"You've ridden in cabs before?" I asked, surprised.
She nodded. "A few times. I only did it as a last resort but I never had a problem before. Sometimes we even drove right along the Bay too. I figured cabs were reasonably safe. In truth I didn't ride in them much mostly because they're expensive. And then I got in the one at the casino."
"What happened then?" I asked.
"I knew something was wrong almost right from the start of that trip."
"What do you mean?" I asked, fascinated, eager to hear this story.
She swallowed nervously. "It was the eeriest thing. I'd been drinking at the casino and was pretty buzzed, feeling kind of good you know? I was up a hundred bucks and ready to just go back to the room and crash. As soon as I closed the door in the cab and it pulled away I started to get nervous. I didn't know why at first. I didn't equate fate with any of it. I just felt twitchy, uncomfortable, like I didn't really want to be there. I thought it was the cab driver. He didn't seem drunk at all, that really would've made me nervous obviously, but there was something about him I didn't like. Something about his face, which looked kind of old and gross looking. He was talking about how good the tips were in his job since he usually only drove people who'd won big. Kind of hinting, you know? He asked me if I'd won big."
She breathed deeply, wiping a tear from her eye. I could see that she was trembling.
"He turned his head towards me when he asked me that," she went on. "When he did that I smelled it. Alcohol on his breath. Like the cop said, it wasn't much, just a faint whiff of that odor that people have when they've been drinking. I'm sure you know what I mean."
"Oh yeah," I affirmed softly. As a paramedic I'd smelled that odor thousands of times and knew it well. When I'd been new and had worked the night shift in downtown Spokane that odor had been on nine out of ten of my patients.
"As soon as that hit my nose and I realized I was in a car with a drunk driver at the wheel I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. The buzz that I had went away like that." She snapped her fingers. "I almost panicked, especially when I glanced over to my right and saw that we were driving alongside the lake. It was dark but I could see the water less than twenty feet away, just down a small incline. I could imagine perfectly being under that water, trapped in my seatbelt, not able to breathe, drowning. I could see Mom and Dad and you at my funeral, crying while they lowered my coffin into the ground.
"The cab driver was still looking at me, waiting for me to answer his question. Everything was moving in slow motion. He wasn't paying attention to where he was going and he was drifting into the other lane. That broke through. I yelled at him to watch where the hell he was going and he jerked his head back, steering back into his lane. He said something like, "Jeez lady, I wasn't gonna hit nobody" and looked offended. But I was still terrified.
"I told him to stop right there and let me out. He said, "what are you talking about, your hotel is still a couple a miles away?" and I told him I didn't care, to let me out right there. We argued for a minute about it and he just kept driving down the road, telling me that we were almost there and that he couldn't let someone out before they were where they were going. Finally I screamed at him to stop the fucking cab now.
"Things got really slow motion at that point. He was pissed off and said "fine, walk if that's what you want". But instead of simply stopping and letting me out he tried to pull into a parking lot on the other side of the street. He did it without looking to see if anything was coming first. Something was. It was one of the shuttle vans that take people from the motels to the casinos. He pulled right in front of it. It didn't even have time to put on the brakes. I didn't even have time to yell. In that second, while I was looking at it's headlights less than five feet from me, I knew that fate had finally caught up with me. I knew that I hadn't listened to you as much as I should have. I knew that I was going to die. I KNEW it!
"When it hit, glass sprayed all over me. I felt something like a sledgehammer hit me all over my right side. I felt the doorframe hit the side of my head. The noise was incredible Bill, I never heard anything like that. I felt us spin around and then start to tip over. Just as I became upside down there was a splash and water was covering my face. I couldn't breath and my body actually felt a little better, less pain when the cold hit me. I felt the seatbelt holding me in place just like I'd imagined. I was trapped underwater and I was going to die. And it felt RIGHT. I knew that if I just sat there for a minute or two it would all be over. Something inside of me told me just to do that. Just to wait there until everything went black. I wouldn't be in pain. I wouldn't have to worry anymore. It would just be over. It was a calming feeling Bill. The thought of just dying actually got rid of the panic.
"I sat there upside down, not breathing and I saw the roof of the car hit the bottom of the lake. I saw a bunch of bubbles go floating up. I saw a bunch of muck get stirred up and obscure everything outside. It seemed trippy to me. I wasn't afraid. I remember thinking, "so this is what it's like-this isn't so bad". I even saw the cab driver get out of his seat belt and swim out through his window. He'd had it open and he just squeezed his way out. His arm was bleeding and leaving little trails of blood in the water and I tripped off of them for a second. I knew that he'd swim to the top and that he wouldn't try to come back for me. I knew it.
"I didn't feel any pain right then. I was relaxed. Just waiting to die. Just waiting to do what I was SUPPOSED to do. It didn't feel bad at all. It actually felt kind of nice."
"Jesus." I mumbled, staring at her. She hadn't said that with nostalgia, but with horror.
"I was just starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to just suck in a bunch of water and get it over with. I was SUPPOSED to die, so why prolong it? That's when I thought of you." She soured a little. "It wasn't a nice thought. I thought, "that'll teach Bill not to tell me what I want to know, not to keep me down anymore. Now the asshole can just cry his ass off at my funeral." It was that thought that got me moving. I actually saw you next to my grave, tears running down your face, wondering why I hadn't listened to you. The fact that you could cry for me told me that you really did love me, that you would be…" She broke a little. "Be disappointed in me."
"I sat there upside down, underwater, not able to breathe and all these thoughts going through my head. Was I really going to just die in order to get back at you? You'd fucked over fate time and time again and I was going to let myself die just to prove you were wrong? What the hell was I thinking? Shouldn't I at least TRY to get out of here?"
"I didn't think I was going to make it. I really thought I was going to die anyway because I was supposed to but I decided to at least try." She shook her head. "It was absurdly easy to get out of there. I've been wondering why the Tracy in the other time-line found it so difficult." She glared contemptuously at me, directing her glare to the "other Tracy" whom she obviously had little respect for. "That Tracy simply drowned. She wasn't injured like I was. I found the clasp on my seatbelt and pushed it, expecting that it would be jammed or something but it wasn't. It came right apart and I dropped slowly onto the roof of the car. My right leg was pinned a little bit between the front seat and the door that had been hit. It hurt when I pulled it but it came out without any problem. I was free but I was still in the car.
"Everything was calm and cool. I was considering myself as good as dead so I didn't worry too much about what would happen if I failed to get out. What did I have to lose by trying? I had time and presence of mind to actually consider the options of escape before I gave it a shot, that's how calm I was. I looked at the driver's side window, thinking I could swim out through there. But it was rolled up and the glass hadn't broken. I knew I wouldn't be able to break it. I looked at the window where the van had hit us. The glass had broken but the frame had been smashed in and I didn't think I could squeeze through it. So finally I looked at the window where the driver had gone out. There wasn't a partition between the front and the back seats like the cabs in Berkeley have so I decided that was the way to do it. I twisted myself around and pushed myself into the front seat.