But the accident taught you something. So in a sense, couldn’t you say that it happened for a reason? That, in a way, it had a purpose?
No. No, the accident did not have a purpose. Two different things happened: The accident happened, and then I did things in response to it. That’s not the same thing as saying that the accident was purposeful—I mean, we keep saying “the accident,” but we’re talking about an enormous amount of suffering and pain, a year of my life in a sense lost to this, part of my body literally destroyed. So much pain. So it’s hard to talk about it like it was a cloud with a silver lining.
What did the pain teach you, Pam?
The pain—the pain didn’t teach me anything. Pain is pain. I don’t…yeah.
What I’m hearing from you is that bitterness was consuming you.
Huh. I don’t—you know, I—it’s weird, because at first I—um—at first I—I didn’t have much room for emotions. I—I was in pain all the time, for a long time, or else out of my mind on drugs. There’s a kind of—deranging effect of that, like I said before. And yeah, so—yeah, once the pain starts turning into just plain old severe discomfort and inconvenience, then the emotions start having room to move in, and you do feel angry, because someone did something terrible to you and there were no consequences.
You wanted revenge?
No, no. No, of course not. I’m not a vengeful—no. I wanted—look, imagine, this terrible thing has happened and no one is helping you make it better. I mean, that’s not true, your friends and family are helping and doctors and nurses and physical therapists are helping, and most of those people are being really awesome, but the person responsible for this isn’t helping, and he’s not being held responsible, and no one seems interested in holding him responsible. It’s like—me and my doctors and family and friends were held responsible for a crime we didn’t commit. That’s it, that’s it.
Because you discovered that you are responsible for your own life, and sometimes that’s a terrible burden, isn’t it?
Well, no, nobody is responsible for her own life, not entirely. You can imagine that you are, but then a truck comes out of nowhere and mows you down! That’s actually exactly the opposite of what I’m saying. I didn’t invite this into my life.
But you were responsible for your response to the situation.
Well, sure, to a certain point, but I was lucky. I know that’s a weird thing to say, given what happened, but it was. I had health insurance. I had love and support. I didn’t have a head injury—that right there, that was fantastic luck, life-changing luck. Sure, I was wearing a helmet, but nothing I did right then determined whether or not I received a head injury—you could be wearing a helmet and a truck could still come along and crush your skull.
You asked a minute ago if I was consumed with bitterness. I think what I was really consumed with was an obsession to tell people what I’d learned and make them act on it. I wanted young, healthy people to know that they needed health insurance. I wanted cyclists to wear helmets, always. I wanted my representative in Congress and my local police precinct to know that a crime had occurred, a real crime, not just an accident—because an accident can be a crime, and vice versa—and that resulted in gross bodily harm to me and emotional distress to my parents and my boyfriend and my friends. I wanted these powerful people to know that the police, who are entrusted to serve and protect, did not, in my opinion, serve and protect me. I wanted health-insurance companies to know how much completely unnecessary stress and tedium and frustration and worry they put their customers through when their customers are already depleted physically and emotionally—that it amounts to a form of abuse, truly. And I wanted drivers to know how much power they had to hurt people, and to feel sort of—to feel chagrined by that power. To feel the literal shape and weight of that power.
So you felt that the accident had made you a teacher, a leader.
No. I never felt that.
Everything you just said sounds like the words of a teacher and a leader. A teacher and a leader doesn’t have to be some wise old man on a mountaintop. What we’re talking about is simply the power of sharing our experience so that others can learn from it.
Well, I think it—it gave me a useful anecdote, I’d say.
But not everyone might have seen it that way. Some people might have just closed in on themselves, felt sorry for themselves. They wouldn’t have seen it as a teachable moment.
Well, I wouldn’t judge them for that. Believe me, I did plenty of feeling sorry for myself during that time.
You invoked the word power a moment ago. What I’m hearing is that you felt powerless, and you seized this chance to own your power.
I don’t—yeah, I don’t know.
Well, can we explore that idea together for a moment, Pam? That idea of empowering yourself in a moment of powerlessness.
I mean, yeah, sure, it gave me something to think about; it gave me an intellectual focus.
So that’s what the accident was there to teach you—that you had power, how you could use your power.
I just—this thing happened—and I think—I think the accident gave me the opportunity—no—I think the accident created an occasion for me to say, “This happened to me, and here’s what could have been better, and here’s what could have been worse, and here’s how it could have been prevented.” And saying that has involved me talking to people with a certain degree of power: congressmen, community representatives, police representatives. And it still does, because I want change to happen. I want laws to change.
That amazing moment when you realize again that everything happens for a reason.
Okay. Fine. Sure. Yeah.
Do you see that journey we just went on together, Pam? Only a few minutes ago you were saying that this accident had no purpose. But we’ve realized together that it had a great purpose for you.
No, I just—I was just agreeing with you.
Pardon?
I was just agreeing with you to be polite. I don’t want to argue, you know.
We only want the truth here. That’s what these conversations are—they’re a search for the truth. The truth of your spirit, the truth of your soul, the truth of Pam’s purpose here on earth.
Yeah, no, I get that.
So, then, what is your truth, Pam?
I don’t know. I really don’t know. Um, so do you guys think you have enough material to work with now?
The time-elapsed bar at the bottom of the screen showed about thirty seconds left on the video, but Jen closed the tab, exited the video player, leaned over, and vomited neatly into her wastepaper basket. The ginger ale was amenable, she’d found, but she’d have to remember to chew the saltines more thoroughly.
whatDaisyknew: I’ll be right back with some water and paper towels
Jen pushed the wastepaper basket under her desk with her foot and watched the package of saltines. She was surprised to find herself still seated inside the pocket of time, as if pressing play on the video had pressed pause on the autonomic avalanche to come.
“The biker,” a deep, familiar voice was saying.
Jen looked up at an out-of-focus image of Donna standing in front of her desk, where Pam had just stood. Donna’s face was a picture of heavy-lidded perturbance, as if her umbrage had rudely awakened her from a late-afternoon nap.
“The biker?” Jen asked, guarding Donna from her breath by sipping from her ginger ale.
“The biker.”
“The biker,” Jen repeated.
“Friend of yours.”
“Pam?”
“The biker.”
“Are you asking,” Jen said, holding her hand over her mouth in what she hoped looked like a pensive gesture, “for general impressions of my friend Pam, whose interview with you didn’t go as well as either of you had hoped?”
Donna stared back at her impassively. “You need to put a collar and a leash on that attitude and take it out for a long, hard run.”
Jen pressed her lips agai
nst the can of ginger ale and pretended to sip to keep from laughing.
“And,” Donna said, “you need to think twice before you put your friends’ needs ahead of the organization’s needs.”
A bolt of pain cracked a ragged diagonal down Jen’s lower abdomen, and she hugged her waist and leaned forward, wincing. “Message received, Donna,” she said to the carpet.
“What is wrong with you?” Donna asked.
“I’m fine,” Jen gasped, surprised by pain.
“Well,” Donna said, swallowing the word in hesitation, unsure whether or not she should press her advantage, “we can’t use that footage. Of your friend. Total waste of time.” Jen could sense Donna shifting on her feet, her bangles jostling one another in discomfort.
A hand stroked Jen’s back. Daisy was standing beside her, holding a glass of water.
“I don’t think she is feeling very good right now, Donna,” Daisy said.
Jen, doubled over, heard Donna exhale through her nose. “You set a good example for us all, Daisy. We can learn from you. You can teach us. And I hope you feel better, Julie,” Donna said as she clinked and clanged away.
Later, Jen remembered feeling happy for Daisy just then, that she had inspired such words of praise from the LIFt board chair. She made a mental note to remind Daisy to mention it in her six-month performance review. That happiness in turn produced a secondary happiness in Jen, that she was capable of considering the feelings of others even at a moment when she was bending and folding into herself, crumpling into a ball under the terrifying pressure of at least two types of pain, and she had no one but herself to blame for the pain, and no more space left in the pocket of time to put off the pain and its outrageous demands.
Fall
The Thing That Happened
Sometimes it was crying, sometimes it was sobbing, and sometimes it was something else. The something else felt as though there was too much oxygen inside her, too much air—too much life, Jen thought; ha ha what a hilarious notion—expanding and kicking against either side of her rib cage until it would crack, air pushing, pushing, air bottlenecked just below her sternum, air that could escape only in small gulps, a mouth wide open but so little coming out of it, a wet ripping sound producing nothing but more of itself.
Nothing will come of nothing
Speak again
Jen would squeeze her eyes shut and pound her fist on the duvet, on the sofa, on the edge of the obscene bathtub under the screaming bathroom lights, as she tried to push, push the air out, again and again.
So much effort and so much time and so much waste and for what? she thought, as water roared out of the tap.
—
The thing that happened started happening on a Friday evening. Jen didn’t want Jim to see what was happening. She locked herself in their bathroom for hours, for an entire day. He went to the bar down the street to use the men’s room. They called no one but the doctor’s office. She went to the doctor’s office alone, which was a mistake.
“I’m sorry, honey, I’m so sorry,” she cried into Jim’s chest after she came back from the doctor’s office. “Who does that? Why did I do that? I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry. I left us alone. I left us alone.”
“No, you didn’t,” Jim said. “You never did. I’m here. We’re here.”
“I’m sorry,” Jen said.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Jim said.
“I’m sorry,” Jen said again, and after that she did not recognize the sounds spurting from her as her own.
—
The crying turned into sobbing and it turned into something else. Jim held Jen as she shook and shrieked with the effort of pushing, pushing the air.
“It’s just—it’s just air,” Jen cried.
“It’s okay,” Jim whispered into her hair.
“It’s just—panic—panic—”
“Shhh, you’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Jen fell asleep crying and woke up crying. By the second day both of her eyes were swollen almost shut. She hurt already and the crying made the parts that hurt hurt even more. But she couldn’t stop.
—
She dreamed that the blood in her veins turned to blackstrap molasses. A nurse with a giant needle struggled to tap a viable vein, then extracted four vials and offered her a taste. Jen refused, and the nurse shrugged and took a sip.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be bitter,” the nurse said, licking her lips.
Jen had other dreams, dreams that she tried to forget, dreams that made her think part of her mind had gone rotten and pestilent, that it should be cut away before it infected the rest.
—
They never called the thing that happened by its name. After it was over, Jim never asked about it, and Jen never brought it up. The thing that happened was a country unto itself. Its borders were permanently closed. It spoke for itself in the event of itself, once, and it brooked no further discussion.
Causation
Monday, 9.30 a.m.
The bell was ringing, and Jen was sprinting across a field toward it. Her heart thumped so hard it clapped the grit from her chest cavity and rib cage, kicking up a swirl of dust that made her cough and retch as she ran. She knew this and could feel it. She had to touch the door before the bell stopped ringing. She had to. That was the rule. But her legs were giving out. The sockets of her hips were oxidizing. Her sides cramped and seized. Twenty feet from the door she fell forward, and some force pulled her arms behind her, and just as her face slammed into the ground she opened her eyes and saw her cell phone in bed next to her, ringing.
“Hey, Jen,” Karina was saying on her speaker phone. “Happy fall.”
“Hey, Karina,” Jen murmured.
“First day of autumn still feels just like summer.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I got your husband’s email and thought I’d call to check in.” Karina’s voice echoed and spun around in the air. “Feeling under the weather?”
“Um, yeah,” Jen said, her tongue thick and filmy. She became aware of the ache in her lower abdomen, a pulling and shredding, and remembered.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Did I wake you?”
“Thanks, and no, it’s okay,” Jen lied, with a small, weak laugh. Why do you always laugh? she thought. Why is everything you think and say laughable?
“Should you be in the hospital?” Karina asked.
Jen regurgitated the same little laugh. Stop stop doing that, she thought. “I’m just home.”
“So it’s not a life-threatening situation, I take it,” Karina said.
Jen pictured her: the eyes narrowed into Möbius strips of empathy and disappointment, the rhythmic encouraging nods.
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Jen said.
“Do you have the flu?”
“Uh, no. No.”
Karina sighed. “I’m hearing a tone of evasion, Jen, and I want to understand. I’m calling out of concern for you and concern for your achievements. We have a lot of work to get done in the next few days ahead of the launch, and we’re counting on you to be fully present. That’s how much we value you.”
“Sure, of course, but—”
“This is a time for all of us to come together, even if we’re under the weather. We can make little sacrifices now, or we can make big sacrifices later. That’s our choice to make. You’re a key part of the team, Jen. What do you say? We’ll give you all the support you need if you’re not feeling one hundred percent. But we need the same support from you.”
“Karina—” Jen’s throat seized and clicked. She closed her eyes.
“Are you still there?”
“I can’t come in today. I can’t. I can’t.” Jen’s voice bent and shuddered.
The line clattered as Karina picked up the phone. All at once her voice was inside Jen’s head. “What’s wrong?”
“I had—it’s just—”
“What is it, sweetie? Take your time.”
“I had a—I had a�
��”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Karina said. “Are you—”
“No—”
“Were you—”
Jen began sobbing. For a second she felt relieved.
“Oh, darling,” Karina said. “I’m so sorry. I thought that maybe you were—other women can always tell—and now—oh, sweet Jen. That is the hardest, hardest thing any woman can go through.”
Karina’s cooing voice, higher-pitched and unfamiliar, stroked Jen’s relief into trepidation. “No, it’s okay,” Jen said, her voice still slushy. Her teeth seemed in the way of her tongue. “This wasn’t—it wasn’t—I hadn’t planned—”
She was about to say I hadn’t planned to tell you, but then she remembered that she hadn’t told Karina anything at all.
“I see,” Karina said after a moment. “Still. It must be hard.”
Jen had stopped paying attention. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth. “I’m going to go now. Okay, Karina? Is that okay?”
“Okay, sweetie. Feel better, take care.”
Monday, 12.30 p.m.
Jen was dozing in bed when her cell phone rang. It was Jim.
“Hey, honey, just checking in. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. I’m glad to hear your voice.”
“I’m glad to hear your voice, too, sweetheart.”
Jen turned on her side and pulled her knees up, nestling the phone between her ear and her pillow, and listened to Jim not talking for a minute or two.
“Okay, well,” Jim said, “I was just checking in.”
“Stay a little while longer.”
“Of course,” Jim said. “Did you—by any chance did you talk to Pam?”
“No.”
“I bet you could call her, honey. I mean, if you wanted to.”
Jen said nothing.
“She would want to hear from you. If she knew. She would.”
“Number one, she told me not to—”
“But that was before—”
Break in Case of Emergency Page 13