The Safety Zone (a novella by Bob Racine) - Chapter 7

Chapter 7     Groping for the Hand of Deliverance

Cara, in a frightful dream of only minutes duration, finds herself struggling to get free of her grandmother before being awakened in another bed.  Brother Vernon and nurses she has never seen before all pass in and out of her troubled consciousness, before a dreamless peaceful sleep overtakes her.  When she awakes once more, she finds a pleasant surprise awaiting her. 

The day was nothing like Cara had imagined it would be.  It was not the warm and exciting and resplendent high point in her life that she had planned on, the kind she felt she deserved.  And after all the patient waiting she had been doing for so many years! 

It looked surely as if it would rain, and there her grandmother was, seated on a tree stump in the front yard, apparently resting, contrary to what she had drummed into Cara’s ears about walking or standing under a tree when a storm was threatening.  Cara did not recall seeing the stump there before!  What beloved evergreen had been there all that time that she had never had the eyes to see?  And now it was too late.  What fool had cut it down? 

But enough for regrets!  This was the day to move ahead – off and away from anything familiar, however dismal the day may threaten to be.

She wanted to say goodbye to the grandmother.  But she knew from the smirk on the old woman’s face that a fond farewell would not be gladly  received and not without some species of chastisement or word of foreboding, unspoken though it probably would remain.  The grandmother did not look at her.  Cara was unable to get her attention. 

Perhaps that smirk was meant for her, the granddaughter.  She considered the possibility but did not give it much thought.  After all, it was an expression with which she was quite familiar.  She felt somewhat numb, even euphoric, and she enjoyed the feeling, one she had never experienced in the old woman’s front yard before or anywhere in her domain. 

Even the house looked different.  When did Grandmother paint it black overtop the green it used to be?  For black it was, a deep coal pit black.  The next thing Cara knew she was on the front steps and about to enter it.  But there was only an open portal, no door on a hinge. 

She drifted into the charcoal interior and was amazed that all the rooms were also black, as well as bare.  No furniture of any kind, no curtains, no wall hangings, no ornaments!  The floor sagged under her weight, as she walked through looking for the kitchen, but there was no kitchen.  All she found was wreckage.  The roof toward the back of the house had caved in, and the surrounding walls were in a state of dilapidation, bending and ready to come crashing down.                                                                                                 

Sitting on top of the cracked banister was a black cat.  The cat, like the grandmother, did not look directly at Cara and did not move a muscle, but Cara knew it was aware of her presence.  She could hear it purring, and she knew that it was the same cat that had crossed her path and followed her home that day after school.  Evidently it had never left the grandmother’s house once it had arrived.  It had been there all the intervening years.  And even more strangely than that, she knew that the cat was responsible for all the wreckage.  It sat atop its mound of destruction, looking very pleased with itself.  The grandmother’s nemesis, the object of her phobia, had done its worst.

She knew she should be frightened at this bizarre scene she was witnessing, but her only emotion was sadness – for the grandmother she was leaving behind.  Somehow she knew that this surrogate mother of hers had brought the destruction upon herself, and she, Cara, had no wish or need to share the fate. 

When she stepped off the front porch, she did not see the grandmother anywhere, and all about her was a marshy open field.  Before she knew it, the house had disappeared, and all that surrounded her was the dark, colorless, soggy earth stretching away to the horizon.  She had gotten farther away from the grandmother than she thought she had.  The future lay before her – her future, out from under the bane of superstition and psychological terror. 

But where would her steps lead her?  Walking became increasingly more difficult, the ground getting more insubstantial under her feet with each squooshy step she took. 

A voice suddenly distracted her.  “Get me down from here!”  She turned to her right, and there was a tree, and a woman was hanging by the neck from one of the branches, her hands tied behind her back.  The noose was tight, but she was alive enough to talk, and she demanded rescue.

“Get me down, will you!  Cut me loose.  I’m dying up here.” 

But the woman was too high off the ground, far beyond Cara’s grasp.  Cara stretched her arms as far as she possibly could, and reached heavenward, but the stretching was useless.  She had no means for effecting the rescue. 

The hanged woman began to get angry about it.  She cursed at Cara, though Cara could not understand exactly what the profane words coming out of her mouth were.  She went into a rage and started twisting violently at the end of the rope.  She swung herself all around, kicked with her feet, her legs and stomach making turbulent waves, until she was able to gyrate so fast that the rope twisted into a thin knot and finally snapped.  She started to fall, but Cara was not quite close enough to catch her.

Suddenly up out of the water rose Vernon, who grabbed the end of the rope and began pulling the frantic woman toward a nearby stretch of dry land.  But he ignored Cara.  She wanted him to come over and rescue her too.  But he kept on heading away, apparently satisfied that he had come to the aid of the faceless and nameless woman and was leaving his sister to extricate herself any way she could. 

Cara then began her own struggle – to free her legs that had gotten stuck in the marshes.  But they had lost all sensation.  When she looked down, she discovered that the water in the marshland had turned red, and that is when the dream became a horrific nightmare.  The black she had seen in her grandmother’s house, the dark rain clouds that had been hovering close to the earth and the drab marshy field she had entered had given her no particular fright. They had only mystified her and saddened her. 

But now, seeing herself standing in blood up to her waist, she freaked out.  And the level of the blood was rising.  She was undergoing one of the plagues that God sent upon the ancient Pharaoh and the Egyptians.  She would drown with the Egyptians.  How did she go back in time, and so far?  Then she too started thrashing her torso and arms round and round, as had the hanged woman, screaming for delivery, wrenching and wrenching in a frantic effort to free herself before the flood overtook her.  So this is death!  God, I’m not prepared.  I’m not ready yet. 

She tried to scream, but she had no voice to speak of.  She was sinking to her death, she knew.  Then to her slight shock she heard her name being softly spoken.  “Mrs. Hutchins!”  Who was that calling?  The entire scene suddenly became a freeze frame.  Nothing moved.  “Mrs. Hutchins!”  She opened her eyes and saw a couple of nurses standing around her bed.  “Try to calm yourself!” one of them said.  “You’re here with us.”  They uttered other words but she could not focus upon them enough to comprehend all that was being said.  She was shaking all over, terrified out of her skull.  Did she dare look down at her lower parts? 

“The blood – is it still there?  Don’t let the blood get me.”  

“You’re safe here with us,” the nurse told her.  “Nothing’s going to harm you here.  Try to calm.  Take deep breaths real slowly.”

But controlling her breathing was extremely difficult for her.  Her heart was beating so hard it felt as if it would break out of her chest – a constant thumping.  Her head was full of so much hammering pain it felt paralyzed.  “Where am I?  Am I unstuck yet?” 

“You’re lying in a bed, a hospital bed.  You had a terrible shock about ten or fifteen minutes ago and you went unconscious, but you’re through the worst of it.  We just gave you something to calm you and help you sleep.” 

She managed to say to the nurse, “I-  I’m h- h- having a mi- graine.”

“A migraine?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, thank you for telling us that.  You’re being cared for now.  You’ll be all right in a few hours.  But you need a lot of rest.  Just let it all go now.  We’ll look after you.” 

 Sure enough, her eyes grew heavy, the space all around her grew lighter, and over the next few minutes she was gradually transported back to sleep – this time a dreamless, obscure, perfunctory but safe sleep.

- - - - -

When Cara woke up, her vision was somewhat blurred.  The lights surrounding her bed seemed overly bright; they made it difficult for her to discern who or what was in front of her or at her sides, though she was quite sure she was not alone.  She felt someone take hold of her right hand, a very rough though tender touch.  And then a familiar voice: “Welcome back!”  It was as though these two words, when uttered, dispelled her murky vision and brought the world, the real world, into focus. 

Sitting on a chair next to her bed was her brother Vernon.  How long had he been sitting there?  How much had he witnessed that she had missed?  She was in a hospital room, only this time the window was on her left and she was in the bed closest to it.  It was quite unlike the room she seemed to recall occupying before-     before what? 

It appeared that she was about to step back into a narrative, perhaps some ancient narrative, and take her place in it once more, having slept through a sizeable portion of it.  Somewhere she had lost the thread of the story and was now picking it up again, without the benefit of the intervening flow of events.  Was it her story or someone else’s?

She did not remember when she had ever felt so thoroughly sedated and flaccid.  She was not even sure if she could lift an arm off the mattress.  Her whole body felt wrung out like a dishrag.  Perhaps she was dead.  Maybe this was the gateway to the next world.  Maybe she was a disembodied spirit.  But how would she account for Vernon’s presence?  He was not supposed to be anywhere near death’s door.  And why did he say “Welcome back!”  One does not say that upon somebody’s arrival at a place to which they have never traveled before. 

“Why am I here?” She was not sure whom she intended the question for.  Could Vernon tell her?  “What have they done to me?”

Without his usual blithe spirit and looking a bit self-conscious about broaching the subject, he replied, “I guess you could say you-   fell down.” 

“You mean I tried to walk and couldn’t?” 

“Not exactly!  You had an accident.  A rather big one!”

“When?”

“This afternoon.”

“What day is it?”

“It’s Thursday evening, about 8:30.”

At that moment one of the nurses, one with whom she was not familiar, approached her bed.  “Hello, Mrs. Hutchins.  Glad to see you awake.  Did you sleep more soundly this time?”

This time?!  When had she not slept soundly?  She sensed that the missing portion of the narrative was about to be furnished, but was she ready for it?  “I guess I slept okay!”  She was startled by how weak and dry her voice was.

“You had everybody worried,” said Vernon, still holding her hand, as if it was the most valued thing in the universe to him at that moment in time.  Strange!  Why is he of all people getting so familiar?  “You were quite hysterical.  I’m glad to see you’re calm now.”

Everybody was worried!  Who is this everybody?  Could there be so many people who cared about her, Cara Hutchins, the one who had become accustomed to believing that her absence from the world would not be lamented all that much?  She could tell she had caused a lot of worry and trouble.  Worry and trouble!  Over what?  She had had a fall, Vernon said.  Had she fallen out of bed?  The notion of someone exceeding her limits occurred to her.  What foolish thing had she done to put herself in this different bed? 

The nurse finally chimed in.  “You’re still in the hospital, the same one.  You had a bad fall.  You passed out from it.”

“I can’t move myself at all.  Did I break something?  Am I a cripple now?” 

“No, you’re not a cripple.  Your body is healing.  You sprained your arm and you got a big gash on your face.  But nothing serious.”

As the nurse related all this, Cara became aware of a sizeable bandage covering her forehead just above her left eye.  As for the arm, it felt more like a paralysis than a sprain.

“Looks like I messed myself up.”

“No, not really!” replied the nurse.  “What you suffered was more emotional than physical.”

After taking Cara’s temperature, blood pressure and pulse, the nurse moved away and left her alone with Vernon, whose hold on her hand was beginning to feel like a metal clamp.  She wiggled her own hand just enough to drop the hint for him to take his away.  He got the hint and complied, but he did not take his attention from her.  He kept up a more persistent eye contact than she was accustomed to getting from him.  His next words were startling.

“They almost had to tie you down to the bed when you woke up the first time. At least that’s what they told me.  I wasn’t around when it happened.” 

 When it happened!  This fall he is speaking of!  Vernon made his it sound like a major event.  Was it an event of her own making?  Or did another individual play a part in it? 

Cara began to sense that someone was missing from the scene.  Someone was present before who was not present then.  An encounter had taken place.  Just thinking about it made her suddenly feel much more tired.  She wanted to be filled in, but she did not want to be filled in. Get rest!  That is what the nurse instructed her to do, and doing so sounded much more appealing to her at the moment than asking more scary questions.  She would wait until she was stronger.  She sensed that she would need much more strength before she could do any more probing. 

                  

- - - - -

The next morning Cara awoke to another startling change of environment. As she was emerging from what seemed like a heavily drug-induced sleep, it felt as if the bed was moving.  In fact, it was not a bed at all, as it turned out.  She was on a gurney being wheeled down a corridor.  A team of medics was walking alongside her, one of whom, a young woman who appeared to be a student or intern, noticed that she had opened her eyes.  “She’s awake,” the woman said to the others.  The gurney stopped, and at once Cara realized that she was the sole focus of all their attentions. 

“Good morning, Ms. Hutchins,” said the doctor closest to her face, who

turned out to be her surgeon.  “Can you understand me okay?” 

Cara nodded her head, but her doctor wanted a verbal response. 

“Was that a yes?”

“Yes,” she wheezed.  “Yes, I can hear you.” 

“Make a fist with your right hand.”

The solemn expressions on all their staring faces were a bit frightening to her.  What kind of monkeyshines was she being put through?  Her right hand?  Where was her right hand?  It seemed to her an eternity since she had felt any control over any of her appendages.  But with a little concentration she connected with it and slowly did as she was asked, closing her fingers and palm into a sturdy knot.

In an instant, all the solemn expressions were replaced by bright smiles, as the medical team was transformed into a loud cheering section.  They all broke forth into a gale of “Rah, rah” or “Yeah” or “Yippee” or “Way to go!”  One of them even leaned over her and offered a very sincere and spirited “Congratulations!”

Congratulations?  She was flat of her back and barely in the world, and yet she was being feted as if she had won a prize at a track meet.  It took several seconds for her to comprehend that the surgery on her carotid artery had been completed.  It was the following morning.  She had just emerged from the operating room and was being returned to her bed, wherever that happened to be.  She reached up with her left hand and felt the bandage and gauze extended across her neck on that side of her throat.  The bulge was considerable, so large in fact that she was fearful of turning her head to either the right or the left, lest she tear something loose.       

Amidst all the distress of the previous day and the confounding mystery of her alleged fall and her alleged hysteria and things missing that had been there and faces standing over her bed that had not been there before and allusions to self-abuse and needless injury, she had all but forgotten why she had come to the hospital in the first place.  The carotid artery!  Oh, yes, that!  And now, before being given any chance to spend hours dreading the entrance of the scalpel, it had all been completed while she was conked out.

She was inclined to feel that somehow she had been tricked, but how?  She wanted it over, didn’t she!  She knew she had much to fathom about the events of the preceding day, but at least she could take some satisfaction in knowing she had gone through the surgery and had survived it. 

Actually, those cheers on the part of the medics, coming right after the solemn looks, had a frightful aspect.  All this told her that her operation had been much more dangerous than she had given herself permission to believe.  She really could have been messed up for life – half mute or paralyzed or even helpless enough to need constant care. 

Even the doctors had not known until that very minute.  She went taut as a wire inside.  Had she been evading this, circling around like a flighty bird and not being willing to land?  She knew it was true.  At a certain level she had known for days that it was true. 

Could it be that God was toying with her?  The kind of God her grandmother had spoken about would have considered it divine justice that she was being brought so close to the edge of an abyss, dangled over it, and at the last second snatched back – scared into obedience.  A just recompense for all the nasty and devilish thoughts and words that she had uttered in her lifetime!  A warning to straighten up and fly right or else. . . !