“How does that feel, Laurie?” Shana, my speech therapist, looked at me with concerned, muddy green eyes. Some days, they were striking, with golden flecks that seemed to float within the algae-hued pools. Today though, they were plain and ordinary. I’d begun to think that her eyes were linked to my feelings. When I was optimistic, they became emeralds. When I was down, the sparkle died. “Laurie, you okay?” Shana pushed a strand of her dark brown hair behind her ear.
The electrodes at the back of my neck made me jump in reaction. The impulses almost felt like they sparked against my skin. Little fingers of lightening popping like firecrackers.
I raised my hand, palm toward the ground, and I tilted it back and forth like a see-saw. ‘So-so’.
“I’m going to turn it up a little higher, okay?” Shana adjusted the TENS unit on the table, angling it more toward her and away from me. Sometimes, seeing the machine intimidated me. I really didn’t like seeing her dial up the power. It was stupid, irrational, but I couldn’t help how I felt. I wasn’t some machine that could lower the levels on my emotions. TENS units were available for home use, but vocal cords are delicate, my situation was delicate, and a therapist was needed. Even if that were not the case, from a physical standpoint, I would still prefer to have someone else in control. I felt that way about a lot nowadays.
Shana was waiting for me to nod, so I nodded. And the lightening intensified, a storm gathering power.
I was always so glad when therapy was over. Walking out of the building felt like coming to life again. Striding toward my car, I tilted my head up to the sky and let the bright overhead sun warm my skin.
I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe if I had been, I would have had time to get out of the way. As it was, though, I was unprepared, unaware, when the elderly woman in the Cadillac backed into me.
You’d think she’d be creeping along―she was only pulling out of a parking spot―but for some reason she’d gassed it, zipping backward and straight into my body.
And it hurt―not in the way it hurt not to be able to speak, to sing. It hurt in the good old-fashioned ‘I just took a beating’ way.
I was on the ground when she tumbled out of her car, apologies and cries flowing from her mouth like a blanket off the needles of the experienced knitter I felt she must be, if the grandmotherly look of her face was any proof.
“Sweetie, oh my god. Oh my god. Are you okay? I didn’t see you and I was trying to back out slowly, but I have problems with my knee and it gave out on me.” She had a phone out now, the oversized kind with large numbers for those with poor vision and poor coordination. “I’m calling 911. I can’t believe this.”
I wanted to say something, say that I was okay, just a little stunned. Of course, that would be a lie, but even the ability to lie was beyond me now.
“Honey, what’s your name? They want to know your name?” Her concerned, merle-grey spotted eyes tightened at the corners when I didn’t respond.
I started crying then. I couldn’t even say my damn name.
“I don’t think she can speak. Maybe shock. I can’t believe this.” The woman was mumbling into the phone, her words becoming increasingly more frantic with every word. My soundless sobbing shifted to a sort of hysterical silent laugh, imagining how messy her knit 1 purl two would be if she tried to work magic with yarn right now.
When she hung up with the dispatcher, the woman fell to her knees beside me, her face grimaced and I knew it must hurt. An elderly woman with a bad knee, and she’d thought nothing of dropping down to the hard pavement.
Of course, she was also the reason I was injured and on the ground, so she probably felt she should do whatever she could to comfort me. I lifted my right arm, because the left felt like hell, and I covered my tear-streaked face with my hand. The insane need to laugh had died fast, suiciding in my throat, somewhere between the stomach and the damaged bits of my body.
The woman was speaking again, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to hear. No, I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream. I don’t know how long I lay there, my hand over my face, lost to time and the world.
“Miss, can you look at me?” A brooding, rich voice filtered through my self-pity. There was something about the sound that was haunted, like wraiths worked about his words, keeping each syllable shadowed.
I lowered my hand, squinting as the still-bright sun assaulted my eyes. I’d love the warmth only a short while ago, I’d gotten lost in it… and that wandering had led to me being hit.
The woman who’d hit me, who’d continued to babble and dance her fingers above my body, never touching, until the sirens had sounded in the near distance, had finally moved away. I’d known she’d been there of course, despite my covered face. I’d had to tune her out though, had to tune everything out, to try to control my manic emotions.
Focusing on the face above me, I found chiseled features and honey-tan skin. Wide-set, nearly lavender eyes sat above a nose that had been broken once too often, leaving it slightly deformed in a becoming way. He had a slighter build than I preferred in men, but I could tell he was firmly muscled beneath the uniform.
“Miss, my name is Silas. I’m here to take care of you. Can you tell me where it hurts?” The EMT named Silas gently shifted my body, testing out my finger and arms and ankles. I thought maybe him touching me would send a thrill through me, bring parts of me alive that had stayed dormant since Ross’s departure. But no such luck, not even that little benefit to make this situation easier to handle.
Finally, after he asked me once more what my name was, I pointed behind him at my purse that had fallen from my shoulder and come to rest beneath the shadows of the Cadillac’s trunk. Looking where I pointed, he nodded and leaned forward to get the dark brown leather satchel. It took him a moment to dig out my wallet, flip it open, and find my name.
“Laurie Laurence.” He smiled, the way people smile when they’re trying to be kind or console you. “That’s a nice name.”
Frowning, I shook my head. I wanted to sign that I didn’t like the name, that I thought it was too sing-songy, but he wouldn’t understand. There wasn’t anyone in Lexington that would understand, at least not that I’d met. I missed Dallas sometimes, missed the way Texans were, even in the big city. But Mom had insisted I move here for treatment and after finding myself newly-single, I hadn’t had the heart to fight against her. Lexington was lovely, but I often found it lacking.
“You don’t like your name?” Silas said, continuing to check over my body. I shook my head once more. Finally, his fingers pushing and prodding, he found the places that had begun to ache, like a slow, dull drum beat beneath my skin.
Wincing, I pushed his hand away from the right side of my hip, the area that had taken the most impact. “That hurt?” He moved his hand back, playing his fingers gently across the same area, so gently that this time it didn’t hurt. I nodded. “Hey, Tanner, I think the injuries are pretty minor. Deep tissue bruising, maybe some muscular trauma.”
Another man appeared then, pulling one of those collapsible stretchers I’d only seen in movies, the kind that can be pushed against the back of an ambulance to lower the wheels and slide it into the interior of the rescue vehicle. It was bright yellow, a riotous sort of color, and I hated it as much as the sun that had kidnapped me, made me daydream, and then let me get hit by an old woman in a Cadillac.
The second man was as handsome as Silas, but in a different way. Where Silas seemed to carry shadows, this was all sunshine, fluorescent bulbs, warmth to rival the rays I’d been enjoying before the old lady hit me.
He was large built with shoulders almost too broad for his frame. And he seemed taller than average, although lying on my back didn’t make me the best judge of that. His skin was fair, the way redheads are fair save for the golden-brown of freckles that come to life in the summer, spreading across their skin to give them the appearance of walking warmth. I studied him closer, letting my gaze rove away from those shoulders and that skin, to find black hair instead of ginger crowning a wide, smiling face. A dimple in his chin beneath a large, full mouth was barely visible thanks to his short-groomed beard. And his eyes, although not as exotic as his partner’s lilac ones, were every bit as breathtaking.
An ocean of navy blue swirled about by silver, glistening specks.
I wanted to say ‘hi’ more desperately than I had in months. I wanted him to hear my voice, to hear me.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen.
I watched as the two men spoke to one another, only half-listening to their words and not really caring to understand. Either I was broken or I wasn’t broken. Broken more, I should say. I lived in a state of brokenness now, it was my default.
But then something amazing happened, something marvelous. The second EMT moved his hands, dancing them through the air in a slow waltz.
“Hi, Silas says your name’s Laurie. I’m Tanner.” He finger spelled my name and his. “The woman who hit you,” he signed woman with his hand a little sideways, his fingers a little bent. Not exactly right, but close enough for me to understand. He thought I couldn’t hear, thought that’s why I couldn’t speak.
“I think she can hear, Tanner.” The EMT named Silas said. “She seemed to know what I was saying about her name and stuff.”
Tanner looked away from me and I hated that. I wanted him to look back, wanted his hands to move through the air again in their dance meant only for me, for my eyes, for my heart. Then his eyes found mine once more and a tightness that had sprung to life in my chest eased as quickly as it had arrived.
“Can you hear me?” Tanner still signed the words, a little unsure of himself now. I didn’t like the way that made his face fall, making the dimple in his chin shallower.
I nodded as best as I could, my body still laid across the blacktop. Then I signed. I signed because he would understand. The first person in Lexington that I’d met who could ‘hear’ me… in a fashion. Yes, I can hear, but I can’t speak. I signed slowly, deliberately. He was a novice and I didn’t want to overwhelm him. Of course, I also wanted to sign fast and hard and tell him everything I’d wanted to scream at someone for months now. Paralyzed―I finger spelled ‘paralyzed’, not knowing the sign―vocal cords―again, I had to finger spell. V-O-C-A-L full stop C-O-R-D-S.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hand leaving where it rested on his thigh to move toward my neck. His fingers fluttered, hesitated, fell back down. “I can’t do anything about that, but we can make sure you’re okay otherwise.”
Nodding again, I tried to sit up, wincing as the motion put more pressure on my hips.
“That hurt?” Tanner’s hands did not hesitate now, this time going to my hips and pressing more firmly than he did before. “I think Silas is right, nothing’s broken. Deep tissue bruises. If there’s fracturing, it’s hairline. We’re going to take you to the hospital anyway, okay? X-rays can see things we can’t. Is there someone we can call for you?”
I placed my hand on my chest, palm flat against my body so that I could feel my heart beating fast within, and then I signed ‘bag’. Silas handed the cocoa-brown purse to me and I dug through, finding my phone buried beneath essentials and unnecessaries.
“Oh my, god. Is she okay?” A voice I recognized was warped with worry, high-pitched and on the edge of keening like a child. Shana, my speech therapist. I wasn’t surprised it had taken someone in the therapy building so long to see the accident. The bank of windows on the front of the building was darkly tinted and, on the inside, maroon blinds further obscured the outside world. “What in the world happened?” Shana dropped to the ground near my head. Her leg ended up pinning down a portion of my dark blonde hair and I reached up and back to pat her leg and point. She gasped, shifting her six foot two, Amazonian-frame back a few inches to release the strands.
“She’s going to be fine. The woman who hit her was pulling out, so the speed was slow and the impact moderate as a result. Though, if the woman’s foot hadn’t slipped on the gas, it would have been even less severe.” Tanner spoke briskly in the sort of voice a doctor uses with a nurse rather than a patient―that quick ‘I have things to do, so you take over’ way versus the calm bedside manner so necessary to soothing ailing people.
Tanner stood then, helping Silas shift the stretcher over and depress the hydraulics to lower it to the ground. They’d still have to lift me six inches or so, but that wouldn’t be hard.
Next to Shana’s model proportions, I was basically child-sized. Five foot three, size two jeans, and wearing one of the few tops that made me look grown-up versus all the juniors’ things in my closet that I’d never gotten rid of because they still fit. The blouse was flattering, a good color against my skin that didn’t wash me out or fight the amber color of my eyes; instead, I knew the silky gold would bring out the nuances of them, make them dance a little in the sunlight. Maybe he’d appreciate that, maybe it would make him consider my face for more than a moment, make him see me as some bright and shining thing versus a victim.
My body was lifted then, supported by strong hands and shifted until the barely-padded stretcher surface pushed against my body.
Then I was being raised up, my things back in my bag and set upon my stomach for safe keeping. I was disappointed when Tanner moved into the driver’s seat and Silas stayed in the rear of the vehicle with me.