to slip this bus off the road, into the trees, the sounds of glass shattering and metal bending, one wheel still spinning and the smell of pine cutting so hard. I’d be okay with dying in the woods just off Interstate 5.
There is nothing but days of driving now, a lull in the schedule. Oregon at a leisurely pace, National Forests around every turn. Into California, like another world up north, just redwood trees and mountain peaks. We are bound for Sacramento, the odd-fitting capital city, like Albany, only more depressing. It seems like an afterthought, something they decided to give the people there because all the good stuff had already been handed out to LA and San Fran and San Diego. A consolation prize. A show there and then two by the Bay and then home again for a few days, then flying out East to begin another tour, different bus, different driver, the same eternally shifting world. Our video is in the top five of TRL; we will be doing appearances in Times Square. Our album is selling more and more copies every week, and the label thinks that, with a second single, it will go platinum. We are a priority now. The shareholders have freed up more funds; we will be shooting another video, going to the UK and the rest of Europe. But all of that is still months away. Right now, we are stopped at a rest area outside Willows, California, sitting on the picnic tables out by the pine trees. Right now I look out at the traffic headed north, feeling the fleeting summer breeze on my neck, almost like a kiss or a caress. A wave good-bye. Right now I get a call on my cell phone, from a Chicago number I don’t recognize. I answer. It’s Her roommate. Right now she is crying on the other end of the line. Right now I hit the ground.
26
There was an accident. She was apparently driving drunk, hit a guardrail. No one knows where she was going. No one knows where she was beforehand. None of that matters much. She’s in the hospital, a tube going into Her mouth, helping Her breathe. Tubes in Her arms are keeping Her alive. The remaining dates of the tour are canceled. I am on a plane bound for Chicago.
She’s in the same hospital that Her mother was in, only a different wing. The bad wing. I tell the nurse at the desk that I’m here to see Her, and she looks at me with sad eyes. I take the elevator up with an orderly and a kid in a wheelchair. His stomach is distended with cancer. They get off on a different floor. I walk down the hallway to Her room, feel the sickly warmth of illness, the slightly sweet odor of feces. Hospitals always smell the same. I am numb. When I get to Her room, Her mother and father are there, Her sister too. They all look up at me, and you can tell they haven’t slept, have been keeping vigil by Her bedside. Her parents are wondering why I am here, but they don’t say it. Her sister asks if maybe they’d like to go get some coffee, and they begrudgingly say yes. Her father wheels Her mother past me, and she looks up at me with tired, angry eyes.
She was on the interstate when it happened, Her sister tells me. She has a lacerated liver and a punctured lung, massive head trauma. The doctors don’t know if she’ll ever wake up. Her head is battered and bandaged, turned to the left. Her eyes are both black. Dark red cuts peek out from beneath the gauze. The tube in Her mouth is held in place by tape. She looks so small and broken in the bed, Her thin arms resting at Her sides, black nail polish still on the tips of Her fingers. Machines surround the bed, whirring, hushed things, helping Her breathe. The dainty drip of the saline in the plastic bag. The chart hanging by Her feet. The thick hospital blanket tucked into the mattress. She is never going to wake up. She is going to die. Everyone knows it.
Her parents are gone for a long time, so I sit in a chair in the corner of the room, looking at Her bashed-in face, Her wondrous eyes tightly shut. Occasionally Her lashes flutter, but Her sister says that’s just how these things go.