Cliff Notes: Them and Him (story)

[Wake]

Cliff Notes: Them and Him

Chapter 1: The Accident

I stooped down then sat back up, pushing myself against the back headboard of my bed to sit up. I paused as I stared into my half lit room with sun starting to peek in through the half shut blinds. As I did I wiped the sweat from my brow.

Closing my eyes, still seeing the imprint of my nightmare and worst memory; It was just a few days before my fourth birthday when that man came to our house; I remember as he told us what happened… I just kept replaying it in my mind. Though I had not been there, my imagination then had played it through; a few more times than possible to be counted; when I was told what happened.

The taxi getting hit from the passenger side by some drunk who had come from a bar just a block down the road; I remember getting told that when the police showed up at our house, I had been sleep. My parents had hired a babysitter and went out for the night to, “eat at a fancy restaurant and go to the theater.” They had been on their way back to the house.

I opened my eyes again, and pulled off the covers getting up. Looking around for the toaster; I ate and got ready for work. Closing my eyes again in the shower; thinking about how life had changed for me the past 20 years. Going into foster care because we didn’t have any relatives, then both my brother and I got adopted when I was 7. After that I guess you could say normal stuff happened, school, college, working through most of both. Luckily getting some “will” money and other things after turning 18, but there was really not too much left after the government had gotten through with it.

I kicked around some dirty clothes on the floor of my lone apartment, looking for something clean to wear. Getting down on my hands and knees trying to, find my shoes after eating. On the wooden floors looking about at the rotting walls and water stained ceiling I came to fixate on the fact that I really had been here almost 5 years to the day. Right after my 18th birthday I had moved from my foster parents’ house down in Virginia to come back to New York, New York to be near my brother and go to college with him; who moved out here a few years previous. I found one shoe under my sheets that had been thrown onto the floor in the night, and the other near a few mounds of cloths that needed to be washed.

I headed out the door, hopping to put my left shoe on as I looked at the clock. “Damn, I’m going to be late; again!” I said muttering to myself, but failing to stay quite as I went down the stairs of my building, “Come on, come on,” talking to myself more, “I’ve been working here for a bit over a year, and still can’t make consecutive days without being late!”

I opened the bottom stairwell door to the outside into the hustle and bustle of early morning New York, traffic. I glanced at my watch; it was 7:40am. “Just enough time, I hope,” still muttering to myself, I started walking down the east side of the building and turned the corner.

BAAAMMM a guy on a bike rounded the corner the same time I did going the opposite direction and clipped my elbow. “Darn it,” I yelled out, “watch where you’re going,” I turned my head as he kept going down the side walk.

With out turning back he yelled back, “sorry dude!”

Well, another wonderful start to the day for me. I looked at my arm; it wasn’t bleeding through my long sleeve shirt, so hopefully the numb pain of it would go away soon enough. I slipped on my coat and took up a slightly quicker pace walking down the sidewalk. I could see my breath coming from my mouth as I went. Looking up I could see the sun partly covered by clouds as a slight breeze picked up, I could feel the new October air going into my longs. I picked up the pace glancing at my watch trying now to jog through the heavy morning traffic of the sidewalk; got down a few more blocks and rounded another corner. Walking past a donut shop with several police cars cramped in the parking lot, I shook my head as I opened the glass door to the building next to it on the right, and walked inside.

I fiddled around in my pocket as I walked toward a machine on the wall beside the door to my left. Pulling out my time card I ran it threw the slider on top; it rang in two minutes late. “Oh well,” I muttered to myself as un-mighty as ever. I turned, putting my card back into my pants-pocket and started down the rows of people in their cubicles talking on the phones at their desk, and all the people rushing around the tightly fitted room with folders of paperwork always needing to get somewhere in too big a hurry.

The building was a little shabby look in from the outside and brick with a yellowish stained ceiling is what you’d see. The place was 4 stories high, the first two floors were the same with cubicles in the center of the room, two rows, each rows had a cubicle against another front to back. Both rows went about 6 of them down, on each side of me was two offices into each the west and east walls of the buildings, with the north, or opposite end of where I came in is a stair case and vending machines. The third floor is the interrogation rooms and the four is where all the filing of the paperwork goes.

I rustled with the lose stitching of my pants pocket as I turned into the second office on the east of the room and swung the door close to shut out the noise of the people. Eyeing the stack of work on my desk, I knew I should have taken a sick day today.

Shuffling over to my desk while my feet dragged themselves on the floor to the desk chair, I fell into it and set off to work, already counting the minutes till lunch…

…Mind numb and hands starting to cramp, I decided to stand and stretch for a minute. I walked around the right side of my desk to the storage cabinets mounted shoulder level on the wall. Hoping I’d think better I pulled out my MP3 player…

Knock. Knock.

“Come in.” I called, turning around and I headed back towards my desk to sit down. I plopped down in my chair and putting in my head phones I looked up. “Hey Marge, morning.” At five foot nine with bright orange wavy hair at shoulder length. Walking in briskly with her green sundress flowing with the little orange flowers on it, she turned around and shut the door behind her.

Not needing to look, I knew she had on her faded but polished black high heels since that was the dress she was wearing. Taking my head phones back out, “You know I don’t mean to ever have “girl talk” with you, but you could probably use a shopping day. Naaaa, make that two,” I said with a light chuckle, expecting a quick and snappy comeback that would show me no mercy; but all she had was a faded cracked smile with a face that looked like it was about to cry. “Whoa. Wait a sec Marge, I didn’t mean it I swear. I love seeing you in that dress every day. It really looks good…”

“No, no, that’s not why I’m…,” she grabbed a tissue from the box on my desk and blew. “It’s not me you should be worrying about. Something’s happened to Sam.”

I stood up pushing the chair out from underneath with my legs and putting my hands out in front of me to lean on my desk, “What do you mean? What happened to Sam?!”

“Peter,” she took a breath and started to talk faster. Most likely so not to get interrupted, “Peter, there was a car crash, now I don’t know anything other then he’s not dead. It isn’t a crime scene and since I’m not family I can’t find out anything for you right now, other then it would be faster for you to go down to the hospital right this moment instead of me trying to find out for you.”

I looked at her for a second, she nodded, “thank you,” my voice was almost a whisper.

Everything was just blurry in between my office and the hospital. Even though I wasn’t that far away and I was in good shape from always jogging at night, I was still out of breath when I came to the entrance door, and started to power walk up to the front desk. (No running in hospitals unless you’re a doctor.) The reality was Sam was in the hospital and had just come from a car crash and I have no idea what how serious his injuries really were.

Getting to the desk, “miss my brother Sam Molt was just admitted just about an hour ago, do you by chance know and could tell me where he is and what’s going on with him?

“Just a moment sir,” She got up from her chair and went over a clear-board that looked almost like a calendar but instead of dates and messages on it there where rooms and names in them. She glanced over it quickly and then pulled out a clipboard from one of many open containers with clipboards in them down below the hanging “calendar” that were on moveable racks. “Let’s; see here sir,” she skimmed over the first two pages of the clipboard and looked up at me. “Ok sir, may I see an I.D. first if you have on hand.” I quickly pulled out my wallet and showed her. “Alright sir; your brother came in with…”

“Well…”

Sorry sir, no one has updated this in the last few minutes, all it say here is he is out of surgery for a broken knee, leg, and ankle all on the right leg. And I’m not sure if he is out of recover yet or how the surgery went, but I take tell you his room number if you like so you can wait there if he isn’t back yet?” She glanced at the chart again.” Room 147th; it’s on the second floor turn right when you go up though stair when you get to the second flood and it will be at the end of the hall.

“And here,” she handed me some paper work to fill out I supposed. “You can do this while you wait.” She sounded like she just wanted me to have something to do more than anything else if I had to wait a while if he wasn’t out of surgery.

“Thanks” I told her as I power walked past her to the door she had pointed to for the stairs. Now having a moment to think as I walked up the stair case taking two at a time, “If I go in and find out how bad off he is the maybe I shouldn’t go in, but if I don’t I would never find out anything either.” I got to the door, “Oh well, here I go,” I whispered to myself turning open the door handle and went in.

Edited September 22, 2012 by Emotional Outlet

[Wake]

Chapter 2: The Hospital

The door squeaked opened, I peaked around the corner of the jutting out wall that was blocking the view of the rest of the room. Sam was lying in the hospital bed in the corner closest to me with a gurney pushed to the opposite end of the room with it looking like what Sam was “driven” around the hospital with; with some bandages and other cords and whatnots in it.

“Sam you awake?” I said almost in a whisper; so I wouldn’t awake him if he was asleep.

“I’m awake Peter; come on in and have a seat.” He sounded in a fairly groggy voice. I closed the room door and walked over to him and lend my back against the wall to face my brother; seeing as there were no seats in the room.

“Hello little brother; sorry to worry you.”

“I’m not that little anymore goof. And just so you know I’m the same height as you, six foot one.”

“Well, alright then YOUNG brother.”

“Hay don’t start with my here. Only by 14 months you can say that.”

“And I will hoard that over you for all of time,” he said it with a little bit of a smile, which was nice to see, but it turned into a bit of a grimace as he look down at himself.

“Hay you ok Sam?”

Wryly smiling again; “Yah, but you know air bags hit you real hard if you’re right next to the steering wheel,” he said as he lightly poked his ribs with is right hand.

“Really though, are you doing alright Sam?”

He took more of a reassuring tone, “Yah, I am. Well as much as I can be I guess.”

“What about the sugary you were in, what was that all about?”

“Well not sure if you heard or not but what happened was I came to a stop at a yellow light because I knew I wouldn’t make it through the large intersection without the other lines getting the green. So I stomped on the breaks, and stop easily enough, but the car behind me must not have been paying attention and ran into me. So I got smashed into the intersection with cars from the left side of me turning right into me and one guy had decided he was in one big hurry and had smashed his foot into the gas pedal for who knows what reason and ran right into my driver’s door at like 30 miles an hour.”

It sounded so surreal to me; I continued to stay quiet and listen as he went on and I tried really hard not to make a too much of a vivid picture of it in my head. “So when the first car hit that’s what did in my ribs. I got 3 fractured ribs but that not why I needed the surgery. I got that because when the air bags deployed because of the first car hitting me it throw my back in my seat and my left leg wiped back to the side of the seat in-between the seat and the car door. And well the second car hit me in that door and smushed my leg and broke my leg in a few places, and some bone broke through my skin from what I hear.”

I cringed, than thought for a second while Sam waited for me to process everything. “Wait, what do you mean you so you heard?”

“Well when the second car hit me I whipped my neck back and must have hit it on something and I was unconscious. Lucky too, because the pain would have been somethin I would not have wanted to feel. I woke up here about 30 minutes ago after the surgery and a doctor that helped with the surgery explained everything to me.”

“Well so much for me being able to be here when you really need me.”

“Wait a second here, you’re here now aren’t you?!”

“Yah but if I had been here sooner…” I trailed off on what I was saying, and we both let silent’s set in for a moment; letting us both get a hold of ourselves and gather our thoughts.

“Hay if anyone should be upset Peter it’s me, I mean I can’t work and I’ll probably lose my job for not being able to work, and anyway you came as soon as you heard right?”

“Yeah,” I said solemnly

“Well there you go. And anyway what could you have really done, I was unconscious, and last time I checked you aren’t no surgeon. Unless I mean you change professions on me?”

“No… no I haven’t. I see your point. Hey you won’t lose your job, and I’m surprised you would even think that.”

“Yeah I guess you’re right, but look at me, it’s going to be a long while before I’m able to be any good to anyone.”

"…So Sam did you hear what happened to the guy who's driving the car that hit you from behind?"

"Yeah, the police came in right after the doctor left and I to get my report on what happened, so I asked them and they said something about him trying to get out of a speeding ticket but they looked hesitant to tell me that or any more on the matter. So I think it was something else, but I really don't care at this point. I'm too exhausted and sore to worry about him now.”

It also turns out apparently that all he got out of it was some bruised arms and a sprained wrist, At least though they caught him so there's at least one idiot who’s not on the road anymore and that's all I care about." He yawned and started to blink stiffly as it now looked like the morphine started to kick back in, so I decided to ramp down the conversation so we could both get some rest.

"So we’ll talk about this later but I think you should stay at my place for a while. I mean while you recover and all...."

"Hey doesn't sound like too bad of an idea," he yawned again and looked at me with half open eyes. "You know Peter I been waiting for your apartment building to fall down on that thickhead of yours. You really need another apartment man."

“It is the lowest rent, two; it is close to work, three; it was the only place that was open at the time for when I was looking to get an apartment, and four; it was best place around the this part of town, which I guess says something about this part of town but I choose to ignore that fact."

"That's the problem Peter, your building is about to crumble in around you and it’s the best building in that area? I don't know if it's just me but I don't want you going in any of those other buildings around your apartment. I really would like it if you moved far, far away where no one has gone before." Sam started to sound a little loopy.

"Okay okay Sam I get your point! I will look around for a new apartment while I'm staying with you?"

"See now you’re getting the hint…" He paused and turned his head so I did as well. "Oh hello nurse."

I wave as he closed his eyes and I turned and walked out of the room closing the door behind me so he could get some quiet sleep.

[jobonline20]

nice and refreshing story, without any hint at the actual plot (or is the plot accidents?)

all characters meet with accidents, fatal or not.

looking forward for the next chapters, and don't take long breaks b/w posts.

i see 1st chapter was in 2010, 2nd in 2012,