating his call button.

  “Oh,” said Doug. After a pause, with the hint of a quiver in his voice he asked, “Am I sick or something? I don’t feel sick at all.” He tried to deny the other possibility, that illness was not the reason for his hospitalisation, but he dared not steer that way, for fear of what he might hear.

  “Oh no, dear! Don’t worry,” said the nurse quickly in her most cheery tone. “Nothing serious! You were just in shock,” she answered matter-of-factly and proceeded to switch on his bedside lamp and check his blood pressure.

  “You were involved in an accident…sort of… and you’ve been unconscious since they brought you in here on a stretcher two days ago,” she said, her eyes fixed on her hands while fixing his drip inlet.

  “At first the doctors were concerned that you might have a concussion or mild brain damage from the ordeal, but don’t fret, they couldn’t find anything wrong with you,” she smiled at him as she wiped his brow, clearly trying to sound as happy as possible.

  “Not even a sign of a wound or even a bruise, I tell you. So they just decided to let you stay until you woke up,” she winked as she poured him some water.

  “Dr. Lamaskaya left orders that we should call her when you did, so I’ll just go do that now, alright? And we’ll have you back on your feet in no time.”

  Doug did not like her overly cheerful tone. It made him worry about the bad news side of the good news she shared. There was always a bad news side. He had learned that in his short life so far and he knew by now that the more people sugar coat a scenario, the more there would be a need for it later when the bad news came.

  For once, he thought, he had to man up as his father always suggested in his most unpleasant tone of voice, and just come out and say it, just square it with her. He sat up as she turned to leave and called after her in urgency.

  “Oh, wait a minute. Can’t you tell me more? I don’t remember anything. Was anybody killed in the accident? Do you know anything about my parents?”

  “Listen, we’re very busy,” said the nurse as politely as she could, “and I don’t know much about it yet. I wasn’t on duty when you were brought in, see? Dr. Lamaskaya will tell you everything, I’m sure, when she comes. Don’t worry. If anything terrible had happened to your parents, it would have been on your chart, right?”

  With that less than satisfactory reassurance, she turned and left as quickly as she came. That sprouting apprehension in his core sprung a few tentacles and reached for his toiled mind.

  The trouble was, Doug had a much too fertile imagination for his own good. He began to fill in the spaces of his memory will all sorts of horrible things. He pictured his mother lying dead with her head severed from her body and her dead eyes staring at him. Then he imagined maybe he remembered a car on fire with his parents trapped inside screaming.

  It all became too much for the boy, his heart pounding and his stomach taut with dread and uncertainty and above all, his ineptitude at remembering anything solid.

  Doug began to cry.

  He tried desperately to remember what had actually happened but he simply couldn’t. Then the images continued in his mind. He visualised a massive pileup with a dozen cars, all terribly damaged, bodies strewn about the area, some barely alive and some dead. One of the bodies lying on the pavement, which had somehow lost its head, had been squashed so severely that it could hardly be identified as a body. Somehow this grisly picture seemed to tease his mind more than all the other things he was imagining. He tried to tell if the body was his father’s, but he just could not form a proper recollection and with this the doubt mounted and grew. Really frightened and almost moved to hysteria, he began to work himself into a real panic, sobbing and shouting, “Please? Isn’t there somebody who can tell me what happened? Anybody!”

  As he was in a double room the noise woke the old man in the other bed. He’d been brought in in an alcoholic coma and on waking nursed a terrible headache, exacerbated by the noise of the wailing teenager in his room. Every time Doug shouted it vibrated like a clash of cymbals in the old man’s ears.

  “Hey, sonny, belt up, will you? Your shouting isn’t going to help either one of us, dammit! Just be quiet like a man and somebody’ll come when they’re ready. Your squealing isn’t gonna get you anything but a hearty slap, I promise you!” he threatened in a hoarse slur that conveyed his fury accurately and he sat up, fists on high as he yelled at Douglas Bates in the half-dark room.

  “But I’m afraid my parents are dead,” whimpered Doug.

  “Oh well, maybe they are. But you’ll live through it. Mine have been dead for 50 years and I’m still alive and kicking ... and damn well happy for it, actually.”

  At that, Doug just buried his head in his pillow and wept. The old man sounded disturbingly like his father. There was no reassurance, even forced in the name of kindness and the boy started wondering if being a man was all about behaving like a prick for the rest of your days. So he sobbed in frustration and tried to keep his crying down, because he was in no state to receive another third-degree from the grump next to him.

  Luckily, it wasn’t long before Dr. Lamaskaya came in to see her young patient. Noticing the state Doug was in, she sat down beside the bed, patting his shoulder and making soothing noises until he calmed down a bit. “What’s the trouble, Doug?” she asked sympathetically.

  “I can’t remember what happened,” he jerked under his sorrow. “They told me I was in an accident but they wouldn’t tell me what happened or if my parents were injured or killed or what,” he moaned, shaking his head. “I can’t remember. I can’t remember and I want to know!”

  “Okay, okay” said Dr. Lamaskaya. “I can’t tell you everything but I can assure you that your parents are fine,” she said softly.

  “In fact, they were with you when you came in. There was a serious accident. A man was killed, not your father, don’t worry. Your parents weren’t involved. Apparently you were standing very near to the man who was killed and the trauma of what you saw caused you to faint. You’ve been out ever since.”

  “That’s awful! Where were we? Who was he?”

  “I don’t know. We’ve phoned your parents and they are on their way. But don’t worry, gradually you’ll remember. Your folks will surely fill you in on the details, but to keep you from being upset when you do remember, I’m giving you some medication to calm you, okay?”

  She took a container from her pocket with his name printed on it and spilled one tablet into the palm of her hand.

  “Here, have one now, and one each day for the next two weeks until you feel better, alright?”

  Doug nodded as he sw
allowed the anti-psychotic and felt her lay him back down on the bed. She gave him a calm look, smiled slightly and left into the pale, quiet corridor.

  Doug was still quite upset, though very relieved that his parents were alright. After a few minutes, the pill kicked in and he looked up at the bland ceiling and its playing shadows while he waited for his parents to arrive.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jean was soaking in a hot foam bath she ran for herself. Candles lit, she exhaled long and slowly and released the strain from her shoulders to her calves, allowing the therapeutic warmth to envelop her entire body. Norman was at work, apparently, and she did not much care if there were any truth to it. Every moment without him was a godsend to her. No insults, no blame, no orders and no reprimands for things he found unnecessary fault in.

  Much as she enjoyed these alone moments every now and then, there was an inkling of discomfort as she lay back this night. Jean somehow refused to close her eyes in the ghostly steam that rose above her bathtub, and the adjective she thought was apt. Since the accident she had constantly had bouts of fear for the man who died, not as himself, but for what he represented.

  Norman did not witness the awful event, and even if he had, she doubted that he would even have had the wherewithal to feel any degree of shock or empathy toward all involved. But she saw it all. She had witnessed it in graphic detail. As much as she sympathised with her young son, she felt that she had a fair amount of trauma applied to her mind as well without the sympathetic care her son had received. She had not closed her eyes in the solitude of her warm bathroom for the past two days, for fear of the dreadful scenes that played inside her eyelids as her cruel memory granted her shot after shot of the details she could not un-see, her mind forced to replay the horror film she could not switch off. She could, as a mother, not allow any of the people in her family or circle of friends know that she was secretly struggling to come to terms with the awful incident that haunted her, and so Jean had been medicating herself surreptitiously and making no excuses to herself for taking care of her own psyche. People always perceive mothers as some sort of super force, women with inexhaustible stamina, wisdom and composure, and she knew for a fact that nothing was further from the truth. The only thing women did have a power for was hiding their wounds and drugging themselves to sell it convincingly.