Trembling All The While

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....
Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....
Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

"Pull around the corner and stop", she instructed her daughter through tight lips, gone suddenly cold. Her head still turned toward the man's contorted face.

"Mother", her daughter protested, "there are other people, look, there's some people at the gas station!"

"Stop!", the woman repeated, pushing the car door open before a complete stop had been effected, stepping onto the gravel shoulder of the road, trying to convince herself to behave calmly, running toward the wreckage of that car.

Conflicting emotions harassed her as she ran forward. She must help, do something. It was the only decent thing to do. And on the other hand, she cringed inwardly. She knew herself. She knew how far short of competency she fell in emergency situations. But she wanted it to be different, she wanted her response to more more than wanting to help; she wanted to be able to trigger something inside herself that would miraculously move her to take charge at a time of crisis. Why not her? So many could, why not her?

She thought briefly of her daughter in the car behind her, so close to home, and wished she'd had the sense to tell the girl to drive on home, that she'd come along later, on her own. It would be grim. She could at least have thought of that; to spare her daughter's sensibilities.

Some flurry of activity from within the gas station caught her eye and she turned momentarily off her course, to shout to a tall woman wearing skin-tight denims emerging from the opened door: "Call an ambulance!" The woman, at that distance, seemed uncertain.

"Ambulance?", the woman repeated as though she hadn't yet taken account of the car jammed up against the concrete abutment. "Right away!", Ruth shrieked, hearing herself shrill, trying to impart some sense of desperate immediacy to the other. The woman withdrew into the gas station and Ruth turned again toward the smashed car.

She had deviated slightly off course. Deliberate, she thought bitterly, probably deliberate that she was now facing sideways, almost away from the car with its stricken driver, that poor man who needed someone with a cool head and a nimble mind. Idiot! she hissed at herself. What good did that St.John Ambulance course do, after all? But it was so long ago, herself whimpered back.

Relief flooded over her as she noted two men approaching from opposite directions so that they reached the car almost simultaneously. "What happened?", the young curly-headed one asked, his almost-hushed voice circulating in the brisk air about them; addressed to anyone, to no one. "He lost control", Ruth babbled, "just kept right on going, ramming into everything". And she glanced back at the carnage.

They circled the car, a sleek late-model vehicle. It was, Ruth felt, as though they too were postponing that moment when they would have to reach into the car, try to come to grips with the tragedy, determine what they might do for the need there. "A seizure", she said quietly, panic rising in her throat again, the momentary relief the appearance of the others afforded evaporating as she realized they seemed as clueless as her.

They peered into the car, assessing the distorted visage of a middle-aged man sprawled before the wheel of his car, mouth agape in some unimaginable agony, eyes bulging, tongue crawling out of that mouth. No movement, no sign of life. The man, shoved sideways toward the passenger side against the front seat, resembled less a human than a straw-stuffed quasi-creature.

A creeping horror melted over her as she pulled at the passenger door, tried to open it, eyes fixed on the man within. The horror matched pace with the worms of blood rimming his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Not a gush, but a trickle around his orifices, slowly streaming, working their way down his face. And his face, ruddy with the look of artificial health, not pale or bluish as might be expected of someone who had suffered a heart attack.

Could the car blow up, catch fire?, she wondered, and spoke aloud: "Shouldn't we get him out of there?" Some caution at the back of her mind, not to move an accident victim in case of spinal injury. But from this kind of thing, surely there would be no damage to his spine? They couldn't just leave him there! The other two, at the opposite side of the car, obligingly jerked the door open. "God help us", Ruth murmured helplessly, as she watched one of the men reach inside, poke at the inert body, begin to pull him toward the driver's side. The movement caused a great shuddering to ripple over the man's body. His head rolled grotesquely.

A woman appeared as though from nowhere beside the men and she, in a pink suit and carefully arranged hair, seemed cool, intelligently appraising the situation, murmuring confidence to Ruth, to the men. As though she had just recalled something very important, Ruth turned away, rushed toward the service station where once again, the tall blond woman had begun to emerge.

"Did you call for an ambulance?", Ruth queried breathlessly. The woman nodded, "they'll be here in a few minutes". Good, Ruth breathed hope. "How about the police, did you call them yet?" Again the woman nodded, jerked her head inside and Ruth made out the blond woman's male counterpart, leaning against a wall, receiver jammed against his head, craning for a better view outside. As though she had accomplished something, a weight of worry lifted, Ruth ran back again to the car, side-stepping and clearing the debris of glass, metal, cardboard; the trail of disaster left by the runaway's sweep through everything in its path, its onrush relentless until it had finally reached the indomitable concrete island with its light standard.

There! They had him laid out on the grass- and gravel-covered ground, beside his car. And there! Someone was covering him with two heavy sheets of some plastic material. Not as good as blankets, but in an emergency....

"Mom...", Ruth turned, was surprised to discover her daughter beside her. Nothing she could do about it now, she was there. She reached over and touched her daughter's arm, told her they would leave as soon as the ambulance arrived.

Ruth inclined herself toward the pink-suited woman kneeling beside the injured man, flanked by the other two. No, it wasn't the original two men, these two wore a kind of uniform; a slight older man and a younger, heftier one, and between them they turned the victim on his side. Everything would be all right. These men looked competent, they looked as though they knew what they were doing.

She glanced unwillingly at the poor man. Fearful, yet compelled to look. Blood
seethed still from his eyes, his mouth, and now, oh God, his teeth were protruding crookedly and it seemed to Ruth as though everything inside him was battling to emerge, to become externalized and she visualized an impossible gore she couldn't possibly deal with. Her stomach turned.

"His dentures", the slight man said. "We'd better take them out", and he reached into the man's opened mouth, withdrawing the dentures, laying them on the ground beside the man's head.

"Stupid of me", the pink-suited woman said. "I forgot to check whether there were any obstructions in his mouth."

Ruth twisted her hands about her purse. Impossibly, she was still holding her purse. As though it mattered, a purse. She stroked its sides, soft, the brown leather yielding. She held it toward the men, offering it. "Here", she said, "put it under his head, it's soft. It will keep his head off the ground." They took the purse, gently lifting the man's head, pillowing it on the purse. And at the same time turning his head up, toward the sky. His mouth fell completely open and his breathing became stertorous.

"No!" Ruth protested. "Not like that! Turn his head sideways."

They looked up at her in some alarm. "So he won't choke on anything", she said hastily. "Vomit, blood..." They turned back and eased his head to the side again. Blood trickled onto her purse, gathering in its soft supple folds, glistening red against the pale brown leather.

"Why don't you", she suggested, glad to have thought of it, as though some important clue to the man's condition lay in this: "see if he's wearing a Medic-Alert bracelet?" Her suggestion hopeful, her face almost bright with the enquiry. The men looked doubtfully up at her again, then at one another. "He may have had an insulin reaction, an epileptic attack, a grand mal seizure", she explained encouragingly. The men blinked understanding, turned to the sad wreck before them and pushed up shirt sleeves, prodded around the neck. Nothing at the wrists, but a gold chain was visible inside his collar and one of them tried to work it around, to see if anything was appended to it.

"Oh", she said, her voice clearly registering disappointment - as though depressing a self-swallowing tongue, as though administering sugar might have cleared up the trouble - "it's only a gold neck chain". Glad though, that they had done the probing, knowing she was physically, psychologically incapable of inclining herself toward the man, touching him however gently, as though the mere touch might confer upon her an idea of the magnitude of his suffering. And that she simply could not bear.

Perhaps as a result of their probing fingers, the man shifted minutely, almost imperceptibly, then again; the effort more convincing, almost lifting one leg as though to cross it at the ankle over the other, the movement convulsive. And with it, a deep-seated groan, an auditory tremor, an anguished moan. Surfacing from some place deep within his unconscious.

Beside Ruth, the pink-suited woman knelt, placed her open palm fleetingly on the man's cheek, drawing it flutteringly to his shoulder, pressing slightly, saying "It's all right. Everything is going to be all right". Her voice calm, soothing, reassuring. Ah, Ruth anguished, why can't I react that way? What a superb human being I could be if only I could do something like that, respond in that wonderful way to the situation, give of myself without this unreasoning fear of ... what, contamination? Am I unable to touch lest I become infected with that same fast-ebbing mortality? The thought of her cowardice, her lack of compassion, brought tears to her eyes; it became somehow easier to imagine the man's intense pain and she felt her chest swell with pity. Her head swam with a momentary self-loathing.

Those eyes; open, staring. Bulging, but seeing nothing beyond their inward locus of pain. Would I react the same way, be as helpless if it were the life of someone I love? Is that how dependable I am? she grieved.

"They're like animals!"

"What?" Ruth turned in gratitude to her daughter's hot eyes, followed her agitated hand motions encompassing the crowd of onlookers whose presence Ruth hadn't been aware of.

"Sick, disgusting!", her daughter hissed. "I don't want to stay here, can't we go? I don't want to be part of this!"

"Go?" Ruth repeated stupidly.

"I don't want to be here with these revolting animals, watching this, hoping to see someone die." Brown hair whipping about her face, eyes flashing disgust, Ruth's daughter turned on a group of children standing nearby, chattering excitedly. "What happened?" "Jeez, look at him." "S'he dead yet?" The girl shouted "take off, you sickies!" The children looked at her blankly, a few defensively shifting a pace backward.

"Go home, all of you", Ruth said, making waving motions with her arms. "Your mothers wouldn't want you to be here. There's nothing here for you to see. go on home!" And they reluctantly pulled away, mounting bicycles, circling, hesitant to ignore an adult under these strange new circumstances, yet unwilling to leave the scene of such an adventure.

"Mothers, hell!" her daughter mouthed angrily. "They probably learned their hyena instincts from their mothers, just look at that!"

Ruth raised her head toward a man approaching from the other side of the road, a child of about four perched on his shoulders. She turned her head and saw in a large semi-circle, people standing in clusters chatting, asking questions, supplying animated responses. In the near distance, cars slowed as occupants gawked, some stopping to disgorge the curious. No one offering help, just standing about, a living backdrop to the still-life before her.

"They want to be part of the action", her daughter sneered.

"It's human nature", her mother said, placatingly. "It's the animal, the curious animal in all of us."

"You're so philosophical!" her daughter responded, her angry voice cutting through her mother's charity. "They're vultures!"

"The ambulance! There it is", Ruth said, craning her head around her daughter's angry form. The siren sounded then was still, sounded again and soon she saw a police car approaching; felt a lurch of disappointment, desperately tried to will the ambulance to appear.

She turned again to the man lying on the gravel, noted the deep tan of his exposed skin surface, and although he was dressed casually, it was evident he had dressed with care. Must be about late fifties, she thought. Almost portly. Plenty of dark hair. She marvelled that she was capable of thinking, observing coherently, then realized that she was trembling. Nothing new. She always trembled, her nervous system always gave out on her at times of stress. "Mom, stop shaking!" her daughter said impatiently.

"I can't help it, you know that", Ruth said helplessly.

The police vehicle drew to a halt. A constable pushed out of the car, placed his cap on his head, walked over to their close little group and asked a few hurried questions. "Think you could use an oxygen set-up?" he anxiously asked the older man.

"Couldn't hurt" the other said. "He's breathing all right, seems to me, though it's noisy, and his heart's beating evenly, far as I can determine." The policeman brought a long black bag out of his car trunk, opened it, and they fumbled with the respirator, placing the mouthpiece at first upside down over the man's mouth, then quickly righting it. It made a loud sucking noise as it pumped oxygen into the open mouth and Ruth imagined that she could see the man's stomach distending with the inflow of air.

"Well, that's certainly controlling traffic", her daughter said, the words drawling scathingly from her mouth. And yes, traffic - and it was now rush-hour traffic - had slowed to a curious crawl. Ruth turned again to another group of children, younger than the previous group, who had drawn close and stood, mouths agape, chewing gum, picking noses and offering opinions. "Go, go on home!", she ordered, peering around at the same time at the others, the growing crowd of adults. An air of expectancy hung about them, an almost electric expectation and awe, as though they recognized they were in the presence of that most fearful personage of all.

The policeman was jotting down notes. Asking for witnesses. Asking who had run into the man, who had caused the accident. "No, no one, it wasn't like that at all", Ruth responded. "That is, no one had run into him. He was driving along in front of us and suddenly appeared to lose control." The policeman paused, drew closer. "You see it all, ma'am?"

"Well, yes, we did. And as I said, the driver seemed to veer off to the right, leaving the road. It was dreadful, he made directly toward that car parked over there", she motioned up the road, toward the car pointed now in the opposite direction to which it had originally faced, its side crumpled like crepe paper.

She recalled the strange, quick ripping sound she'd heard, the impossibly slow-motion appearance of the event, the surrealistic nature of it. She'd been certain she was witnessing some macabre lunacy, someone run amok. God knew, there were enough newspaper reports of just that happening, some crazed young person demonstrating the ultimate in social alienation. High on drugs, using a car to impress on the world his dissatisfaction, his contempt for society. And she'd thought at first, this was another one of those cases, had thought oh God, let Andrea drive on, let her not stop, let us get completely away from this thing, let us not be involved.

And she'd watched, mesmerized, unable to tear her eyes away, as the car which had been struck bounced away and the runaway just kept going, sweeping aside everything in its path, crashing into anything that refused to give way, leaving a trail of crashes resounding her ears, a palpable shriek of metallic terror. And finally, the runaway came to rest, bounced off the concrete abutment, shuddered to a stop.

She said not that, but that it was her opinion (trembling all the while) that the poor man had suffered a seizure, had been helpless, had lost control of his reflexes, his ability to control his surroundings, surrendered to sudden living death, a reluctantly deep sleep. The policeman nodded, said thank you ma'am, took her name, telephone number; said he'd call later on in the evening.

And where, where the hell was that damn ambulance? Shocked to hear the policeman turn back to her and respond: "Oh, they're always late, but they'll be along shortly". So she'd spoken those words out loud, and he had responded casually, as though something of this magnitude, someone whose life juices were slowly ebbing away, whose blood was even now staining her purse, her purse which she felt certain she would never be able to use again, since why would she want to, how could she? When to do so would be to see that poor tortured face on it? As though, finally trivializing this catastrophe that what had happened to this man was an everyday tragedy of no great significance.

The woman in the pink suit came to stand beside Ruth. "I don't know if they should have moved him", she said, confidentially. "I tried to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, thought that might do some good." Ruth looked at the woman with ungrudging admiration ... how could she? How could she have brought her mouth to that pain-congested one? And glad, in a way, that she hadn't seen the attempt. It must have been when she'd rushed panic-stricken over to the gas station for the second time. "Trouble was", the woman went on, "I forgot to check his teeth and he began to choke on those dentures".

"But you tried", Ruth said. And then it struck her. Dr. Shui's clinic was two blocks away. Why hadn't she thought? And by now it didn't matter, did it? The siren of the ambulance could be heard ululating along the street. And then it arrived, the policeman directing it where to park, peremptorily ordering people away, finally.

And there was Andrea still beside her, fuming at the disgusting spectacle people make of themselves. Still saying, stop trembling, Mom. But now, hearing her mother repeat over and over to herself, in stunned tones: "How could I be so stupid? Why didn't I think? I could have gotten Dr. Shui!", Andrea spoke with compassion to her mother. "Oh, Mom, you responded as well as you could. Don't be so hard on yourself. You did all you could."

Ruth thinking, I should wait until the paramedics take him away, the poor man. I'll get my purse then. But do I want it? Whatever on Earth for?

And Andrea leading her poor trembling, ineffectual mother away, murmuring soothing sounds at the woman, occasionally flashing daggers of disgust at the onlookers, parting to let them through.

c.1979 Rita Rosenfeld