The speed limit was thirty-five. I was doing sixty-two. I passed through a business district: convenience stores and video stores and computer stores and carpet stores seemed to creep like turtles past my side windows leaving a wake of dust behind me. Then I heard the short blast of a siren and I saw flashing blue lights in my rear-view mirror. I rolled my driver-side window down as I slowed to the speed limit and I waved the police car forward. The cruiser pulled alongside me and lowered the passenger window. There sat a thin young policeman in a blue uniform with glasses too big for his long narrow face and a thin mustache that made him look more like a teenager than a man.
“Hospital!” I shouted as loud as I could, “Where is the hospital?” I pointed toward the back seat of my car to where Melanie lay.
“Follow me.” Was his muffled reply. The policeman turned his siren on and the repetitive blaring whine pierced the deadened silence of night and echoed off of the buildings like sonar to a submarine as we passed them and the sound of the siren faded into the emptiness of space as we flew through open building-less spaces.
Time seemed to slow and distort the world around me. Intersections and landmarks crept closer as minutes became hours. I thumped the steering wheel impatiently. We passed a blue and white “H” sign mounted to a light pole near the freeway entrance which indicated that a hospital lay ahead. And then the hospital came into view and slowly grew in size as we approached. We turned into the emergency entrance and through a traffic loop normally reserved for ambulances.
As I opened my car door the normal speed of the universe seemed to catch up to me and clock me from behind as my knees buckled and I crumpled to the ground. I gripped the car door and pulled myself up as two paramedics wheeling a gurney came racing alongside my passenger door. Before I could round the car on my wobbly legs they had Melanie on the gurney and were wheeling her toward the emergency entrance and through two large automatic sliding glass doors. As I weakly followed and entered the emergency room a doctor began working on Melanie applying pressured rhythmic pushes with his palms to her chest while a nurse forced oxygen into her lungs through a large plastic tube.
“What happened to her?” A doctor in a powder blue uniform grabbed my shoulder and spun me towards him.
“Overdose.” I said.
The policeman, who was standing just behind the doctor, looked over the doctor’s shoulder and up at me, “What kind of drugs were you doing?” he said accusingly.
“None.” I heard my voice break. “She took sleeping pills.”
“How many?” asked the doctor.
“Six…maybe seven.”
“Do you have the bottle?”
I fished inside my pocket and pulled the topless bottle out and handed it to the doctor.
“Did she try to kill her self?” said the cop who had moved to stand beside the doctor.
Up close I could see that he was much older than I had originally thought.
“I guess so…I don’t know.”
I turned my head and watched as they wheeled Melanie through a set of doors and disappeared down a corridor. I was in a state of shock.
“I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.” The cop said to me leading me by the arm to a waiting area of plastic lime green chairs shaped like quarter moons with stainless steel legs. A television set tuned to a news channel was mounted to the wall near the ceiling but the sound was turned down and letters appeared on the screen as the anchor’s lips moved. The cop and I sat across from each other.
“What is your name?”
I paused and thought about the question for a moment.
“Your name?” he said impatiently. “Mohamed.” I blurted. “Mohamed
Assad.” I reached for my wallet to show him the driver license of the store owner I had taken it from.
“You don’t look Muslim.”
“I’m not.” I forced a smile, “But my father was and it’s the name he gave me.”
The cop formed a puzzled look as he compared the driver license photo to my face and then he handed my wallet back to me. “What is the woman’s name?”
“Melanie Burke.”
“And what is your relationship to her?” “She’s my girlfriend.”
“Any idea why she would try to kill herself?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t spoken to each other for a week. We had an argument.
But I don’t see how that would make her want to kill herself.”
A paramedic in a white uniform poked his head into the waiting room, “You’re going to have to move your car sir…you too officer.”
I rose from my seat and I followed the policeman outside to the circle where an ambulance was waiting to unload its cargo. The policeman turned his head back towards me. “We’ll finish this afterwards.” He said; then he stepped into his cruiser and pulled out and disappeared into the mass of cars in the parking lot.
I was pretty scared at that point. I hadn’t had any positive experiences with the men in blue. I felt that I would soon be found out. If he had asked my date of birth or my height and weight my cover would have been blown. I had never thought to memorize Mohamed’s personal details. I climbed inside the Mustang and slowly pulled out and I turned to the opposite side of the parking lot as did the policeman and drove sluggishly down an aisle. When I came to a parking space nearest the exit I turned off my headlights and left the car running and got out and closed the door and started to walk back towards the hospital. I saw the cop observing me from the emergency entrance but once he saw me walking towards him he stepped inside the sliding doors and disappeared. I took that opportunity to rush back to my car and with the headlights off I pulled forward and onto the street and I drove down the main drag for a few miles and then turned down a side street and I took the side streets back to Melanie’s house. The car was registered now to Mohamed Assad and it was addressed to my old house so I didn’t have to worry about having the car traced to Melanie’s house.
16
Amazingly I had forgotten to be afraid of the dark until I reached the driveway. When I got out of the car I bolted toward the side door and up the steps until I reached my back door which was still standing open and I turned on the ceiling light and slammed the door behind me and fell back against the door and slid to the floor. I held out my hands and was astonished at my trembling fingers. I could have thoroughly shaken a martini but I could not have brought the glass to my lips to drink it.
I was in deep trouble and I knew it. So was Sarah. We were doomed. The police would not be far behind. Once Melanie was able to give them her home address they would be coming for me. My first instinct was to grab Sarah and put her in the car and drive away. But the police knew what my car looked like and they had my license plate number. I could have taken Melanie’s car but it would not have taken them long to figure out that her car was missing and we would have been caught. I had no money. Melanie had deposited all of my money into her account as I could not have my own account. We were cornered like rats.
And then there was Sarah. How long could I go on consciously allowing her to kill people? To stop her we would either have to live on a deserted island or I would have to turn her in to the authorities and she would grow up surrounded by doctors in a psychiatric ward. And if she was designated a sociopath she would be incurable. She would never be permitted to leave and both of our hearts would be eternally broken.