Knowing that I would have to drive home I'd quit drinking beer a few hours before. I was the only one. Though no one was roaring drunk they were all quite asleep long before we reached I-90. I drove in solitude, with Nina curled up on my shoulder, with Mike and Maggie cuddled together in the back, their soft snores echoing in the car.
I wondered about Mike and Maggie as I drove. What would happen with them? Some sort of chemistry had obviously occurred between them, a powerful chemistry judging by the rapidity by which they'd connected. Was it doomed to be short lived? In my first life Mike and Maggie had never met each other except for brief glimpses in school before Mike dropped out. He'd probably whacked off a time or two thinking about her but I don't believe he ever even talked to her. Did this mean the relationship was shot before it could begin? Were they just two ships passing in the night? I didn't know, couldn't predict what would happen. All I knew was that it hadn't happened before. Did that automatically preclude it from happening now? Just how powerful was fate anyway?
I couldn't have known of course, that I was only a few minutes away from getting a very dramatic answer to that question.
My passengers were still asleep when I pulled onto my street. I turned the car and prepared to back the trailer into the driveway so it could then be backed into the garage. The lights on in the house were a little unusual; after all it was approaching ten o'clock and my parents were usually in bed by then. I didn't think much of it however until Dad came rushing out. I knew by his face that something was wrong.
He came up to my window and I rolled it quickly down, the car still blocking the street.
"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling adrenaline starting to pump through me, bracing myself for horrible news. Beside me Nina began to stir from her slumber.
"It's Tracy." Dad said hollowly. "There's been an accident."
Chapter 14
Those four words: "there's been an accident" brought the blackest dread to my heart in that instant. Just four little words, a simple arrangement of syllables rolling off my father's tongue and I felt that my whole world had just collapsed around me. I felt fate at work, felt it's presence as I had in the garage when Mike had said he was thinking about joining the Air Force, only stronger, in lethal proportion. Had I really thought that I could thwart fate in the matter of a life? Had I really thought I'd won? Why hadn't I foreseen this? Especially after Mike.
"Is she…" I asked my Dad slowly, fighting to maintain control of myself. Fighting and losing. I couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't speak the word.
"She's alive right now." Dad told me, knowing exactly what I was thinking, what I was dreading. "We don't know a lot about how she's doing."
By now Nina was fully awake and following the conversation. Her face was troubled, worried, but she kept silent. Behind us Mike and Maggie still slept, oblivious.
"What do you know?" I asked him. "What happened?"
"We got a call from the South Lake Tahoe Police," Dad said.
"South Lake Tahoe?" I asked. That was a considerable distance from Berkeley, about four hours by car.
He nodded. "Tracy was up there and was riding in a taxi cab. They don't know what happened yet, or at least they're not telling us, but the cab somehow crashed into the lake and landed upside down."
"Jesus," I muttered. "And Tracy?"
"She didn't drown," Dad told me. "She got out of the car somehow but she was hurt. The cops didn't know how badly, all they know is that she was airlifted to a hospital in Reno. The cab driver is in a hospital in South Lake Tahoe. He wasn't hurt too bad they said."
"They don't know anything about her injuries?" I asked.
"Nothing," Dad said. "I tried calling the hospital she's in but they couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything."
"What time did all of this happen?" I asked him, feeling guilt that I'd been out playing on the lake while in another part of the country my sister was having a horrible car accident. A possibly lethal car accident.
"We got the call a little over an hour ago," he told me. "The accident happened about an hour before that. They had a little trouble identifying her because she apparently had a fake I.D. on her. Only after they searched through her things did they find her real driver's license. I guess she was up there for a little gambling trip."
"Jesus," I said again.
"There's a red-eye flight out of Spokane in two hours," Dad told me. "It doesn't go to Reno but it stops in Sacramento, which is only a couple hours away by car. Your mother and I are going to be on it."
"Me too," I said quickly.
"Bill," he started. "There's nothing that you can…"
"I'm going Dad," I told him. "I'll pay for the ticket myself."
He looked at me for a moment. "You don't have to do that," he said. "Why don't you get the boat put away so we can get ready to go?"
Obviously a damper had been put on the end of what had been a very pleasant day. Mike and Maggie, after hearing the story of Tracy, offered condolences and then quickly slipped away. I was not so far out of it that I didn't notice Mike climbing into Maggie's car even though he only lived around the corner. Nina offered me some soothing words and a hug and then she too left, making me promise to call her and let her know what was going on. I promised.
I showered quickly and packed a few things. Soon we were on our way to the airport.
We took off on time, heading Southwest for Sacramento. The flight took forever. I spent much of it staring out the window to the darkness below while Mom and Dad held hands quietly next to me. Around us the lights were dimmed down and most of the other passengers were asleep in their seats. I was exhausted from the day I'd just spent and the droning of the engines was soothing white noise but I couldn't sleep. Not while my sister was maybe already dead somewhere, maybe sitting in the refrigerated section of the county morgue in Reno, a little tag tied to her toe.
Sometimes having knowledge of how a medical system works is not a good thing. This was one of those times. I could perfectly envision Tracy being taken into some hospital room, possibly the trauma resuscitation room, possibly the emergency operating room. I could see a team of doctors working on her, mechanically following written protocols as they cracked open her chest, or cracked open her skull, trying to save her but knowing it was useless. Doing it only because their training dictated they try. I could see a technician squeezing a bag attached to a breathing tube to supply her with oxygen while the efforts were going on. The technician would probably be checking out her tits as he did it, admiring them, thinking lightly that it was a shame they were going to be taken out of circulation soon.
At some point the doctor in charge would decide enough is enough. The time would be noted and all of the devices would be taken off of her. She would be zipped into a body bag which, by protocol, would have already been placed beneath her before she'd even arrived. The doctors, nurses, and technicians would all go onto other things, treating patients, stitching wounds, writing orders, fetching blankets, reflecting sadly for a moment how it was a shame that someone so young had died that way.
But none of them would shed a tear for her. None of them would slam their fists into the wall, cursing the insidious nature of DEATH, the mortal enemy. They would go about their tasks, eat their lunches, and the next day none of them would even remember her. Except maybe the technician who had admired her tits. The zippered bag would be moved into a storage room somewhere and a phone call would be placed. Soon a white van from the coroner's office would arrive and the bag would be placed on a small gurney and taken to the county morgue. The next day a pathologist would rip open her body, saw open her skull, take out her internal organs and weigh them, and then finally stuff everything back inside and crudely sew her up.