Chapter 39

My head hurt. Lots.

I think I was dimly aware that other parts of me hurt too, but it was hard to take notice of it because of the pain of that axe driven into my skull. Or, at least that was what it felt like.

When I could think halfway clearly, which wasn't often, the main thing I could think about was seeing Sandy getting sideways in front of me. I must have stomped on the brakes a thousand times, except for the fact that my leg wouldn't move. I kept seeing my 66 car sliding up over his, seeing the crowd, seeing the dirt, and then seeing nothing.

Along in there I had a few other dim impressions. At one time I thought I heard Frank and Spud talking to me, but I couldn't make out what they were saying, or if they were making any sense at all. A couple times I was sure I'd seen Arlene, all dressed in white. That didn't make any sense. What would she be doing dressed in white unless she was an angel? If she was an angel this must be heaven, so why did my head hurt so much? No idea; it didn't make sense. Nothing much made sense at all.

I had no idea of time passing, didn't notice whether it was day or night, or what.

After a time – and I can't tell you how long a time – things started to make a little more sense. I guess I wasn't with it very often, but somehow it became clear to me that I wasn't in heaven, but in a hospital bed. That made sense to me; as bad as I hurt, it must have meant that a hospital was where I was supposed to be. Not too much after that, I was sure I saw Arlene leaning over me, dressed in white.

"Arlene?" I whispered.

"It's me, Mel," she said softly. "I thought you were starting to come around."

"Hurt... " I managed to reply. I'm not sure if I was telling her that I hurt, or wondered how bad I was hurt.

"I don't doubt you hurt," she smiled. "You were hurt pretty bad, but I think you're going to be all right now. Now, you just relax and take it easy."

Seeing Arlene dressed in white was starting to make a little sense to me. "Nurse?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm your nurse," she smiled. "Since I was going to be here anyway and they were short staffed, I decided to make myself useful. I borrowed the uniform. It looks dreadful, doesn't it?"

"Looks ... good," I croaked out; neither my voice nor my mind were capable of handling anything much more complicated just then.

"I hope you meant that anything looks good on me," she smiled. "I'll take that as a compliment, anyway."

"Yeah," I whispered. I don't remember anything much after that for a while; I guess I must have fallen asleep again.

Things made quite a bit more sense the next time I woke up, although I still had no idea if it was minutes or hours later. Arlene was there, still wearing the nurse's uniform. They weren't brightly colored, or scrubs, like nurses wear today, but plain white dresses, cut rather baggy, with a hemline almost down to the ankles. It did look pretty dreadful on her, but might have looked better if it had fit her. But she looked good anyway, so I didn't mind. Maybe my head wasn't hurting quite as bad, and I guess I felt a little better.

"Hi," I said.

"Are you feeling any better?" she smiled.

"Maybe a little," I told her. "My head hurts, though."

"No doubt it hurts," she said, leaning over me to take my pulse. Apparently my heart was still beating, since she didn't say anything about it. "You took a pretty good whack with it when you jumped Sandy's car and rolled. When I got to you, I wasn't sure you were alive. I still don't know why you didn't break your neck. In any case, you had a pretty bad concussion and it's taken you a while to come around."

"Anybody else hurt?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Unless you count Sandy crapping his pants. I don't know whether that happened when his steering went out or when you drove over his hood."

"Steering?" I frowned. "What happened?"

"A tie rod end broke," she said. "The wheel went all cockeyed and there wasn't anything he could do to save it. I'm afraid I got into you a little and helped you get over him, but there wasn't much I could do about it, either. It was just bad luck all around."

"Sounds like it," I agreed. "I doubt if there's much I could have done different."

"Me, either," she agreed. "I've thought about it a lot and replayed it in my mind over and over, and I think the same thing. Anyway, in addition to your concussion, you had a broken arm and a broken leg, along with some internal bleeding. We had to go in and sew you up a little. I'm afraid you're going to be laid up for a while, Mel. No more driving for you for a while."

"Don't think I mind," I told her. "How about you?"

"Oh, I'm fine, I just had the fright of my life when I saw you go over in front of me," she said.

"I meant you driving?"

"Not for a while, at least," she smiled. "I told Frank there was no way I was going to be leaving you alone and unconscious in a strange town, and they understood that. He and Spud were in the other day, and said they were just as glad that I was going to stay with you. They didn't want to leave you behind but there was no way to take you with them. They think a lot of you, Mel, and it really bothered them to have to leave you here."

"Where are we?" I asked, beginning to realize that not only had the show moved on, it had moved on some time ago.

"Oh, we're still in Bradford," she said. "At one point there was some talk about moving you up to the hospital in Hawthorne, that's the county seat, but we pretty well decided that there wasn't much more they could do for you there than we could do for you here. It's not a bad little town. We've been in lots worse."

I guess I still wasn't in that good of shape; that much discussion and thinking just about exhausted me, and I guess I fell asleep again. There's one nice thing about being asleep, you don't realize that you hurt so much, and it passes the time. I know I was awake for brief periods after that, but never for very long.

I was feeling a little better – it must have been the next day – and just lying there, staring at the ceiling, thinking a little about what this all meant for me, when I heard someone come into the room. I had already learned that it hurt to move my head, so I just rolled my eyes, to see Arlene come in with a strange man. "Mel," she said. "This is Dr. Bronson. He's been looking after you."

"That's not quite fair," he chuckled. "She's the one that's been looking after you, I just look in on you from time to time. You seem a little brighter today."

"I think so," I replied, getting a look at the doctor. He was in his forties, I would guess, the kind of guy who had once had an athletic build but was putting on a few pounds. It also looked like he'd once had a full head of hair, but was losing a little of that. He seemed to be a nice guy, not all stuck up like some doctors I'd seen, not that I'd seen all that many over the years.

"Arlene says you've been talking a little, getting more lucid," he told me. "That's good. Your body must be healing itself. There's not much we can do for a head injury like you had other than wait it out, so you seem to be coming along fine."

"That's good," I said. "How long before I'm back to normal?"

"There's no saying," he told me honestly. "With head injuries like you had there's no way of telling for sure. You might never come all the way back. You might always find yourself a little impaired in some way. But then again, maybe not. You may shake off most of the effects in the next few days. Your arm and leg, well, if you didn't have the head injury and you had someplace to go, we could probably release you now, but you're going to have a problem getting around for a while."

"Arlene said I had some internal injuries," I observed.

"You did," he said. "The steering wheel or something must have caught you wrong, that's hard to say, too. We had to open you up and fix some bleeders. I have to say, when you get injured you bring one hard-headed nurse with you. From what I know she was taking care of you about as soon as the car came to a stop, rode the hearse here with you, and probably did as much to stitch you up as I did. Then, when we had to open you up, my usual surgical nurse happened to be out of town and I was all set to send you to Hawthorne, when your girl said, 'Doctor, I've operated in worse conditions than these, and I'm a competent surgical nurse.' Well, so she is, and I operated under a lot worse conditions when I was in the South Pacific, too. It turned out that she was right; she's a darn competent nurse and a pleasure to work with. As it turned out it was just as well that we opened you up here, you might not have survived the ride to Hawthorne."

"It wasn't that bad," Arlene protested. "But I was concerned about you, Mel."

"Arlene," I smiled. "It seems you did more than I knew about, but about what I would have expected you to do."

"Well, I tried," she said. "After all, I had something to do with punting you over Sandy."

"I doubt there was much you could have done differently about that, but you sure made up for it afterward," I told her, and turned back to the doctor. "So, I take it I'm stuck here for another few days?"

"Right," he said. "We'd want to keep you under observation anyway. According to Arlene, you don't have any place else to go, so this is probably as good a place to stay as any for the next few days."

"I guess," I said. "I really don't feel much like going anywhere right now, anyway."

"That's to be expected," he replied. "And I don't blame you. Given everything that's happened we're not all that anxious to run you out of here. I'll look in on you a couple times a day, but if there's anything you need, don't be afraid to tell Arlene or the other nurses."

"I will," I promised him.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Arlene said. "I am at least technically working here, so I'll have to make the rest of the rounds with Dr. Bronson. Don't go away."

"I doubt I'll have much choice," I told her.

After they left, I started to think about things a little – I guess I was enough better to be able to do that. Whatever else happened, I was out of a job. It still wasn't clear to me just how long before that the MMSA had moved on, but it was clear that it had been several days. In any case, it was clear to me that I wasn't going to be doing any driving anytime soon, not with my right leg in a cast the way it was. I hadn't asked how long I was going to be in the casts, but remembered from somewhere that it usually took a couple months to heal a broken arm and leg. That meant that if I did make it back to the crew, there probably wouldn't be much of the season left.

When you got right down to it, I wasn't all that sure how bad I wanted to go back to the MMSA anyway. For a year or more I'd felt that I'd been growing tired of it, and the time was coming to do the next thing, whatever that was. This season hadn't been as much fun as the previous ones. On the other hand, being laid up like I was just wasn't going to be very useful when it came to looking for a teaching job. There wasn't much I could do about it right then as far as I could see, anyway. I'd just have to wait and see what happened, and it seemed to me that it was going to be hard to wait.

I thought back to the year before, when Hap and Junie had gotten banged up. From what little I knew, Hap had been hurt about as bad as I'd been and Junie not a lot better off, but Buckshot had stayed behind with them. He was some kind of a shirttail cousin, and took on the responsibility until he could get the two of them home, then had come back to join us. I'd wondered what it felt like to be left behind in a town when you knew nobody like that, and now I could tell you that it would have been awful damn lonely if it hadn't been for Arlene. Was she going to stick around until I was on my feet again, then go rejoin the MMSA? Could I go home? The only thing I had that barely resembled a home was Livonia, where I knew a few people who would be there during the season, people like Hoss and Hattie and Chick and Dink, and, well, Vivian. It wasn't much of a home, and I didn't know what I could do there. It really wasn't a place I wanted to be around all that much, anyway. I wasn't sure I wanted to be around the racers anymore, and whatever happened this was a good time to move on with my life, that much was clear. If I was around Livonia, spring would come, Frank would be short of drivers, and there I'd go again.