| General Fiction posted June 26, 2024 | Chapters: |
...6 7 -8- 9... 
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Aftermath of the accident
A chapter in the book DUEL with the DEVIL
DUEL with the DEVIL - Chapter 8
by Jim Wile
| Background A brilliant young chemist creates a new opioid with unknown benefits and pitfalls. |
Recap of Chapter 7: Brian soon turns 15, gets his learner’s permit, and begins to drive. At 16, he gets his license and buys a used car. One summer night, while Fran is in Raleigh on a four-day training session, he hears of a party at a rich friend’s house and goes to it. The kid’s parents are not at home, and drugs and alcohol are rampant. Brian tries both marijuana and alcohol for the first time.
It's been over a year since the snafu at the car wash, and his passion for Sandi has cooled a little but instantly comes roaring back when he sees her at the party. Emboldened by his uninhibited condition, he seeks her out, but she has another boyfriend by this time. Brian tries to impress Sandi by being macho with the boyfriend, and he ends up pushing him into the pool. Sandi is irate and chews him out, telling him she never wants to talk to him again. He is instantly humbled and tries to apologize to her, but she refuses to forgive him. He flees the party, humiliated by his behavior and the devastating knowledge that he’ll never have Sandi now. He speeds away in his car, neglecting to turn the headlights on. When the lights of the party no longer light up the way, he crashes his car in the dark and passes out.
Chapter 8
It was after me!
I had been spelunking in Boone’s Cave near Lexington and took a turn in the dark that separated me from the rest. I headed down the wide passage by myself and soon realized I was all alone. No matter. I would catch up with them later on the outside. As I continued down the passage, it began to narrow. I thought I heard footsteps behind me, so I stopped to listen but heard nothing. I turned to look back but didn’t see anything either, so I beckoned, “Hey guys?”
No answer, but as I resumed walking forward, the sound of the footsteps began again. Once more, I stopped and shouted, “You guys back there?” but still no answer. The tunnel I was in was lit only by my headlamp. I felt the first tickling of fear.
As I proceeded forward, the tunnel began to narrow. The walls and the ceiling began closing in, although I could still walk upright. All of a sudden, my light flickered and went out, and my fear rose up a notch. This tunnel was supposed to lead to the outside, so I continued forward, refusing to give in to the uneasy feeling. It started to get very cold—much colder than the usual 52 degrees. I started shivering as I stumbled ahead in the dark. After some minutes, I heard a deep-throated voice say, “Had enough yet?”
Enough what? I didn’t know what it was talking about, but this question sent a more intense pang of fear through me. I turned to the sound of the voice in the dark and shouted, “Who are you?” but the voice only laughed at me.
“Don’t you know?”
And then I heard the footsteps pick up pace as it headed toward me. I turned back around and fled down the tunnel in the dark. I didn’t want to face this thing, whatever it was. As I ran, my head began to bump against the top of the cave overhead. It was narrowing at an alarming rate, and I had to duck down as I ran. I had no idea where I was going in the dark, and there was nothing to guide me. The voice began laughing at me as it closed the gap between us.
In sheer panic now, I sped forward, but suddenly I was falling. After what seemed like minutes, I struck the bottom and must have passed out.
I don’t know how long I remained at the bottom of the vertical shaft in the cave that I had run into, but in a dreamlike state, I began to hear a gentle voice calling to me from a long way off. As I slowly became aware of my surroundings, I felt stabbing pains in my mid-back and neck, and I felt myself whimpering, which soon led to moaning. The gentle voice persisted, and I felt a steady shaking of my arm. I could feel my eyes flutter as I slowly opened them, and the image of Fran took focus in the dim light.
“Hello, Brian.”
I came fully awake then and said, “Where am I?”
“You’re in a private room at Baptist Hospital. You were in a coma for almost two days now. Welcome back.”
“How did I get here? What happened?”
“Let me go get your nurse first, now that you’ve awakened from the coma. Then I’ll explain it to you as best I can. There are a lot of unanswered questions, though.”
Rather than push the call button to summon the nurse, Fran got up and left the room. I guess she figured it might get the nurse here faster.
While she was away from the room, I tried remembering what happened, but my thoughts were all jumbled, and I was distracted by the pain in my neck and back, which hurt like hell. I had never felt pain like this, and it was almost more than I could bear.
I seem to remember escaping in the dark in fear, then crashing into something, but that seemed more like a dream. I didn’t have long to wonder until Fran returned with both the nurse and a tall, thin Asian doctor.
“Hello, Brian. I’m Dr. Chen. Do you know where you are now?”
“Baptist Hospital.”
“Can you remember what happened to you?”
“Not too clearly. Could I maybe get something for my pain?”
“How much does it hurt on a zero-to-ten scale, with zero meaning no pain and ten being the worst pain possible?”
“Eleven.”
Dr. Chen smiled grimly and instructed the nurse to prepare a course of intravenous morphine after doing some calculations.
“Brian, apparently you crashed your car into a tree at a high rate of speed. Evidence showed you were not wearing a seatbelt, and consequently, your head hit the windshield, which shattered on impact. Your body also crashed into the steering wheel. You suffered a severe concussion, and the fact that you are in great pain now indicates that there is likely some degree of injury to your spinal column. Can you raise your hand and squeeze my two fingers with your left hand?”
He had extended his right hand to me, and I squeezed the two fingers.
“Good. Now the right hand.”
I repeated the action with my right hand.
“Very good. Now, can you move each leg, one at a time?”
I was able to do that as well.
“Excellent. You don’t seem to suffer from any paralysis, but it will take some testing to diagnose the source or sources of your pain. However, I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen so far. You are very lucky the accident wasn’t more serious, although it was plenty serious enough.”
I didn’t feel so damn lucky. I was still in extreme pain while the nurse was getting the morphine infusion ready.
Dr. Chen said, “I’m going to schedule some tests for later this afternoon to see if we can figure out where that pain is coming from. The morphine will make you feel a lot more comfortable soon.” He made some notes on my chart before leaving.
The nurse eventually got the IV going, and the pain lessened almost instantly. It wasn’t complete relief, but the pain was substantially better than before.
“Are you up for talking about it now?” said Fran.
“I suppose. Last thing I remember, I was leaving a party at Don Robbins’s house, and then I was going through a cave being chased by someone, and I fell. But that doesn’t make any sense. That part must have been a dream.”
“Well, you were at a party at Don Robbins’s house, and according to the police report, you apparently missed a turn in the driveway on your way out. It said the headlights weren’t on, and you weren’t wearing a seatbelt, and you must have been going very fast to have totaled your car and injured yourself the way you did. Now why were you leaving the party in such a reckless fashion?”
Maybe she took pity on me because I was hurt since her voice stayed even. She wasn’t hollering at me, as she was prone to do sometimes. I just lay there trying to recall the events that led to the sudden departure, and she patiently waited for me to continue. Crashed my car? No, that was Momma and Daddy.
“I suggest you don’t try to make up some story to explain this, Brian. I’m pretty good at knowing when you’re lying.”
“I’ll tell you the truth as soon as I can piece together the details in my mind.” It began coming back to me what happened, and a sense of shame and embarrassment dominated my feelings about it as I remembered the events of that night.
What is it about this family and car crashes? Although both were caused by thoughtless stupidity, Momma and Daddy’s hadn’t been their fault, whereas I was totally to blame for mine. And yet, they died, and I lived. The irony and lack of justice were overwhelming.
I ended up confessing everything to Fran as best I could remember. When I had finished, she looked at me for a few seconds before saying anything. The look on her face was inscrutable. At least she didn’t appear furious at me.
“Brian, I know you’re aware you did a lot of things wrong that night and used some extremely poor judgment. You don’t need me screaming at you or punishing you; I daresay your condition now will be punishment enough. I just hope you learn from this. You have a tendency to get obsessed with things, not the least of which is pursuing Sandi the way you have. You got lucky you didn’t kill yourself in that accident, and you have a chance now to make some changes in your life. I hope you’ll make them.”
She was right, of course. I acted like a complete idiot last Friday night. But if the pain I suffered from was supposed to be the gift of a tough lesson for me, it was a gift that kept on giving.
Tests, including X-rays and MRIs, revealed that I had three herniated discs in my neck and thoracic region of my spine, a couple of subluxations in which the discs had become misaligned, and a few sites of foraminal stenosis (narrowing of the channels the spinal nerves run through). The subsequent impingement on a number of spinal nerves caused me a great deal of pain when my meds wore off.
I stayed in the hospital for three days and left with a 3-month prescription for OxyContin. This kept me reasonably comfortable through the day. Opioids like Oxy were not so heavily regulated in 2008, and when I ran out after 2 ½ months, the doctor cautioned me not to exceed the dose or the frequency, but he was still willing to renew the prescription for another two months.
He wanted me to begin physical therapy to help ease the pain, and I started attending three sessions a week. I did the exercises my therapist gave me, but they didn’t appear to help very much.
During this period of recuperation, Chloe the cat was my constant companion and stayed with me much of the time. She was 14 years old now and only occasionally went outside anymore. I would discuss things with her, like about what a jerk I had been towards Sandi and her boyfriends, attempting to be someone I wasn’t in both cases.
Our house had an unfinished attic upstairs that we used for storage. The house had been built to have optional bedrooms and bath upstairs and could be converted, but we just always used it for storage. Chloe loved it for some reason. It got quite warm in there during the summer and cold in the winter, but she didn’t seem to mind. We used to keep a rolled-up hand towel on the floor between the door and the jamb to keep it ajar and allow her to go in and out by herself.
School had started up again by now, and I had a good excuse to get out of gym class. I also had the first of my surgeries to repair the herniated discs. This proved only mildly successful. I continued with PT, but again, relief was slight. The only thing that really seemed to help was the Oxy. And besides the pain control, taking Oxy felt really good, giving me a nice high.
When that prescription ran out, the doctor wouldn’t renew it except for just enough to follow a tapering off schedule he provided.
 Recognized |
CHARACTERS
Brian Kendrick: The narrator of the story. At the beginning of the story, he is 12 years old and in 6th grade in Kernersville, North Carolina.
Francine (Fran) Kendrick: Brian's older sister. She is 18 at the beginning of the story and goes to junior college, where she studies law enforcement.
Chloe: Brian and Fran's cat.
Sandi MacReady: She is a pretty blond and Brian's crush in high school.
Derek Shafer: Brian's best friend and lawn mowing partner.
Josh Bennett: Sandi's boyfriend. He's the center on the high school basketball team.
Don Robbins: A high school acquaintance of Brian's. He is a rich kid who throws a summer rave party when his parents are away.
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Brian Kendrick: The narrator of the story. At the beginning of the story, he is 12 years old and in 6th grade in Kernersville, North Carolina.
Francine (Fran) Kendrick: Brian's older sister. She is 18 at the beginning of the story and goes to junior college, where she studies law enforcement.
Chloe: Brian and Fran's cat.
Sandi MacReady: She is a pretty blond and Brian's crush in high school.
Derek Shafer: Brian's best friend and lawn mowing partner.
Josh Bennett: Sandi's boyfriend. He's the center on the high school basketball team.
Don Robbins: A high school acquaintance of Brian's. He is a rich kid who throws a summer rave party when his parents are away.
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