I used to think I of myself as "lucky." I mean, when the car hit mine, I could have been killed. I wasn't, though the hours I should have spent watching my only daughter, Molly, graduate from school, I lay sedated in a hospital bed. What follows is the true story about what happened after. Whether it's real, or whether I'm still in a coma and dreaming this whole thing up... Hell, I stopped worrying about that a long time ago.
My wife left us ten years ago, but she also lost the privilege of watching Molly grow into an amazing young woman. Polite, popular, near the top of her class, softball pitcher, and with a figure to match Angela's. In short, every father's dream. Three days after graduation came Molly's birthday. That, at least, I was awake for.
The hospital discharged me that morning, rolling the mass of bandages and casts that was me to the entrance in a wheelchair. It didn't look like the same entrance I came through but, thinking back on it, I was strapped to a board. This time, rather than being greeted by a scalpel, an ecstatic Molly bounced out of her Jeep and up to me.
"Oh Daddy, I came as soon as they called. I would have been here last night except I was getting the house ready."
She gave me an awkwardly gentle hug, which amounted to little more than pressing my nose into her cleavage. I closed my eyes instinctively, and breathed in a mixture of vanilla and brown sugar. Then she withdrew and the pain returned in one hideous torrent.
"Ow," I struggled out.
"Oh! I'm sorry, Daddy!" Molly collapsed on her knees next to the hospital chair. Her eyes came level with mine, and her purple contacts were awash with her concern. They looked strange even on a good day.
The doctor, surgeon, whatever, cleared her throat. "Miss Roarke, that's probably his vicodin wearing off." She tore a prescription off her pad and handed it to my daughter. "Fill that, and keep him in bed for at least three days. My number's at the top. Call me if his stitches come loose."
Molly's face went severe. "How will I know?"
I could practically hear the woman roll her eyes in her tone. Molly sometimes came off as stupid just for asking questions other people might not think of. She genuinely wanted to know, so that she wouldn't freak out at the first false alarm symptom. Hell, she'd read through Grey's Anatomy while she was away at camp one summer. As a counselor, of course.
"He'll be bleeding all over the sheets. Also, call me if his temperature spikes. We'll need to bring him back for more observation..."
She began to trail off into medical jargon which I'll spare you from since, to be honest, I was in too much pain to pay attention to any of it. The next thing I knew, my chair was in motion and two pairs of hands—I refuse to this day to believe they were Molly and the Doctor—lifted me into the Jeep's leather embrace. "The Cherry-Red Wrangler" was her sixteenth birthday present, and her efforts kept it in as great a condition as the day she picked it out. Like I said, a father's dream.
The pain must have made me pass out even before she had my seatbelt across my chest. I felt her breasts brush my thigh, but soon realized they belonged to Molly's friend Nivea. About her name, well, don't ask. I went to college with her mother, and she was always a little weird. Rather than her given name, Nivea preferred to be called Ginger. It's what was on her softball jersey, after all.
"Relax, Molly's Dad," she scolded. She refused to call me Jim since I refused to call her Ginger. We'd never grown out of it, what can I say?
"Dad, she's got you."
The thought crossed my mind to wonder how many pieces of me were missing if a single eighteen-year-old girl could lift my body. And yet, I saw and felt all my limbs. Must have been all that blood I lost.
Nivea put me in a wheelchair, a rental by the creak of it, and Molly crossed around from the other side of the Jeep juggling two sacks of groceries and her keys. "Shit," she said suddenly. "I forgot the prescription."
"Get it tomorrow," I groaned, "I'll sleep until then."
"My poor Daddy, you slept all the way home, didn't you? Well, I've got something from when I tore my shoulder last season. That should do for now."
"Molly!" hissed Nivea. I couldn't see her face, but Molly's reaction went from confused to understanding to frightened in less than a second.
"Just get him into the guest room, the bathroom will be closer than the one upstairs. I'm going back to the store."
A twinge began on the left side of my lower back and soon encompassed the rest of my torso. I gritted my teeth through it, but forced out some agony-induced words. "Pills. Give. Now."
My daughter nearly dropped the groceries on her rush to unlock the door. She and Nivea whispered in hushed tones, as girls often do, but all I could pick up were things like, "Don't worry about it."
They got me settled on the bed and, once my head and heart were aligned, a taste of numbness returned to the general area of my body. As the two girls began to outright argue, I began to wonder if I was, in fact, already dead. Sorry ladies, but at least fists are quieter.
"Molly," I growled, stretching out the name into two long syllables. Both girls went silent, suddenly remembering their current meal ticket was in pain.
"Fine," said Nivea, "just go get them. I'll get a glass of water and some more pillows, then if you want me to head to the store I will."
My daughter hugged her friend in apology and they were off and running. Through the wall, I heard Molly bound up the stairs to her bedroom. From somewhere else came the hiss of running water. Good, both my ears still worked. If I weren't in so much pain, I probably would have cared what their argument was about.
I just lay there instead. The ceiling of our guest room is decorated with little blue fleur-de-lis, and Molly had been kind enough to leave the light off. The drapes were closed, so the only light came from the hallway. She'd already setup an iHome for me, and the local radio station was on at a low volume. There was a chair near the bed with a tattered paperback sitting on it, and a stack of blankets stood next to it on the floor. She planned on spending a lot of time in here, then.
As the two girls returned, they giggled about some shared joke. I didn't think this was the time for giggling, but I always liked when the sound filled my home. That thought suddenly reminded me of a hazy request, lost in the pre-accident cloud. Then the words echoed in my head, as clear as when Molly had said them the week before.
"Can I have the girls over for the weekend after Graduation? We're going to do a LOST marathon!"
Shit. She had plans. And Nivea had shown up early to help clean and get the house ready for eight rambunctious eighteen year olds who'd just graduated.
Granted, the injured card trumps the burden card, I don't care who you are, but I still felt guilty along with just plain dead. I didn't want my adult daughter setting her friends aside to feed me pills and watch me sleep. So I told her so. Or tried to, anyway.
Molly wasn't having any of it. "If you don't mind listening to crazy smoke monsters and a bunch of frightened girls, Daddy, I'd rather be here with you and do both."
"Well, they are my DVDs," I said. Still coherent enough to bite back. I'm sure the Doctor would have said that's a good sign.
"Here, take these."
I opened my mouth and Molly dropped three pills onto my tongue, raking her fingertips across it to make sure they all came off. Nivea came in just after, leaning over me from across the bed and offering me water.
