Defying Death in Hagerstown

by John Paul Carinci

  defying DEATH

  in HAGERSTOWN

  defying

  DEATH

  in HAGERSTOWN

  JOHN PAUL CARINCI

  New York

  © 2015 JOHN PAUL CARINCI.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other‚—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in New York, New York, by Morgan James Publishing. Morgan James and The Entrepreneurial Publisher are trademarks of Morgan James, LLC. www.MorganJamesPublishing.com

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  ISBN 978-1-63047-351-8 paperback

  ISBN 978-1-63047-352-5 eBook

  ISBN 978-1-63047-353-2 hardcover

  Library of Congress Control Number:

  2014944783

  Cover Design by:

  Rachel Lopez

  www.r2cdesign.com

  Interior Design by:

  Bonnie Bushman

  bonnie@caboodlegraphics.com

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  DEDICATION

  To all the great storytellers of the past, who have inspired us to dream big, fantasize much, press on, and share our stories with the world.

  To my wife, Vera, my ongoing inspiration.

  And to my mother, who first instilled the confidence in me that I can be great.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was pouring outside, harder than I could remember it doing for some time. I was drenched to the bone. My hair looked like a slick, matted crop, and I had just gotten into a car accident.

  “Just another lousy day in paradise,” I mumbled as I made my way through the huge glass doors of Number One, Terminal Place, headquarters of the Washington Gazette newspaper. I walked gingerly through the atrium and past the guards, Carlos and Russell, acknowledging their cheery “good mornings” as I headed for the elevator.

  I was feeling very conspicuous as I passed the morning crowd of my co-workers on my way to the sixth floor reporters’ desk.

  The woman who had rear-ended me had no control over stopping her large Lincoln Navigator on the slick, cool roadway. The slamming of her huge SUV startled me as I sat waiting at a red light. I had seen her SUV coming in the rearview mirror, approaching too rapidly. Then the bang from the rear, and the jolt that caused my shoulder to slam against the rigid seat belt, and suddenly I was wearing half a cup of hot coffee on my lap.

  The coffee made me jump. “Son of a bitch!” I screamed, now fully awake on that Monday morning, a morning I was already running late for, a morning I really didn’t want to get out of bed—a dark, gloomy morning I was convinced was my worst in many months.

  As I surveyed the damage along with the very shaken young woman who had been driving the SUV, I noted that my 2010 Chevy Malibu had a badly scratched, cracked bumper, while her vehicle had virtually no damage. She was clearly shaken up, while I felt pain setting in. Ten minutes later, after we had exchanged information, I continued on my way to work. I had told her I would call the insurance company from work because I was already a half hour late.

  Now as I made my way from the sixth-floor elevator, I could feel my underpants sticking to me, just as Russell’s greeting of “Have a good one!” resonated in my head. I sat down softly in the chair at my desk and tried to comb my matted hair into something remotely presentable. It didn’t help. So I sat staring at my desk clock showing 9:42 and my gold nameplate, which reads “Louis Gerhani, Junior, Reporter,” distinguishing my personal workspace. Just as I was calming my nerves, a flunky named Jamie Lynch, a redheaded, freckle-faced kid, rushed by screaming, “The boss wants to see you pronto! Holy crap! What happened to you? Fall into a puddle?” He laughed as he rushed away.

  I felt like I looked—like crap. I was in no mood to talk to anyone, much less my boss, the editor of the Washington Gazette, Mr. Harold Glavin. My boss is a real hard-ass. He thinks he is a king and the employees are peasants in his kingdom. He has been all over me for the past few months. I knew I had been off my game, just going through the motions, but he won’t cut me any slack. My heart just isn’t into reporting as of late. Sure, I was still doing my job, writing insightful stories for the paper, but it is never good enough for Glavin, never “cutting-edge,” as he calls it.

  There are times when a writer produces copy to the best of his ability but without a lot of heart. There is no way to feel passionate about every story you write, every day, all the time. I know my writing has been off, and I know why, but an astute editor is like an art connoisseur who can spot a counterfeit painting that from twenty yards away.

  Harold Glavin is just such a connoisseur of reporting and writing. I’ve seen him kick back a story upwards of ten times to a junior reporter. It is a frustrating job, this reporting. There are many months when you just know you are writing in the zone, when the words flow as quickly and precisely as a waterfall, when you are right on and there is little editing needed. There’ve been times when my pen has had a life of its own, flowing easily. I can’t remember the last time I felt like that and what story inspired me so powerfully.

  I used to love to write short stories. There was a time awhile back when I planned to publish a book of my best short stories. That, now, was a distant memory; I hadn’t written a decent short story in many months, and none at all in the past three months.

  My shoulder ached as I stared at my phone as if it were going to speak to me and make me feel better. I felt so alone as of late, but at that moment, I felt as if I were on an abandoned island. I waited a few more minutes, hoping for my hair and clothing to dry a bit before I visited the King and Master of Himself, Harold Glavin. I combed my hair again. It was still a soaking mop of glop. I wondered what Harold Glavin would yell about today. I knew he was pissed about something. Maybe it was the story about the use of cell phones while driving. That story was due to print on Sunday of next week, but I had turned it in last Friday—early. I was sure he would can the story and make me rewrite it.

  I thought about what my life had become and how I had arrived at such a mental state. “Crap!” I said to my trusty black phone. “My life is real crap lately!” The phone was at least pleasant. It never tried to convince me that I was wrong. I thought about my father, Lawrence.

  It had hit me hard that morning while I was exchanging personal information with the woman who rear-ended me: Today was the tenth anniversary of my father’s passing. As I wrote the date of the accident, 6-10-2013, I felt a sudden skip of my heart. I suddenly realized that exactly ten years ago my fathe
r was killed in a tragic accident. It was the worst day of my life, and nothing else has ever come close. That day, I had thought that I would not make it through. To lose a parent is a traumatic experience for anyone, but to lose a parent suddenly due to an accident is so heart wrenching that you almost don’t want to take another breath as you wonder, Why did this happen? What’s the use?

  How ironic it was that ten years later to the day, I, too, should have an accident. Does it really matter whose fault causes an accident? I realized that I, too, could have been killed. I thought of all the what-if scenarios that could have happened: What if the huge SUV had hit me on the driver’s side while running a red light? What if someone had run me down on the sidewalk while I was walking the last block to work that morning? It made me miss my father that much more—all the inner pain attacking the brain cells that never let us forget, the cells that vividly recall sights, smells, tastes, and heartaches in an instant with only one slight thought.

  All the memories of that day flooded my brain. If my brain were a computer, it would surely crash, I thought.

  All the details I had tried to forget for a decade were suddenly crystal-clear, as if they had just happened yesterday.

  It had happened on a Thursday afternoon. The weather was much the same as this morning—cool and rainy, making the road surface slick. My father was returning from an errand, traveling home on the highway. He had hit a huge pothole that I later learned had destroyed the tires and rims of numerous previous victims’ cars. And like them, he ended up stuck on the side of the road in the pouring rain, fixing a flat. It was sometime after he had jacked the car up and was changing the front driver’s-side tire that a commercial van, trying to avoid the huge pothole, swerved out of control and into my father and his car. My father was pinned against his Buick 88. By the time the ambulance arrived, he was unconscious and bleeding heavily. We were notified by the hospital at around 2:30 that afternoon.

  Dad was in the intensive care unit, and the doctors didn’t hold out much hope for him because he had lost so much blood and had slipped into a coma. Over the next twenty-four hours, we prayed and kept vigil by his side. There was a four-hour period during which his condition improved. Then, as if he was stabbed in the back by a ruthless villain just when he was almost free and clear, his condition turned suddenly dire again.

  As we gathered around his bedside, my mother, my sister Alice, and my sister’s best friend, Karen, we witnessed my father’s gradual demise as his organs slowly and brutally shut down. The torture was excruciating to our hearts and brains. We were helpless as we watched this once-powerful man slip away far too early.

  Life is not fair. We are never promised that it will be fair. When we least expect it, something tragic happens, just to remind us that we are like ants in the great wilderness of the world, and anything can easily destroy us.

  By just before midnight, it became clear that only the machines were forcing my father’s body to react with false signs of life. As hospital staff turned off the machines, we watched him leave us forever.

  Ten years later, sitting at my desk, still wet, I remembered how I regretted never having taken my father to a baseball game; how I didn’t pay enough attention to the man I had most admired for years before he died; how I never got to tell him how much I respected and loved him.

  Just memories left. Just regrets of “what if?” Just pain that comes rushing back, reminding me of the regrets I must live with forever.

  I smelled like a damp basement as I waited, to no avail, hoping to dry off before having to show up for my command performance. I wondered if I smelled more to myself than to others, as hot air rises and the smell of my wet pants and shirt rose naturally to my nose. My eyes felt very heavy as I fought the urge to nod off for a few minutes. I knew I could fall asleep on the spot, sitting there in my chair, and sleep easily for an hour. I was exhausted from thinking and from the adrenalin rush of the morning accident.

  The need to close my eyes was so strong that I gave in to the urge, knowing I wouldn’t be able to stay awake if I tried. I knew that I would feel refreshed after perhaps ten minutes of quiet time. Boy, was I wrong!

  I was startled by a loud voice and a hand on my arm.

  “Lou! Lou! Hey, Lou Gerhani, wake up!” I felt myself jump as if I’d been stuck with a needle. After a second, I realized that my great theory about a short rest had been wrong. My eyes focused on the redheaded Lynch kid. What a sight!

  “Lou! The boss sent me back. He’s been waiting for you for almost an hour. He’s pissed! Are you all right?”

  I looked at my watch; it showed 10:35. I had been in a dead sleep for almost forty minutes.

  “Holy crap!” I snapped. “I just, I just . . . .”

  “You just better get your ass into Mr. Glavin’s office. I think you’re finally gonna get fired this time,” Jamie said, and he shook his head from side to side as he slowly walked away.

  “Listen, Red,” I screamed, “I’ve been thrown out of better places than this dive!” The Lynch kid turned and just shook his head; he knew I was dead meat.

  I knew I was in big trouble, too, but something inside kept telling me, “Screw it!” There are always two personalities, I feel, occupying our minds—the good-guy angel personality and the devil personality. I knew the devil personality must have drugged my inner angel awhile back, because I hadn’t felt the angel’s presence for quite some time.

  I think Harold Glavin was clearly burnt out. After nearly fifty years of newspaper madness, of deadlines and declining sales, he clearly hated the job but couldn’t walk away from his mega-bucks paycheck and bonuses. So he took his grief out on poor writer slobs like me. Sure, he was nice to the premium senior writers who hogged the hot page one stories. But he had been riding me for many months now. I couldn’t remember the last juicy story I had written. The crap assignments I had received didn’t belong on the obituary page. But what the heck, it was a paycheck. I wondered how much unemployment was paying these days, and how long I could collect it. I had never collected unemployment before, and I knew nothing about applying. Facing the boss, now, freaked me out.

  As I stood up on slightly wobbly legs, I took in one big sniff. “This’ll have to do.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was eleven o’clock when I knocked on Glavin’s office door. His office was like his own kingdom: elaborate, show-offy, and full of over-the-top memorabilia. Every time I sat in one of the guest chairs in front of his desk, I felt so out of place. And I suspect that is exactly what the boss wanted. He wanted everyone to know that they were inferior to his level of education, finances, and knowledge about the newspaper industry. After all, he was the king of his empire.

  “Yes! Enter!” he screamed in his booming voice that reminded me of a foghorn warning of oncoming danger.

  “Glavin, you wanted to see me?” I asked with a smile.

  “I told you before to address me as Mr. Glavin. And what the hell happened to you?”

  “I had a nasty car accident this morning on my way to work.”

  “No wonder! I’m not surprised. You probably were half loaded.”

  “Boss, no, I didn’t even really get hurt, but thanks for asking. I’m just real sore.”

  “The only thing that could help you at this point is a good hard bump to the head! You look like crap! And I have a few choice questions to ask you other than ‘Did you scratch a knee or a forehead in a minor crap car . . . .’”

  “It was more than minor.”

  “Listen, butthead. That fits well because your hair and you look like crap. So listen here, what the hell do you think this place is?” His ears were as red as tomatoes.

  “This is my place of employment, sir.”

  “Gerhani, don’t you get snide with me. I’ll fire your ass right now on the spot. I’m this close to boiling over with you. We don’t need wise-asses at this newspaper.”

  He took a brief pause for breath before launching into his rant. “Do you know anything abo
ut this newspaper, son? Do you know the great history of printing newsprint, set by hands of men sweating over hot ink and presses since day one of 1898? You have no clue. The forefathers broke their asses so you little turds can work in luxury today, sitting behind fancy desks and computers, enjoying heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer . . .”

  I heard his voice and saw his mouth moving but I didn’t understand any more of what he was saying. I felt myself fixating in a zombie-like trance on his tomato-red ears before almost passing out. I fought the urge, but the dizziness persisted. I hadn’t eaten anything that day; then the car accident, the bump to my head, being abruptly awakened from my nap—it would all lead to passing out if I let my guard down slightly. I tried to tell him, but to no avail. He kept clamoring for ten more minutes. I did respond to his last command quite readily.

  “Get the hell out of here! Now! Get out! And don’t come back until you complete that assignment. This is your last shot. If it’s not perfect, I’ll fire your worthless ass. Now get the hell out!” he shouted, loud enough to wake the dead.

  My mind said “Go” but my body stood frozen in a weakened, dizzy state, which was quickly helped with some added encouragement. “Are you deaf? You’re fired! I’ll fire your ass right now! Get out! Are you stoned, or still drunk from this morning? Now get the hell out of my office. Now!”

  My legs were wobbly but finally managed to carry me through the walnut doorframe of Mr. Glavin’s office.

  As soon as I exited, I held onto the wall for guidance and slowly and carefully made my way back to my desk where I slumped down into an uncontrolled sleep.

  It was 12:30 when I awoke to the sound of my name. Graham Griffiths was calling me. “Lou, Louis Gerhani! Lou, you okay, man?”

  “Oh, Graham . . . .”

  “Geez, what happened to you, man?”

  “It’s a long story, bro.”