I did.
“At 5:43 yesterday evening, police responded to a 911 call concerning a multiple car accident on I-270 near the Shamrock Heights exit. Three people died at the scene. Marla Sanderson, 43, from complications of diabetes, Janie Evans, 27, from head trauma, and Bob Monroe, from lacerations and trauma. Howard Cushman was life-flighted to Sweetwater Springs Memorial Hospital for head injuries. There were no other reported serious injuries. Investigators are still trying to piece together the incidents that led to the …”
I slapped the paper down on my leg. “So there it is. Janie Evans. That’s got to be her. I killed her,” I thought to myself.
“I killed her,” I said to the empty room.
As I folded the paper and moved to place it on the tray, I noticed some writing on it that I hadn’t noticed before because I had folded it in the opposite direction. I moved it back to where I could read it.
“YOU DO!” it read.
“Holy fuck,” I thought to myself. “That is so not funny. Not to mention fucking creepy.” I could feel my heart beating and my nerves tingling down my back.
“That can’t be a coincidence, can it?” I said to an empty room. I could feel my heart beginning to palpitate.
“Donna!” I yelled.
A few moments later the door swung open and Donna and a different nurse crashed into the room.
“What’s wrong, honey, what’s wrong?” she said as she came over to my bed.
“Oh darling, why are you shaking like that, are you okay? What happened?”
I just looked at her and held out my hand. She grabbed it and brought it to her lips. “What’s wrong, honey?”
After a few deep breathes, I said, “I’m okay, I mean, no medical emergency. Just this damn paper that you gave me, did you happen to see the writing on the back of it?”
“No,” she replied.
“Where did you get it from? Did you see the guy that had it before you?”
“No, why?” I saw tension in her lower lip.
“Because,” I hesitated to continue because of the nurse in the room. “Well, darling, we can talk about it later, ‘kay? Don’t worry; I’ll feel better in a minute. In fact, I’m starting to feel better already.”
“Are you sure?” she asked and I nodded my head.
4
The early morning light crept across my bedspread as I sat and waited for 9:00 AM. It was a bright spring morning, and I felt the awakening in the air that the season always brought with it. Especially after a long, hard, cold winter like the one we had just experienced.
It was a week later, and I was being released from the hospital that morning. I still had to stay home for a few more days and go back to see the doctor once more for some final tests before he released me back to work, but I was mending well. My body anyway. My mind was still trying to cope with the events of the accident. I wasn’t any further along in remembering what happened, but I had several similar nightmares in the past week that the doctors explained away as something similar to PTSD, in fact, I think it had Post Traumatic in the name, probably Post Traumatic Amnesia. Yes, that was it. Or, maybe not, that could have been what he was talking about for the reason why I couldn’t remember the accident. Yeah, that sounded more like it. Anyway, that and the other thing were supposed to go away. I sure hoped they would.
The nurse came in and started to explain to me what was going to happen that morning, as far as my release. She was the same nurse that wore Pooh Bear, only that day she had on Sponge Bob. Where they got the idea it was cute to wear cartoon characters was beyond me. Nancy was her name. She started to wrap the blood pressure cuff around my arm and told me my wife was in the lobby talking to Dr. Morrisey and would be right in.
My mind drifted as she took the reading and started the rest of her routine.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the poor woman I ran over. I had to try and plead to her father and ask for his forgiveness. I knew I wouldn’t ever feel right if I didn’t. I wasn’t sure that I would want the same, if someone had killed my daughter, but I had to try.
During that past week, I was able to find out some information on the man. He was a pharmacist on the east side of town. A small sole proprietorship. I had the hospital forward my new prescriptions to his pharmacy. Whether I could make my plea to him or not, I didn’t know, but the least I could do was to give him my business.
I ascertained from the woman’s memorial in the paper that she wasn’t married, and didn’t have any kids, which was good. Relatively anyway. It also read that she was survived by her father and some siblings, but not by her mother. This was not so good.
My wife walked into the room with a bag in her hand. Something that looked like it had come from a coffee shop. Perhaps pastries. I spent a moment focused on the bag, but my eyes were more interested in who carried it. That day was the first time in a month that I noticed how beautiful she really was. She did not show her age at all, from what I could see. I knew she dyed the gray out of her hair and used a zillion creams on her face, but I could swear that she was 20 years younger than she was.
She was wearing the tight pair of jeans I liked, and a soft cashmere sweater that outlined her body just perfectly. I felt a stirring in my pants as she walked over to the bed and stood right in front of me.
“Darling, I can’t wait to get you home today,” she said, with an air of ripe sexuality. Again, reading my mind. I guess when you lived with someone for 25 years, you got to know them pretty well. “I talked to the doctor and he said that it was perfectly fine to have periods of short exercise as long as it didn’t last long. Or in your case, long exercise that lasted just about right.” She smiled.
“Donna, really? You didn’t ask him if it was all right if we could have sex, did you?” I shook my head just a bit. Like I did when someone would do something silly. Then I noticed Nancy come out of the bathroom. I’d completely forgotten that she went in there after doing my vitals.
The nurse looked in our direction and smiled.
“Yes, I did, darling. And I’m sure Nancy here isn’t too surprised to know that people in their 40’s have sex, right, Nancy?” she asked.
Nancy giggled.
Donna giggled.
“Let’s get out of here, shall we?” I asked. “Before we embarrass Nancy any further.” I was still shaking my head.
“It’s not quite 9:00 yet, honey, but we can at least go out to the lobby and wait for the charge nurse to release you. She might even do it early.”
“Sounds great,” I replied. Yet once again, she read my mind.
5
When Donna and I got home that day, I noticed that the house was spotless and I told her so.
She smiled and just rolled her eyes at me.
I went into the kitchen with her because I wanted to check the mail. That was where it always piled up. And, I was famished.
She put her purse down by the phone and pulled out a note of some sort. She put it down in front of me and I noticed that it was a prescription.
“I also talked to the doctor about giving you something for your restlessness, you know, for home, just in case,” she said. “He didn’t have time to give it to the nurse to phone in, so he just wrote me one.”
I picked it up and looked at it. Some scribble that looked like Lonorrsi was on it. I deduced that it must be a prescription for Lunarest, the popular night time sleep aid that according to the ads on television, everyone could benefit from it.
“I don’t think I’ll need it, but we should probably get it filled anyway, huh?” I said, trying to remember what QID meant.
“At the very least, I would give Janie’s father more business,” I thought. The nervous tension in my neck felt like someone had grabbed it and squeezed at that moment and I winced.
I made my way for one of the stools at the kitchen counter.
“Are you hungry, darling?” Donna asked.
~
After we ate and talked about every miniscule thing that had hap
pened in the world the past week and a half, it seemed, I opened up to her.
“Remember those dreams that I was telling you about?”
She nodded. I knew that she realized I was going to tell her something important, because she gave me that look of complete focus.
“Well,” I hesitated. “I didn’t want to scare you, but all of them weren’t exactly as I had described them.”
“Why, what do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean, the people in the dream weren’t always the same.” I took a deep breath. “Like when I reached the woman standing in the road, sometimes it would be you, and sometimes it would be Kate. Once it was even Brandon, although I remembered that he looked kind of odd with a woman’s body.” I tried to lighten the mood a bit because I noticed that Donna was starting to scrunch her eyebrows together.
“I don’t know what to think of it exactly, I mean…”
“Did we start spitting up maggots, too?” she interrupted.
“No, actually it was worms for Brandon and centipedes for…”
“Oh, don’t tell me. Please. I don’t want to know,” she said, as she held up her hand in the “talk to the hand” fashion.
“Well, anyway, do you think it means anything? I mean, the woman died,” I said, and waited for a reply.
She looked as though she was about to say something, but then she paused, reached her hand out to mine and said, “Oh, don’t talk about those kinds of things, Howard. I’m sure it isn’t anything but a reaction to the trauma that you suffered from the accident. They’ll go away, I’m sure. You just don’t worry about them, ‘kay?”
She always knew how to get out of a conversation. Although I knew she had a different answer for me. Why she didn’t want to tell me, I can only imagine. The fiction must have outweighed the facts, and even though she speculated a lot in her job, she was usually only factual with me, which I loved her all the more for.
I studied her eyes for a moment and then nodded.
“I, uh, I guess I’ll…” I began.
“Yes, darling, why don’t you go and sit in the living room for a bit and I’ll bring you some tea?”
“Now, that was just creepy. I was just going to say that,” I replied.
~
Donna was a social worker. Had been since the week after she graduated with her MSW. She also had a Bachelor in Psychology. I tended to rely on her encouraging and protective nature, because I didn’t know half as much about the brain stuff that she did. I was just like Jesus, a carpenter. Donna always hated it when I said that to her. The children, on the other hand, thought it was funny.
We married just out of high school and considered ourselves two of the lucky ones. We both stayed in college. Donna obviously went on to graduate school. The one thing that we were smart about was the children. We waited until after we’d bought a house and settled in the same town where we both grew up. Sweetwater Springs, Montana. We were kind of like the boy and girl next door story only she lived across town and we didn’t really hang out with each other until junior high, but I knew who she was. I saw her around. We went to the same church for one thing. Her being there was the only thing that made me look forward to church sometimes, just so I could see her.
Through most of our childhood years, I thought that she was out of my league, though. Her parents owned the local Woolworth and they always drove to church in a Cadillac. My family was lucky to have a car that ran.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized it was all a big show. Her father only put on a front that he was a big shot, but in reality, Woolworth didn’t do so well in the late 70’s. I was surprised to find out later that Donna’s mom did bookkeeping on the side to help keep up the show.
My father was a postman. A respectable job, to some degree. With four children, the dollars didn’t always stretch to the next paycheck, but I remember being a happy child. My mother wasn’t. She hated staying home all the time and raising a family. Not that she shirked her responsibilities at all, she just wanted to have a career and be a mother, too. But, that was a different era, then. My dad expected her to stay home and take care of us kids, and make sure dinner was ready at 5:00 sharp when he got home from work. This was most likely why she started having her first glass of wine about 11:00 in the morning. She lived in the wrong era and there was little she could do about it.
6
Donna went with me to the pharmacist the very next day. The place was a respectable looking drug store. It had everything that you might expect to find in one. The odd thing about it was that 1/3 of it was empty. I don’t mean 1/3 of the shelves; I mean there was 1/3 of the floor space on the other side of the register that was empty. Perhaps they had cleared it out to make room for tables and chairs. I didn’t know.
We walked to the rear of the store and saw an older man standing at the counter. I noticed that he was rather skinny and gaunt as we approached.
He raised his upper lip and for a moment I thought I saw his left eye turn blood red.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cushman,” he said.
I was puzzled as to how he knew my name and asked him so.
“It doesn’t take much of a thought process to see a man come in who has never been in here before and walk up to me with a prescription in his hand and not add two and two and realize that it is my newest customer who transferred all of his prescriptions just this past week from the Safeway that was closer to his house across town. I don’t get many new customers.” He smiled. His teeth were yellow and decaying.
“Oh my God, he knows where I live,” I thought. “Wait, he would know, wouldn’t he. He has my address.”
“Something wrong, Mr. Cushman?”
“No, and…” I glanced down at his nametag to make sure it was Janie’s father, “Gerald, please call me Howard.”
“I really don’t think that I would like that, Mr. Cushman. Thank you, but I don’t know you, sir, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stick with my family name, also. Now, what is this new prescription you have for me?”
I was rather appalled at his rude brevity with me, but I gave him the paper and asked him if my other prescriptions were ready just the same. He seemed to ignore me. “What is with this guy?” I thought. “Maybe he really does know who I am.”
“Oh, Lunarest. I’m pretty sure I put the rest of my stock in a prescription this morning,” Gerald said. “I was going to put it on my order list for the afternoon delivery. I would have to ask you to come back later, Mr. Cushman,” he said and began to turn away.
“What, wait, I suppose we could, but as you mentioned we are clear across town. Do you have anything like generic that might substitute for it? And do you have my other ones ready?”
He snapped back, “I heard you the first time, did you think that I was dismissing you? I was going to get them,” he said as he snatched the paper from the counter, and without looking at it, thought for a moment. “Well, actually, I do have something that will work just as well. It’s not the same drug, exactly, but it’s really close.”
“Um, can you do that?” I asked
“Sure, sure. That’s why they give me that document hanging over there on the wall. I’m allowed.”
I was pretty sure that he was joshing me but I really didn’t want to come back when I could pick up almost all of my prescriptions except the one and he was willing to substitute something for it. “But what if he puts poison in my pills?” I thought.
“Uh, maybe I will come back later,” I said.
“No, wait a moment, Mr. Cushman. It won’t take a moment for me to go into the back room and fill this. I’m sure the medication that I’m thinking of will put you to sleep just as well as the one on the prescription. It’s not a problem, really. Have a seat and I’ll be right back.”
Something felt strange to me about his behavior at that moment. Almost as if he was trying to con me.
“Honey, maybe we should just go.” Donna startled me. I’d almost forgotten that she was there.
; “Really, honey? It’ll be okay; surely he wouldn’t risk his license for me?”
“Well, I don’t know about that, I just know that the man gives me the creeps, and he does not have a very good aura about him.”
“Aura? Are you gonna start telling me again that you can tell what kind of a person he is because you can see some invisible aura around him?”
Donna’s upper lip began to tremble.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” I said. “I really didn’t mean anything by it, really I didn’t.” I put my arms around her. “I feel funny about this, too. It’s making me edgy. I’m sorry, ’kay?”
“What makes you edgy, Mr. Cushman?” We both jumped. Neither one of us realized that Gerald had returned.
“Well, nothing in particular.”
“Is that right?” Gerald asked as he went to his shelves of filled prescriptions and took four of the envelopes and put them on the counter. He walked over to his computer and typed a bit, printed a label and affixed it to a bottle that he took out of his pocket. A bottle that was already filled, and looked like it already had a label on it.
As he placed it in its own bag he said, “Now you be sure not to take these when you’re drinking, Mr. Cushman. You’ll have some mighty nasty side effects.”
“Is that right, like what?”
“If you heed my warning, Mr. Cushman, and don’t take these while you’ve been drinking, then you’ll have nothing to be concerned about, now, will you?” he snipped at me.
I swore I wanted to hit the man, and I just met him. “I don’t drink much anyway, it won’t be a problem.” I decided not to press it. I could always Google it later.
He nodded, rang up the sale, and placed all five of the prescriptions in another bag. “That’ll be a $50 co-pay, Mr. Cushman,” he said.
“Do you take plastic?” I asked.
“I prefer cash, but I will take a debit card.”
Dream Sweet Page 2