Deb Hanson
10-09-2010, 10:49 PM
O N E
She’d been doing what she was supposed to be doing that dark, rainy night, minding her own business and walking with the green light where West Cook met Broadway on her way home from work. The car came out of nowhere like a bat out of hell. She didn’t even hear its approach. Maybe if she hadn’t been so deep in thought, excited over a new storyline that had just popped into her head, things might have turned out different. In the millisecond it took for metal to meet flesh in the crosswalk, life as she knew it was changed forever, her body reacting like an anthropomorphic aluminum alloy dummy in a head-on pedestrian crash test.
A more devastating hit couldn’t have been achieved had it been planned. Each of her limbs almost separated from its socket, the power of the strike so strong. Its tremendous velocity had forced her head and torso onto the hood of the car and into the windshield before sending her flying backwards into the street. She was told later that her mangled, torn body had finally come to rest on the cold, wet pavement more than a hundred yards from where it was hit between the two white lines. The accident reconstruction report had deemed the muscle car’s speed to be in the forty- to fifty-mile-per-hour range to have thrown her that far and caused the injuries it did. The impact, in all its violence, was surprisingly painless from the little she could remember. The suffering would come later in the hospital and during the two years that followed, the grueling physical therapy sessions to rehabilitate her legs causing the most hurt. A series of reconstructive surgeries would rebuild her jaw and replace half her teeth with prosthetic facsimiles of those given to her by natural means. The offending driver had gotten off scot-free and was most likely one of the drag racing teens spotted in the immediate vicinity just prior to the collision, never to be seen again or held responsible. Three paramedics had rushed her from the scene and into a waiting ambulance, alive but certainly not in one piece. She would remain in intensive care for weeks, her condition touch and go for the first several days after impact, her breathing aided by a ventilator.
The near-fatal accident had been the start of two years bad luck for Deb Hanson, a run that continued to this day as she reclined in a dental chair in a state of artificially-induced twilight, looking up into the eyes staring into her mouth. Green irises were there in front of her one second and gone from view the next.
Pain was the last thing she was feeling this morning in the capable hands of a specialist who knew his drugs. He must have been a pusher in a previous life. She’d been administered so many pills over the past two years she had given up keeping track of their names and had long since stopped trying to pronounce them.
Her mind floated free as she heard the watered-down version of an oldies classic being piped into Dr. Rubin’s office. At the moment, she was the girl from Ipanema making her rounds on the beach, all eyes glued to her tall, tanned body as she sashayed to the shore. A vague sense of a face over hers was there again as the doctor fired up his drill, told her to open wide, and stuck it in her mouth.
She had no worries. Not a care in the world. Not sitting in this chair. She wasn’t worried about the new batch of collection letters she had picked up in the mailbox on her way out to her car, now folded neatly inside her purse. She wasn’t thinking about the threatening call that had wakened her from a dead sleep at five that morning, the voice heard through the receiver and the things it said scaring the holy bejesus out of her. Neither was she concerned about how to pay Dr. Rubin for his services. She wasn’t even fretting over the anxious look on her landlord’s face when he had shown up at her door asking for rent. No, whatever Dr. Rubin had given her this time was making her feel over-the-top giddy. Giddy, woozy and loopy, a triple whammy combination much more potent than the hits of marijuana she had tried on a whim after a high school dance all those years ago. And she was thoroughly enjoying being under the influence, desperately needing to latch onto a bit of disorientation right about now.
Her friend woozy allowed her to pretend the stack of unpaid bills on her kitchen counter wasn’t continuing to mount day after day. Loopy kicked in to make her forget she’d be thrown out on the street in a hot minute if this afternoon’s meeting at the agency didn’t soon turn into a permanent work assignment and sizeable bank deposit. Giddy made an appearance just when she needed to stop thinking about the words that had come from her brother’s mouth the week before, making it clear there could be no more borrowing. What were they exactly? “I’m all tapped out. You’d better pray for a miracle.”
And pray she had, every night in her tiny Santa Maria apartment, after doing her prescribed range of motion exercises and seating herself at the typewriter to add a bit more to her latest story. She’d asked herself how much more one person could take. Two pills for lingering nerve pain, followed by the first few minutes of Carson’s monologue, had helped her relax each night until her eyes had no choice but to close. She was grateful when sleep finally came to give her body the rest it needed to recuperate. If only it could erase the last two years of her life and the deep hole into which she found herself sinking.
Deb gazed into Dr. Rubin’s eyes and willed the nitrous oxide, and whatever extra he had thrown into the mix, to work its magic on her dopamine receptors. Her mouth open as wide as it could get, she was at the mercy of the able hands she trusted to finally finish the work started two years before. Today’s treatment was the last, and the dental sessions would soon fade into a bad memory. Still, a part of her would miss seeing Dr. Rubin’s young, attractive face and caring emerald eyes. She had surmised long ago they were too green to be natural. Color contacts for sure, she had concluded just before the start of surgery number two of six that would correct her contorted features.
The effect of the drugs beginning to fade, Deb felt his nimble fingers work with authority and confidence inside her mouth. Were they just as dexterous when he got under the sheets? She giggled to herself. That thought would somehow have to get down on paper and into her next story. At least she could still count on a sense of humor to provide a little levity in the midst of her problems.
Dr. Rubin’s handiwork finally done, he squeezed her shoulder and left the room, assistants in tow, allowing Deb time to rest while she came down from her high to contend with a reality she didn’t want to face. A reality that saw her drowning in debt from hospital and credit card bills that could never be repaid on a domestic worker’s meager salary. A reality in which she felt alone in the world with nowhere to turn. One in which the only thing bringing her any bit of happiness was her steadfast belief in herself, a belief that if she could survive the last two years, she could make it through anything. She knew one day soon she’d catch a break and her life would improve, that a miracle did indeed lie in wait just around the corner.
She’d been doing what she was supposed to be doing that dark, rainy night, minding her own business and walking with the green light where West Cook met Broadway on her way home from work. The car came out of nowhere like a bat out of hell. She didn’t even hear its approach. Maybe if she hadn’t been so deep in thought, excited over a new storyline that had just popped into her head, things might have turned out different. In the millisecond it took for metal to meet flesh in the crosswalk, life as she knew it was changed forever, her body reacting like an anthropomorphic aluminum alloy dummy in a head-on pedestrian crash test.
A more devastating hit couldn’t have been achieved had it been planned. Each of her limbs almost separated from its socket, the power of the strike so strong. Its tremendous velocity had forced her head and torso onto the hood of the car and into the windshield before sending her flying backwards into the street. She was told later that her mangled, torn body had finally come to rest on the cold, wet pavement more than a hundred yards from where it was hit between the two white lines. The accident reconstruction report had deemed the muscle car’s speed to be in the forty- to fifty-mile-per-hour range to have thrown her that far and caused the injuries it did. The impact, in all its violence, was surprisingly painless from the little she could remember. The suffering would come later in the hospital and during the two years that followed, the grueling physical therapy sessions to rehabilitate her legs causing the most hurt. A series of reconstructive surgeries would rebuild her jaw and replace half her teeth with prosthetic facsimiles of those given to her by natural means. The offending driver had gotten off scot-free and was most likely one of the drag racing teens spotted in the immediate vicinity just prior to the collision, never to be seen again or held responsible. Three paramedics had rushed her from the scene and into a waiting ambulance, alive but certainly not in one piece. She would remain in intensive care for weeks, her condition touch and go for the first several days after impact, her breathing aided by a ventilator.
The near-fatal accident had been the start of two years bad luck for Deb Hanson, a run that continued to this day as she reclined in a dental chair in a state of artificially-induced twilight, looking up into the eyes staring into her mouth. Green irises were there in front of her one second and gone from view the next.
Pain was the last thing she was feeling this morning in the capable hands of a specialist who knew his drugs. He must have been a pusher in a previous life. She’d been administered so many pills over the past two years she had given up keeping track of their names and had long since stopped trying to pronounce them.
Her mind floated free as she heard the watered-down version of an oldies classic being piped into Dr. Rubin’s office. At the moment, she was the girl from Ipanema making her rounds on the beach, all eyes glued to her tall, tanned body as she sashayed to the shore. A vague sense of a face over hers was there again as the doctor fired up his drill, told her to open wide, and stuck it in her mouth.
She had no worries. Not a care in the world. Not sitting in this chair. She wasn’t worried about the new batch of collection letters she had picked up in the mailbox on her way out to her car, now folded neatly inside her purse. She wasn’t thinking about the threatening call that had wakened her from a dead sleep at five that morning, the voice heard through the receiver and the things it said scaring the holy bejesus out of her. Neither was she concerned about how to pay Dr. Rubin for his services. She wasn’t even fretting over the anxious look on her landlord’s face when he had shown up at her door asking for rent. No, whatever Dr. Rubin had given her this time was making her feel over-the-top giddy. Giddy, woozy and loopy, a triple whammy combination much more potent than the hits of marijuana she had tried on a whim after a high school dance all those years ago. And she was thoroughly enjoying being under the influence, desperately needing to latch onto a bit of disorientation right about now.
Her friend woozy allowed her to pretend the stack of unpaid bills on her kitchen counter wasn’t continuing to mount day after day. Loopy kicked in to make her forget she’d be thrown out on the street in a hot minute if this afternoon’s meeting at the agency didn’t soon turn into a permanent work assignment and sizeable bank deposit. Giddy made an appearance just when she needed to stop thinking about the words that had come from her brother’s mouth the week before, making it clear there could be no more borrowing. What were they exactly? “I’m all tapped out. You’d better pray for a miracle.”
And pray she had, every night in her tiny Santa Maria apartment, after doing her prescribed range of motion exercises and seating herself at the typewriter to add a bit more to her latest story. She’d asked herself how much more one person could take. Two pills for lingering nerve pain, followed by the first few minutes of Carson’s monologue, had helped her relax each night until her eyes had no choice but to close. She was grateful when sleep finally came to give her body the rest it needed to recuperate. If only it could erase the last two years of her life and the deep hole into which she found herself sinking.
Deb gazed into Dr. Rubin’s eyes and willed the nitrous oxide, and whatever extra he had thrown into the mix, to work its magic on her dopamine receptors. Her mouth open as wide as it could get, she was at the mercy of the able hands she trusted to finally finish the work started two years before. Today’s treatment was the last, and the dental sessions would soon fade into a bad memory. Still, a part of her would miss seeing Dr. Rubin’s young, attractive face and caring emerald eyes. She had surmised long ago they were too green to be natural. Color contacts for sure, she had concluded just before the start of surgery number two of six that would correct her contorted features.
The effect of the drugs beginning to fade, Deb felt his nimble fingers work with authority and confidence inside her mouth. Were they just as dexterous when he got under the sheets? She giggled to herself. That thought would somehow have to get down on paper and into her next story. At least she could still count on a sense of humor to provide a little levity in the midst of her problems.
Dr. Rubin’s handiwork finally done, he squeezed her shoulder and left the room, assistants in tow, allowing Deb time to rest while she came down from her high to contend with a reality she didn’t want to face. A reality that saw her drowning in debt from hospital and credit card bills that could never be repaid on a domestic worker’s meager salary. A reality in which she felt alone in the world with nowhere to turn. One in which the only thing bringing her any bit of happiness was her steadfast belief in herself, a belief that if she could survive the last two years, she could make it through anything. She knew one day soon she’d catch a break and her life would improve, that a miracle did indeed lie in wait just around the corner.