On The Bridge (3 page)

Jean was soaking in a hot foam bath she ran for herself. Candles lit, she exhaled long and slowly and released the strain from her shoulders to her calves, allowing the therapeutic warmth to envelop her entire body. Norman was at work, apparently, and she did not much care if there were any truth to it. Every moment without him was a godsend to her. No insults, no blame, no orders and no reprimands for things he found unnecessary fault in.

Much as she enjoyed these alone moments every now and then, there was an inkling of discomfort as she lay back this night. Jean somehow refused to close her eyes in the ghostly steam that rose above her bathtub, and the adjective she thought was apt. Since the accident she had constantly had bouts of fear for the man who died, not as himself, but for what he represented.

Norman did not witness the awful event, and even if he had, she doubted that he would even have had the wherewithal to feel any degree of shock or empathy toward all involved. But she saw it all. She had witnessed it in graphic detail. As much as she sympathised with her young son, she felt that she had a fair amount of trauma applied to her mind as well without the sympathetic care her son had received. She had not closed her eyes in the solitude of her warm bathroom for the past two days, for fear of the dreadful scenes that played inside her eyelids as her cruel memory granted her shot after shot of the details she could not un-see, her mind forced to replay the horror film she could not switch off. She could, as a mother, not allow any of the people in her family or circle of friends know that she was secretly struggling to come to terms with the awful incident that haunted her, and so Jean had been medicating herself surreptitiously and making no excuses to herself for taking care of her own psyche. People always perceive mothers as some sort of super force, women with inexhaustible stamina, wisdom and composure, and she knew for a fact that nothing was further from the truth. The only thing women did have a power for was hiding their wounds and drugging themselves to sell it convincingly.

Jean kept her eyes wide open, made sure her television was blaring in the adjacent bedroom for faux company, and popped a mild tranquiliser, the kind that made her sleep without the disadvantage of dreaming. Her dope of choice had her alert enough to function as a strong, supportive mother, but had enough kick to put her down nice and dead for when she did close her eyes at night.

“God bless the druggist,” she said to herself as she lay back after taking her pills.

Suddenly her cell phone rang on the toilet lid next to the bath tub, making her jump and sending a gallon of bubbled goodness over the edges of the tub and onto the floor.

Jean cussed wickedly as she tried to reach the towel quick enough to dry her hands and get the phone, all the while having to endure the annoying ringtone she forgot to change from default to her favourite song the day before. Finally she managed and her minor happiness diminished at the word on her screen:
Norman

“Yes, dear,” she answered, abandoning all effort of feigning joy.

“Jean. Douglas woke up,” Norman said without a change in tone, although Jean’s heart jumped at the news. “I’m on my way home. Be ready when I get there. I don’t want to be at hospital all night.”

“Okay, I’m getting dressed now,” she answered and hung up the phone. She was elated and did not even care to wipe the floor properly before she got out of the bath and pulled the plug. All she could think of was Doug’s eyes open and alive. She did not even care much in what state he would be yet, as long as he was awake. The rest she could nurture later.

The street lights shifted the yellow light through the car as Norman sped along the highway to the hospital, more to get the whole thing over with than actually out of interest at seeing his son. He found it all so exaggerated and could honestly not understand why Doug could not just get over such a scene. In his mind the boy was simply looking for attention, embellishing his shock to gain a little more awareness and to evoke a sense of vulnerability to make him feel special. Actually, it infuriated Norman and he pressed his foot down on the accelerator, speeding as his temper flared at the little brat who disrupted his business priorities for his weakness at standing firm.

“Why are you driving so fast, Norman?” Jean asked urgently. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“Nope. He isn’t, is he? Comfy and cosy in the arms of the nurses and soon his parents will show up, summoned by the little prince and dropping everything to get to the hospital,” Norman barked without thinking as the pulsing light illuminated his angry frown and his tight lips.

“My God, Norman, what is wrong with you? This is your son you are talking about? Don’t you care what happens to him? His health? His happiness?” Jean was shocked by her husband’s rude rant. It was wicked, even for him, and he realised this in the following silence of Jean’s retort. Norman felt a twinge of contrition, and slowed the car a bit, relaxing his pursed mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I didn’t mean for it to sound so…”

“Mean?” she finished his sentence.

“Mean,” he agreed. “I am just under so much stress and sometimes I feel like he…” Norman hesitated this time, “…gets in the way, you know? Like he puts things on us that he doesn’t have to. Things he could probably handle by himself. Jean, he must realise that he is a young man now and start acting like one.”

Jean understood, although she did not approve of his blatant discard of fatherly love for the sake of education toward manhood. She knew that there was much blame to be had from Norman’s father in this regard and that her husband had trouble conveying emotion on the best of times, but it was no excuse to belittle his own son for the frozen love of men in his family.

“Stop calling him nancy and being disrespectful to me in his presence. You just need to stop cutting him off every time he makes you feel inadequate as his personal
army ranger, for for God’s sake,” she said abruptly as the car came to a halt in the hospital parking lot and she spared no time in pushing the car door wide open and slamming it with controlled fury as the lit sign with the hospital name beckoned her to her son’s side.

Doug looked so small and helpless in the big dark room, sitting up halfway in the huge hospital bed with the soft lamp light on his slight frame. Norman and Jean entered quietly and Doug’s face lit up when his mother moved swiftly toward him, her arms outstretched and her face beaming with delight. His father followed, maintaining his image as the alpha male, but he did lend Doug a smile and it made the teenage boy feel so much better.

“How are you feeling, baby?” Jean asked as she fluffed his hair and kissed him a few times too many and it made Norman cringe. Douglas sniggered at his father’s disgust and found himself a sense of humour right there and then.

“I’m peachy, mom. High as a kite, man,” he dipped his eyelids and both his parents laughed, to his pleasant amazement. But after a few moments, he enquired again as to the events that had put him there, and his mother, being the more articulate of the two, recounted the horrible event with as much tact as possible, not to aggravate his sensitivity. Norman tried not to show his indifference as much as he could, but his cold silence behind Jean said it all. The pill helped Doug take in the details with ease and although it was terrible, he used the information to confirm the strange images he had in his head rather than be haunted by them – for now.

“Now you know,” Jean said.

“Yep. I feel okay now,” Doug said, in essence trying to impress his stern father.

“That’s good. That’s good, Doug, but the doctor said she needs to keep you here overnight just to make sure you are good to go,” Norman replied in a much more accessible tone. “And it’s good that you feel better. You should be able to get over stuff like this. It’s good. It’s not like it had anything to do with you anyway. It’s not a big deal to process. In fact, it shouldn’t have fazed you to begin with.”

“Norman!” Jean raised her voice to her husband, showing her disapproval of his comments.

“What?” Norman asked.

“We're in the hospital,” Jean said.

“I know,” Norman said sharply.

“Doug is still a child, it a big deal what he saw!” Jean said, hoping her words would sink in very soon. She was wrong.

“He is a teenager not a child!” Norman couldn't accept.

“In the eye of the law, he still a child at 15” Jean corrected him.

Doug was muted, as he watched his parents making a scene. He felt embarrassed, for the unfriendly old man was nodding his head while watching his parents. Doug's parents stopped arguing when they realised they were not alone in the room.

Jean made sure Doug knew how much she loved him before they left him behind with a smile on his face, which was a wonderful weight off her. The young man looked at the elderly man fast-asleep and snoring next to him and switched off his lamp. His mind and memory reeling from the new details, he still found himself peaceful, considering his head kept showing him snapshots of the severed head with its hand over its mouth and the obliterated body that wouldn’t go away. Thankfully the medication kept them from upsetting him too much, but they just wouldn’t subside. Finally, after a painful hour, he managed to sleep.

When Doug woke up the next morning, there were two policemen waiting to talk to him. He had the normal teenager’s apprehension for police, but they did everything they could to reassure him that they only wanted to know what he remembered about the incident on the bridge.

He told them what he remembered, about how the man had looked like he was going to throw his briefcase into the river and how he had smiled at Doug before he ran out in the road. In telling the story, Doug remembered the little things he hadn’t before and eventually became quite upset, until a nurse had to give him a mild sedative to cope.

The policemen asked him several times if he knew the man who got killed, or if he knew anything about him. They asked him what was in the briefcase. They asked him why the man had smiled at him, if they were not acquainted.

“Look, I don’t know the guy, okay?” Doug raised his voice to the law and had to be hushed by his fellow patient to preserve the peace and not provoke the officers. He softened, realising what they could do if he did not comply.

“Look, I was there completely by chance. We had a flat. My dad changed the tire. This dude stepped out of his car, looked over the barricade and then walked his rich ass into a truck. And that’s that. That is all I know about this guy, officers. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Doug started feeling the tears burning into the corners of his eyes. His heart slammed against his chest as the panic attack welled again. The police officer asked him if he thought it was an accident or if the man had committed suicide.

“I don’t know! I don’t know. I don’t know! How can I know? But he knew where he was going and he had to have seen the van. He still didn’t hesitate even for a moment but just walked into it. Maybe he’d gone blind. Maybe he was seeing things. How do I know?”

Doug was at wit’s end. Nothing he said could satisfy the police officers and he felt like a cornered animal. One by one the questions came incessantly.

They asked Doug if it had been the fault of the van driver, but Doug answered vociferously that it wasn’t.

“If anybody was at fault,” he said, “It was me!”

The policemen looked taken aback.

“What do you mean?” asked the sergeant in sudden seriousness.

“He smiled at me. Maybe if I’d smiled back or spoken to him, really spoken to him instead of praising his taste in cars…he would have…stopped to chat,” Doug’s voice cracked under the guilt of his ineptitude at saving the stranger when he could, “…and nothing would have happened.” His eyes became wild as he raised his voice again. “Maybe you should arrest me!”

“No, son, don’t you think that for a moment,” rushed the older officer.

“Whoever may have been at fault, it was somebody he knew. Don’t go on a guilt trip. It wasn’t your fault in any way, you hear?”

Taking a hold of Doug’s shoulders, he looked him straight in the eye and repeated, “This was NOT your fault.”

But Doug did not stop shaking this time. The reassurance from the older officer battled his guilt blow by blow.

His parents collected him shortly after and he almost felt normal again as his mom returned his cell phone. He checked all his messages of well-wishing as the car quietly passed the scene of the carnage that had now been cleaned up.

His room was a welcome sight after the frigid walls and rules of the hospital room and his posters called him back into his world. All his favourite rock stars looked down on him from their fixed places and he felt like he had been gone for months. His parents were strangely void of arguments today, probably because of the new developments in the home, their son being on psych drugs and everyone’s demeanour leaning a tad over the norm, but he was perfectly content at it all.

The sun threw lines of warmth onto his bed and carpet and he threw himself lazily onto his back to enjoy the familiarity again. He didn’t even care to switch on his computer yet, something he did religiously every time he entered his room from a day out. All he wanted to do was take in the outside air that drifted through his second-story room window and the chirping of the birds in the bright sunlight of day. Doug stood by his window now, looking down upon the garden, and he was deeply thankful for being alive.

The blood and the tar and rubber that pierced his thoughts were somehow washed away by the power of the daylight around him and he took a long, deep breath to cleanse himself of the darkness he had endured the past few days.

When the sun finally faded on the horizon, Jean made him a strong cup of coffee with marshmallows floating in a mushy pink and white on top. She knew how much he loved a sugar overdose and he knew he was being spoiled. Norman would not be home until late on this Friday evening and Doug took full advantage of running the hot water in the shower until his body was good and pampered by the warmth of it. He owed it to himself, after all.

Jean had rented a fluffy romance movie and this alone repelled Doug, as he wouldn’t let her forget with his playful mocking of her genre choice until she threw him and his pillows out of the TV room and chased him off for having
“no taste”.

Young master Bates was quite exhausted by the change in scenery of the day and he closed the door of his bedroom as he did every night before bed. He switched on his aquarium light and fed his fish, passing a brief glance to his computer, but still maintaining his abstinence of it in favour of a solitary relaxed state in the blue-green ambience of his room. It was bliss to lie in his own bed again, flat, not propped up on a million unnecessary pillows. Hospital protocol about patients’ comfort was absurd in his opinion, and he thoroughly enjoyed his familiar posture. Doug drifted off, drugged up, in the solace of blue light and the wonderful whisper of aquarium bubbles.

The bridge was deserted, completely empty not only of vehicles, but of any movement. Not even the wind stirred a blade of long grass that fringed the road and the sky lacked any motion from bird or plane, much like the air contained absolutely no freedom to breathe. Time stood still like everything else, in fact, there was no such a measure as time as the broken-down car was suddenly there where just a moment before there was only a stretch of road. Norman sat next to the flat wheel, fixing it, and Jean stood looking over the bridge, chatting to Doug without any sound coming from her mouth, but she seemed fascinated by something at once and pointed to a spot behind Doug’s back. He turned and saw a red Ferrari pull up, so red that it paled all other things in comparison.

From the moment he saw the driver step out of the Ferrari, Douglas was bombarded with one image after another, one by one, like a fast forward into his living nightmare, recollecting scene by gruesome scene as it happened. Flashes of raw flesh, dead eyes and astonished expressions on deadheads pounded him, faster and faster as it went by like a merry-go-round of carnage churning all around him. The smell of tires on tar, the sound of screeching stops and the horrid thumping of steel on anatomy echoed repeatedly in his ears until he could hold it no longer and screamed for his very life.

But not a sound came from him as he woke in the blue light of bubbles and water, drenched in sweat and soaked with tears. The teenager shook with sorrow, holding his crying spell to himself in the dead silence of the house. His legs were numb from the dream, slyly deterring his body from running, should he feel the need to outrun his nightmares.

The dumbfounded youth sat upon his bed in the blue light and just pondered on the dream. There was no way he was going back to sleep. It was all fine and well that Dr Lamaskaya’s magic potion kept him from being assaulted by memory demons, but she did not tell him that her medicine did not cover the chambers of slumber. Doug’s eyes followed the orange fish in his aquarium as he consciously tried to put from his mind the possibility of a spectral messenger that may have crossed from his nightmare and into his reality, because that’s how it is with nightmares – the most intense of which always leaves us thinking that something had followed us out and was now perched somewhere in our rooms watching us. The uneasy feeling that rode his back would not leave, and so the poor young man elected to sit awake, waiting for the solace of morning rather than to venture back into the netherworld of memory-inspired bad dreams.

Eventually the birthing day spewed a shred of light into the comfort of his blue sanctuary and he felt worse than ever, his lack of sleep now really hammering him into fatigue, but Doug preferred to talk about what had happened and since his parents were utterly unavailable for such a job, he decided to call his friends for a meet-up and chill out. He needed a bit of normal. He needed to unload where nobody stood elevated in age or hierarchy to him and made him feel inferior with every word he breathed.

His father was due for his obligatory visit to the old age home where his mother was housed, which usually left him in a foul mood, more than usual. Doug made his mother some coffee as he joined his parents in the kitchen.

“Mom, I think I’m going to hang with the guys at Mick’s a bit today, okay?” he said carefully as he poured her a cup. She figured the boy could use a little peer cheer, as long as Doug took his medication and left her to hers while all remained oblivious to her own trauma, but she tried to discourage him from going.

“Darling, you’ve had a terrible shock. What you need to do is rest here at home for a day or two,” she protested, duty bound, but inside her deepest core she could not care which way the pendulum would swing, really.

“No, I’ll be all right,” Doug said. He refused to tell his parents about the nightmare or the effect it had had on him, leaving him looking like a stubborn teenager and nothing else.

Norman disagreed vociferously with Jean, as usual.

“Oh come on, Jean. You are making it so much worse than it is. This is the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, anytime. It isn’t as if he’d caused the accident. We were just witnesses, only he was closer. Don’t you think you and I need to rest too?” His diatribe only served both Jean and Doug, neither of whom would admit to it out loud, though.

“But he’s just a boy,” Jean pushed, secretly indifferent to the outcome as she felt her need for solitude overtake her motherly instincts.

“Maybe, but he’s pretty much a man now and should begin to act like one,” Norman snapped as he finished his coffee and checked his watch. “Doug, it would serve you better to not perpetuate this wimp act and just put the whole thing behind you. Carry on as normal.” Norman packed his gift basket for his mother and was clearly not done rubbing Doug’s nose in his tyrannical authority.

“I don’t know why you bother with this pill-popping the women have you doing. You damn well don’t need it,” he looked at Jean’s warning eyes with a disdain that countered her quiet attack on her husband’s bitching. But Norman considered it a challenge.

Then he launched a tirade against the man who caused it all.

“I wish I could reach into the dark pits and pull that son of a bitch out and let him know how selfish committing suicide is! Look at what it has done to us!” Doug’s father was furious. There was no sarcasm, no discipline and no preachy lesson, just brute rage, as raw as he had ever seen his father emote. “And we were just witnesses. What about his family? He’s just fine. He’s dead and gone, but his family will have to deal with it for the rest of their lives!”

It seemed to have hit a nerve, a very personal nerve that Norman’s little family dared not ask about now.

Norman suddenly stopped and realised that he had revealed a bit too much emotion just then, and emotion is for women. His father had made sure he knew that when he was younger than Doug was now. Boys who took care of stray dogs were too soft, his father taught him. Boys who asked their daddies for help when their secret pets were caught in barbwire were nancies who couldn’t do things themselves. Boys who cried when their dads shot stray dogs who could not be held as pets were pathetic, emotional girls who had to get a beating to remind them that feelings were for women.

Doug could see that his mother didn’t agree, but she said nothing. Doug didn’t know if he agreed or not. He’d have to think about this whole suicide business. His father nodded awkwardly as if to say goodbye, took his basket and stormed out, leaving Doug with his mom in stunned silence.

“I guess it’s alright if you go then,” she said softly as she took her mug from the microwave.

She tried to play the understanding mother, but the guilt of her true agenda, to get him out of the house for her own self-inflicted healing, had to be drowned by a stiff drink or two. It was not in Jean’s nature, but then again, one does not see a van turn a man into sausage meat every day and simply walk away from it without a shard of injury.

“I’ll be fine,” Doug smiled, and his mother gave him a loving embrace, masking her selfish desire to be alone, and with that she left the kitchen with her cup, calling back to him that she was going for a morning soak.