In a Pinch

If you’ve never seen a man pinned against a cement wall by a 1994 rust-covered Buick, consider yourself lucky. 

 

The first time I’d seen such a thing was undoubtedly the cleanest. The driver, a middle aged mother of two teen-aged boys, fell asleep at a red light and let off the break. According to witnesses, the victim was leaving the post office and didn’t notice the encroachment until it was too late. 

 

I was across the street finishing a muffin and a personal pot of Oolong tea when I heard the crash. It didn’t sound remotely like any car crash on television. Glass didn’t rain down against the pavement, and there were no squealing tires— well, not yet anyway. It was as if someone enthusiastically slammed a dumpster lid. I hopped up and joined the crowd of rubberneckers at their office windows. 

 

I couldn’t tell if the man I would come to know as Nicholas Roth was looking at me or if he was looking past me the way someone with a concussion might do, though his face in that moment will haunt me, I suspect, until I die. He looked like he was ready to vomit. The color drained from his cheeks and lips as he braced against the Buick’s hood to push against the one-ton machine of steel and glass, trying to unpin himself. 

 

That’s when the driver woke up. She panicked and pressed the gas. Her back tires squealed against the pavement and belched out thick white smoke. Nicholas doubled over the hood and a onlookers added a chorus of horror and shock. Another woman, still dressed in her lavender work scrubs, ran to the driver-side window and reached in. Just as the Buicks tail lights flashed white, the nurse grabbed the keys and the tail lights flickered off. 

 

I remember thinking to myself how strange it was that the nurse could be that calm at a time like this. She’d likely seen worse in the emergency room up the road— infections, animal attacks, and fireworks mishaps— but that was all in her own controlled environment. It was very much static save for the patients themselves. Needles, medications, swabs, just about everything you would need was all in one place. This was the street; it was brimming with un-expectation like exhausted mothers, judging eyes, and filth. Yet the nurse went into management mode all the same, cool as could be. 

 

I ran around the passenger side while the nurse pulled the driver from the car and sat her on the curb. She was inconsolable. I went up to Nicholas though he barely seemed to notice the nurse and myself. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. Bubbles of spit collected at the corners of his mouth. Behind us a crowd was gathering. Someone yelled, “I’m calling 911.” 

 

The nurse probed Nicholas’s injuries and asked, “Do you have any water?” 

 

It took me a moment to realize that she was speaking to me. She reached across the Buick’s hood and snapped her fingers inches from my face and repeated the question. I said that I did. “Get it out and give him some,” she said. 

 

I pulled my water bottle from my bag and unscrewed the top. She took it and held it to Nicholas’s mouth. He tilted his head back and drank what she let him have. “Hey what’s your name?” she asked him. 

 

“Nicholas Roth.” 

 

“Hello Nicholas. My name is Martina. I’m a nurse at Bridgeford General Hospital.” Martina set my water bottle on the hood. “What happened, Nicholas? Do you remember?” 

 

I thought it a strange question, but I would later learn that it served a medical purpose. Nicholas looked down at his waist where he was all but separated from his other half. His eyes went elsewhere as he spoke. “I was coming out of the post office. I needed some stamps for our invitations. I had my headphones in. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye.” 

 

Nurse Martina held up the bottle so he could drink again. While Nicholas’s eyes were occupied with the bottle, she flashed me a single pessimistic look. One needn’t be a medical professional to know that Nicholas was in dire straits. He looked like a tube of toothpaste ready to pop. She pulled the bottle away from his mouth. Emergency vehicle sirens gained in the distance. Reinforcements were on their way. Martina pulled away and busied herself with the driver and left Nicholas in my charge. 

 

He turned his vacant look in my direction and sighed. “It’s bad isn’t it?” Despite his heavy eyelids, his voice was sharper and more direct than it’d been with Martina. I shrugged and told him that the EMTs were almost here and that they’d take care of him. 

 

Nicholas licked the corners of his mouth and leaned his head back against the concrete wall. “I appreciate the optimism, but I can’t feel my legs. And my stomach—” he pressed his palm against the hood, “feels like the life is leaking out of me.” I shook my head and said that he’d be fine. That he’d be in good hands when the ambulance arrived. He spit pink on the Buick’s hood. He pulled his lips against his teeth in a grimace and I saw the blood in his gums. 

 

“You know I can’t afford an ambulance ride,” he said with a wry little smile. “They’re like four grand. Debt like that is a death sentence.” He paused. “I’m mostly kidding,” Nicholas said. Sweat beaded on his forehead and Nicholas’s eyes were little slivers against the light. 

 

Trucks pulled up behind me and sent red lights dancing across the wall over Nicholas’s head. Nurse Martina sprung up and corralled the EMTs to look at the driver. Something was wrong, I thought. Nicholas cleared his throat and said, “Triage.”  

 

“Say, water guy, do you have your phone on you?” Nicholas asked me. “You mind if I use it to call my fiancé? I’d use my own, but I can’t seem to reach my pockets.” 

 

I told him I didn’t mind in the slightest. I think Nicholas’s shock was infectious; a calm swept over me. I went to hand him my phone, but when he struggled to lift his arm, I took the labor upon myself. I asked him what her number was. 

 

“His number,” Nicholas said with a smile. “Is 867-5309.” I dialed and held the phone up to Nicholas’s ear. The EMTs behind me looked on, solemn. 

 

“I’m the top by the way,” Nicholas said with a gasping chuckle. His hazy eyes peeled from the screen and fell to me. “You should see your face right now. Are my jokes too over the top?” I told him they weren’t and that I was just floored that he still had a sense of humor given his condition. 

 

“Jordan always said that my jokes were too much for public use,” Nicholas said. His eyes unfocused as he listened to each passing ring.  “C’mon babe, pick up… please.”

 

My hands started to shake, not from the effort of holding the phone, but from anxiety. I didn’t know Jordan, didn’t know their relationship, but I found my stomach dropping with every unanswered ring. 

 

“Hello,” Nicholas opened his eyes and leaned forward. The stake in my heart came with the rest, “you’ve reached Jordan’s phone. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you.” 

 

“Maybe once more?” Nicholas asked. “He may have just ignored the strange number. Could you try him again?” 

 

And so I did, and so we got the same result. Nicholas spoke over Jordan’s voice. “I’d like to leave him a message if that’s okay.” His voice was distant and he looked as if he’d aged five years in as many minutes. I said it was perfectly fine with me and held the reciever up to his mouth. Out of respect, and partly out of a sense of intrusion, I averted my eyes to the Buick’s hood— where the metal folded against Nicholas’s pinched torso. 

 

Nicholas cleared his throat and tried to muster the most normalcy he could. He closed his eyes and smiled up at the sky. I’m sure his thoughts were that of his lover’s face. “Hey Jordan,” he began. 

 

“It’s me. Sorry I’m calling you from a strange number. I can’t get to my phone right now. 

 

“Something’s happened. 

 

“I wanted to call you— with the hospital’s stupid rules I didn’t want you to be the last to know: I think I’m dying, babe. 

 

“I won’t go into details now. The doctors or the police will fill you in. But I want you to know that I’m the luckiest guy in the whole world. Not only have you, Jordan Estes, given my life purpose these last six years.”

 

Nicholas rolled his head back against the concrete wall and the tears followed over his graying cheeks. My hand trembled, but I did my best to follow him with the receiver. Out of the corner of my eye, the EMTs loaded the driver into an ambulance. The second waited by patiently. 

 

“I want you to promise me something, babe. Ready?” Nicholas asked. “You can mourn me for six months, whatever. Be lazy. Grow a big ol’ beard. But after that you need to find someone else. Put yourself out there. You are too precious to keep to yourself. Okay? Do we have a deal?

 

“One last thing, babe, it’s starting to hurt to talk: I’m sorry that we argued about hor’s d’oeuvres last night,” Nicholas allowed himself a wan laugh. “Seems silly now. You were right and you have excellent taste. Our wedding would have been absolutely stunning. I know it would have. 

 

“I wish I could hear your voice right now. Babe— Jordan. I do. I do a million times over. I love you.” Nicholas coughed and rolled his head forward. His eyes were red and unfocused but they told me that he was done. I hung up the phone. 

 

“I feel like you’re my guardian angel,” he said to me, his words thick with fatigue. “First the water. Then the cellphone.” A smile, one that would be burned into my mind right along with horrid expression after the crash, passed across his face. It was a smile of pure contentment. 

 

“Y’know,” he said. “In the last 15 minutes I’ve come to appreciate the little things.” He was fading in and out. The EMTs grabbed me by the shoulders and moved me aside. Nicholas continued and looked right through me. “Most people would be scared right now. But I think I’m ready to die.” 

 

I still think about those last words of Nicholas Roth and their entirely unearthly cadence. I find myself wondering if he actually meant them, or if they were the last front of bravery from an utterly brave man. I was ushered away as he said them by an overweight police officer. It was relayed to me later that while resisting the officer’s handling of myself, I elbowed him in the stomach. For all my efforts to stay with Nicholas until the end, the man whom I’d only known for a few minutes, I ended up behind bars for assaulting an officer. It was in the county jail that I’d learned about the Buick’s driver. Her name was Angela. 

 

I heard about her two jobs, her teen-aged sons, and the boss who threatened to fire her if she didn’t agree to work a double shift that morning. On top of her first job, 20 hours of non-stop service work left Angela exhausted and she simply fell asleep at the wheel. 

 

My charges were ultimately dropped. After the local paper got wind of the story and gathered witness accounts from the scene, public pressure forced the department’s hand. Not so for Angela. The DA threw the book at her. 

 

I missed Nicholas’s funeral while I was behind bars. I also missed a call from 867-5309. Jordan’s number. He didn’t leave a message. It’s been six years and I still haven’t returned his call, though I do think about him often. Did he adhere to Nicholas’s last wish? Did he find someone new to love? What kind of hors d’oeuvres did they serve at the wedding?