Chapter 17: That Hard Headed Woman of Mine

October 9th, 1995, 2:10 AM MST, Mile 2502, 23 miles east of Hyder, AZ

George and Jill, with Josh’s trembling help, managed to carry Akilah under the cattywampus dining car, at which point, Miguel saw them and came and helped them carry her. They brought her, wrapped in the blankets and sheet, beside Sharon, who was also still completely unconscious. They all breathed the sigh of someone who isn’t really relieved, but has completed a difficult task that they thought would be to their benefit.

Akilah was in poor shape. She was bleeding profusely from somewhere, and they couldn’t entirely determine from where or why. In the dark environment of the sleepers shower room, George didn’t have the time or the ability to examine her closely, and hadn’t taken the time to do anything but wrap her up and get her out. Even basic first aid supplies were not really available to them, so there was no point in trying to do something about it.

The sheet and blankets had been wrapped quite tightly around her, keeping the wounds, whatever they were, covered, and relatively clean. They even were providing a little bit of tension onto the wounds, helping them seal and maybe clot. That was all they could do under the circumstances. They had done what they could; they had taken her to the most wide open space they could find, to allow for the medical service to get to her as quickly as possible.

“Is she ok, Geawhge, or what?” Josh finally got himself to say, “Will she make it, or what? Is she alive, or what? Tell me, please, I’m axin’ yuh tuh tell me whatcha can, please, Geawhge?”

“Calm down, Josh,” Miguel said, “You aren’t even letting George get a word in edgewise, here.”

“Josh, she is alive,” George told him, “She’s breathing. I couldn’t get her awake, but she is alive. She is bleeding, but I don’t know where from. How could I? I couldn’t see practically anything in there. She needs a doctor, that’s the blunt honesty. I think she’ll make it, Josh, she’s a tough little girl.”

“I don’t know what I’d do wit’out huh, Geawhge,” Josh said, “I’m gonna lose huh. Even if she makes it tuh de hospital and she lives, huh parents are gonna take huh away from me and from here. I know it.”

“Calm down, Josh,” George said, “I am on your side, and I did something twice as impossible as this six months ago. My dad has influence, he has money, and he has power. We don’t want to lose her, either, trust me.”

“What can yuh do” Josh said, “Nuttin’. Nuttin’, yuh can do. Okay? Lose huh, I am gonna. Yuh can’t help. Okay? Powerless, yuh are tuh do-”

The boy was going crazy, getting shriller and shriller, and on the verge of a panic attack.

“Josh,” Jill said, slapping him sharply across the face, “Stop saying all these stupid things. Let me put this to you straight. Six months ago, we got rid of my uncle, and convinced my relatives to sign over custody, through several less-than-legal motivators, of me, a minor child, so that I could be with the one I love, who I live with, as if I was his wife, in our own house. Blissfully. You understand this?”

“Yeah, so?”

“You and Akilah are 18,” George took over, “Her parents are foreigners. If you don’t think we can keep them at bay after doing what we’ve done, you are off your rocker. If she wants to be with you, you will be with her. All we have to worry about is getting through the injuries, trust me.”

Meanwhile, the distinctive sound came of a helicopter, a large Huey, came out from the distance, and started a landing pattern on the desert floor, not too far from where they were standing.

Lieutenant Norman Kasey and a medic sitting next to him in the helicopter shown their light down at the scene and saw two unconscious women laying on the desert floor. One looked ok, the other looked really messed up, wrapped in a blanket that was stained with a lot of blood. It didn’t look good, she looked like she needed immediate medical attention.

“Put down over there, sir,” the medic told Kasey, “Those two look like they need immediate attention, possibly a fast trip to the hospital. I see other injuries, but those are the only two that look unconscious from here.”

“Ok, let me find a clear space near there,” Kasey said, “We can land some of our medics to treat other injuries and we can pick those two up.”

Actually, there were several other serious injuries, but they were mostly on the other side of the train, or in the ravine, and would need prep to be picked up for transport. There were several helicopters sent to the scene; this was just the first to arrive. Akilah was losing a considerable amount of blood, and needed immediate attention, something they could determine simply from looking at her from the sky.

They landed the big Huey on the desert floor, and several medics rushed towards the two women resting on the desert floor. Sharon was quickly examined and put on a stretcher.

“What can you tell me about her?” the Medic asked the crowd.

“She’s these kids mother,” Miguel said, “We were traveling together, she hit her head in the bathroom when the train derailed, from what I can tell. I could see no obvious external injuries.”

“I can see no obvious external injuries either,” the medic said, “But she is unconscious, so we are going to take her to the hospital. I can’t take everyone with us, though.”

“I have to stay here and watch the kids,” Miguel said.

“Me and Jimmy will watch them, Miguel,” George said, “You go with her, she needs you.”

“If you insist,” Miguel responded, “I trust you, George.”

Two medics had been looking at Akilah, but when they started undoing the blanket, Josh stopped them.

“She’s naked unner dere,” Josh said, “I’m not sure she’d like bein’ exposed. Okay?”

“What do you know about what happened?” the medic asked Josh.

“I know nuttin’,” he said, “I just know she was in de showuh.”

“I was the one who found her, sir,” George said, “She is naked. She was covered with blood, I could feel it, but it was so dark in there I couldn’t see anything. I wrapped her up in a bed sheet and two blankets to sort of bandage her as best I could and protect her from the cold. It was hard to extract her from the car, but we managed it.”

“Is there anyone else in the train?”

“I don’t know about the whole train,” George said, “But all the survivors got out of our car. The car attendant was killed, he is still in the car.”

“How did you know he was dead?”

“His neck was at almost a ninety degree angle from his body, and he wasn’t breathing,” George replied, “I handled his body when I removed his key so I could open the shower room and get her out.”

“You did really well getting her out of the car, kid,” the medic replied, “We’ve got to get her to a hospital ASAP. I think we might have some major head injuries, but I’m not sure. Are any of you related to her?”

“I’m-” Josh started.

“He’s her fiancé,” Jill answer for him, “Practically her common law husband. He has to go with her.”

“Okay,” the medic stated, “He can come with us.”

“I don’t know what tuh do Jill,” Josh said, “I’m so scared. I don’t know what tuh do. What do I do? What if she-”

“Calm down,” Jill replied, slapping him again, “You need to stay calm. Can I come with him, sir? I think he needs emotional support. You don’t mind, do you George?”

“I mind,” George said, “But go ahead. He needs the help more than I do. I’ll try to get to the hospital as soon as I possibly can. I need to watch these kids, anyway.”

The medics loaded the two women aboard the stretchers, with one staying aboard to tend to them, then the rest left to tend to other injured people in the desert. Miguel, Josh, and Jill boarded with Sharon and Akilah, and the helicopter took off for St. Joseph’s.

October 9th, 1995, 2:40 AM, 5 miles out from St. Joseph’s

Helicopters are not the most comfortable way of getting from point A to point B. But they are a very fast way of getting from a specific point A to a specific point B. It was noisy, it was bouncy, and Josh felt like, on top of everything else, he was going to be sick. Not from Akilah; that was a whole different kettle of fish, just from the helicopter ride. He gave all kinds of explanations as to why he took the train, but he was hiding the real one: flying terrified the life out of him. He hated the sensation of being off the ground.

Jill had comforted him when they first took off. She tried to convince him that flying was safe, and that everything would be alright, but it didn’t work. She should change her middle name. It shouldn’t be Jillian Chandler McGee. It should be Jillian Sangfroid McGee; it was truly her middle name. She never seemed to get scared or worried. She was always calm and collected under pressure, always there with logical thoughts and the right action, doing what needed to be done, no matter what.

That girl was nuts; when she wasn’t calm and collected in the face of danger, she was laughing at everything in the world. She was so free and uninhibited; he envied her ability to stay calm in danger, and to laugh at the horrible. He wished he hadn’t, but he did. What was going on for him right now was the very utmost of tragic hell. He had found the perfect girl; he had fallen in love with her, and she with him. He had gotten her to agree to marry him; on her finger even now was a band of gold he had given her to signify it.

At 1:30 AM, he was so high on life, it was as if he was flying- and it didn’t even suck. His greatest dream, of finding the perfect girl to love, the one he thought was impossible for an ugly geek like him, it had come true. He was in bed with her, having an ecstasy above what he thought ever existed, making love to her, her sensuous body in his hands, alive and moving, all for him, and out of love. She was his, and he knew she was his. Forever.

All of those doubts, all of those fears, all of his lack of confidence, all of his awkwardness, had drained from his body. He had everything. If he could find such a beautiful, wonderful, kind, intelligent, sexy girl to love him, he could do anything, everything. He had friends, good friends, he had Akilah, he had his future, it was all there. He had the world on a string.

Fifteen minutes later, he was kneeling by her broken and bleeding body, feeling bereft. Fate was going to take her away from him. He should have known better than to think that this he could have. He was undeserving of her; he wasn’t good enough. Life, for him, had never been good; it had been an endless stream of taunts, of teasing, of bullying. He was ugly, he was awkward, he moved funny, he talked funny- even for someone from Queens- he was a nerd, a geek, a dork. Who was he to have someone like her?

He loved her, more than he could put into words. She was special. She was so perfect. She was beautiful, oh yes, she was beautiful. That light brown skin, her soft brown eyes, her long, full jet-black hair, her generous nose, her full eyebrows, her electrically warm smile, her shapely and warm body. She couldn’t be more beautiful to him, nobody could be. What’s more, that was the very least of her assets.

She was brilliant, she could think, she could see, she could observe. She was more basically intelligent than he was; it was wonderful to have someone to talk to and have them be close enough to him that they could just talk, no need to explain the very basics. That head on her shoulders, it was ... it was even more beautiful than her exquisite physical assets. She was humble, too. She wasn’t one of those really arrogant people who not only saw the people around her as if they were insects, but treated them as such, the way George seemed to be, for instance.

But if all of that mattered, it was still something else. She had a way about her. She saw through him, she read him, she felt him. Once the walls came down between him, he had felt a little silly. He could see the way that she felt about him; he suddenly went from believing she couldn’t possibly love him, to seeing that she was in total denial when she backed away from it. Once they kissed, he knew, plain knew, that she was madly in love with him. He didn’t understand why, and he didn’t care.

She could cut through his bullshit. She knew how to make him happy, how to make him feel better. She made him see that George and Jill were real friends, somehow, after just a few days, they would be there for him no matter what. She made him a better man. And now she was being taken from him.

“Oh Acky,” he cried, stroking her hair a little as she lay there, “Yuh can’t know just how much I love yuh, Acky. Away from me don’t go please. Live wit’outcha, I can’t. I need yuh, Acky. Wake up, Acky, please...”

His lips brushed her forehead, but the medic gave him a stern look, so he stopped, even though for a brief moment he thought he perceived a response.

She reminded him of a song by Billy Joel, “She’s Got a Way,” and he started singing it a little differently to her...

Yuh’ve got a way aboutcha,

I doan know what it is,

But I know dat I can’t live wit’outcha,

You’ve got a way of pleasin’,

I doan know what it is,

But dere doesn’t have tuh be a reason,

Anyway.

Yuh’ve got a smile dat heals me,

I doan know why it is,

But I have tuh laugh when yuh reveal me,

Yuh’ve got a way of tawhkin’,

I doan know what it is,

But it lifts me up when we are wawhkin’,

Anywhere.

Yuh come tuh me when I’m feelin’ down,

Inspire me wit’out a sound,

Yuh touch me and I get turned around,

Yuh’ve got a way of showin’,

How I make yuh feel,

And I find de strength tuh keep on goin’,

Yuh’ve got a light around yuh,

And everywhere yuh go,

A million dreams of love surround yuh,

Everywhere.

Yuh come tuh me when I’m feelin’ down,

Inspire me wit’out a sound,

Yuh touch me and I get turned around,

Yuh’ve got a smile dat heals me,

I doan know why it is,

But I have tuh laugh when yuh reveal me,

Yuh’ve got a way aboutcha,

I doan know what it is,

But I know dat I can’t live wit’outcha,

Anyway.