imanant :: look at me go.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005
"Chapter" Three in the amazing failures of Patrick Midleton

"Chapter" Three

I didn’t really start worrying until the blood began to gather around my tongue. Catching my finger nails in the steering wheel was a warning shot. Having the air knocked out of me when the seatbelt constricted, I admit, was a bit worrisome, but I kept my cool. I only screamed because she screamed. It’s like yawning. Ten and two, turn with the skid. I wondered, “So…which way do you turn if you’re flipping?” When I began choking on blood, then perhaps I became a bit nervous. My anxiety quickly began to subside when we came to a halt, which seemed a bit sudden, upside down against the barrier. I felt bad for all those mornings I quietly cursed road workers for holding me up as I was clearly just trying to get to work on time. They did quite a good job on that barrier. Firm. Reliable. It did a fine job of preventing us from rolling into the Hudson River. I chided myself for not recognizing the necessity of their craft or the quality of their work sooner.

“How predictable”, I thought, “to not see the hard work others put in to keep me safe.” At that point, the blood began rushing out of my mouth and into my head, which would account, I think, for my strange line of thought.

When I finished imagining the smiling construction workers who had so skillfully placed the line of concrete barriers along Rt. 87, I felt myself smile. I’m alive, I felt it. I was sure of it. Everything was so real. The scenery vivid, the smells pungent. My noteworthy lack of pain curious.

“That must be my passive nervous system kicking in, or whatever it’s called.” I wasn’t thinking that clearly, I mean, I was hanging upside down in a totaled Toyota Camry.

The sun was setting over the Hudson. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, PCBs reflect well in the environment. The colors were astounding. A purple and orange sheen stretched thin across the sky, complimented by their faint reflection in the Hudson. What Upstate NY lacks in color culturally, it makes up for in beautifully polluted sunsets. Had it not been late fall, the trees no doubt would have coordinated well with the sky.

“Perhaps I should get out of the car.” So I began my first attempts at moving. “I wasn’t alone, was I?” No, I wasn’t, I remembered. Jamie was in the car with me. And so she was, in a way. I looked over and there she was.

“Jamie, we’re alive.” Her hair looked more red than I remembered and her cheeks more blushed. An accident will do that to you, I surmised.

“Jamie! We’re alive!” The passage words take from conception to expression in my body is not very long, so I have an awful habit of speaking without thinking. Those are the two dumbest words I’ve ever let fly.

Later, when two separate ambulances took us away and I was drugged on something so I would stop screaming Jamie’s name, my dreams were krayola colored. Small schoolchildren were put to the task of storyboarding the accident. I give them credit for trying, but really, what kind of detail can you achieve with a crayon? In this purple skied world, a brown quadruped, wait, no, car, came to a great halt against the back of a blue blotch with two black dimples before the blue blotch rotated and flipped off the back of a white box with brown dimples. The blotch took on a triangular shape and began to get lost in sea of sea foam green water and purple sky. A sun, or an orange, hung low in the sky. Two “skin-toned” stick figures raised their arms in surprise. When I attempted to critique the children on their efforts, I was scolded by a bleeding and broken school teacher who bore a striking resemblance to Jamie.

Odd, I thought. Jamie’s dead.

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