BED RIDDEN

Chapter Two:

Chapter Two:

By the time Cloey was positioned behind the wheel of the car she was shivering like a colic horse in a summer sweat– from the cold or the fear? She didn’t know which. Her only thought now was to be away from the oppressive weight of the foreboding house. I have my credit card, Cloey thought, I can book a room at The Wellington, in town. I’ll dry out, have a hot shower and order room service. No, she changed her mind. I’ll sit in the dining room surrounded by people. Lots of people. And order the beef with Yorkshire pudding and extra gravy for my roast potatoes.

Cloey wheeled out the end of the drive and skidded through a wide turn on the slick asphalt. She braked, switched gears, and raced the length of the street, throwing up sodden leaves in her tail lights. She tasted salt on her lips and found the tears were streaming across her cheeks.

Still driving much too fast and with the wipers relentlessly whipping away sheets of water, Cloey careened down the ramp to the highway and turned toward town. But suddenly she was fighting the glare in the rain and fog– the blinding lights. She had just made the curve when she saw the truck. It had already jack knifed and was careening across the highway toward her speeding car.

It was a fuel tanker, Chevron was stenciled on the side. The truck’s cab, skewed at a sickly angle, was smashing down the medium barrier, jolting like the head of some mythical monster each time it chomped off a post that stood in its path and the tanker-trailer was already rearing up, starting to roll, threatening to crush the Lexus under its weight.

Cloey didn’t think. There was no time. She instinctively jerked the wheel across. The rear tires lost traction and the car swerved, headed toward the ditch. Cloey saw the guard rail loom up in the mist and braced for impact. There was a massive jolt and the car lifted. The guard rail disappeared beneath her wheels and Cloey was airborne.

It wasn’t a ditch, but a ravine.

Cloey found herself soaring and, as she was catapulted into the night-sky, she was haunted by a single thought: In her panic to escape the man who had invaded her home, she had neglected to fasten her seat-belt.

The car hit, crashing into the mud and rocks. The hood buckled and the pulverized windshield peppered Cloey’s face and chest with glass. Cloey was thrown forward. Cushioned by the airbag, she wrapped her arms around the steering column and tried to hold on. The car crumpled, tumbled end over end before once again, taking to the air. The Lexus landed on its side, bounced and barrel-rolled down the embankment.

The doors flew open and Cloey was sling-shotted from her seat. With the car spinning like some demented carnival ride, she wasn’t even sure through which door she had been jettisoned. She was only aware of being thrown across the empty darkness, her arms and legs flailing, cartwheeling wildly, tumbling end over end like a bird blasted from the sky. And then the jarring halt when soft body met unforgiving stone.

Cloey landed hard on her right shoulder and tumbled into a ball, skidding across the rocks like she had landed on an skating rink. She bounced and came up headfirst against something very hard. It might have been a rock or the trunk of a tree. Cloey would never know. The buzz, like mad hornets, rose up in her brain. There was a flash of blinding white light that slowly began to narrow, down and down, into the merest pin-prick and then abruptly, it swooped, crystallized, and burned out. Blessed darkness closed in and cradled her broken body into the oblivion.

Cloey was up at the lake. She was floating face down, her hair swirling about her shoulders. She was enjoying the muffled sounds of the under-water, the warmth of the sun on her back and the tickle of tiny bubbles across her skin.

She had a faint recollection of an accident of some kind, but it didn’t concern her much. Cloey was ten years old. And she thought she was in heaven, laying there, face down with the water rippling along her body. And being departed, she didn’t even have to lift her head to breathe.

Cloey remembered the colorful shells she had once dived for. And she opened her eyes to see. But there were no shells. No sandy bottom. No dappled blue and green shadows. There was only her body, naked and bloody, stretched across a steel table. A weird dream, she thought.

Her eyes focused. It was a hospital, an operating theater in a hospital. And a dozen men and women were hunched over her nakedness. Cloey looked down, saw her girlish breasts, the thin patch of pubic hair and the lavender nail polish which adorned her tiny toes. She felt she was drifting up by the ceiling and when she looked down again, she saw her cute Dutch-boy cut was a distant memory. Her head was as slick as an egg. Shaved clean.

Cloey could hear the pulse of the heart monitor. A respirator wheezed and a doctor mumbled something to a trauma nurse. The woman twisted a thumbscrew on the surgical-steel vice which en-cased her head. And as Cloey watched, a gowned and masked doctor positioned a drill at the side of her skull. The doctor consulted an x-ray, re-positioned the drill slightly and pushed the switch.

“No,” Cloey cried out, “let me go. Don’t make me come back.”

She heard the high-speed squeal of the drill bit as it met bone. There was the raunchy smell, like burning hair. Then she saw the rush of blue-black blood.

“No,” Cloey cried, fighting the helpless feeling of a slow descent. “Don’t make me...”

There was a time shift. Like she had taken a sidestep to the left and now viewed her world from an opposing angle. Someone was talking:

“Cloey. Can you hear me. Cloey.”

Her eyelids fluttered and she caught sight of a young doctor– green scrubs, a stethoscope– through the bars of her eyelashes.

“Cloey,” he said again, his voice strained with anxiety. “Please. I can’t lose you, Cloey. Can you hear my voice?”

Cloey forced her lips to move. Yes. Oh God, yes. I hear you! she cried. But nothing came out. Her weird dream was just the beginning of her nightmare– she was paralyzed.

Nick Chase sat beside his sister-in-law in the Neural Surgical Department of University Hospital. “So what’s wrong with her, doctor?” Nick asked, shifting uneasily in the chair positioned across from where Doctor Evans sat behind a metal desk.

“Look, Nick. I’ll be entirely honest with you. We really don’t know what’s wrong with your wife.”

Suzie sat up. “That’s not very reassuring...”

The doctor held up a hand. “I know, I know– but that’s the truth of it.” He turned to Suzie. “Your sister has made a remarkable recover in the past twelve weeks. Except for a small scar or two, she has survived the accident unblemished. Physically, there’s not a thing wrong with her. Her age and good health were instrumental, you understand.”

The doctor took a moment to study the young woman. Suzie filled the definition of baby sister perfectly. He knew her to be ten years Cloey’s junior, a pretty teenager, taller than her older sister and lusher somehow, but with baby-doll good looks.

Nick broke into his thoughts. “But the paralysis? All she can do is blink at me. What the hell is that all about?”

The doctor leaned back in his swivel chair. “Trauma. That’s my belief, for what it’s worth. The human body is a marvelous machine, Nick. It deals with injury and sickness in ways we still, as medical practitioners, don’t even begin to understand. A coma for-instance. It’s an amazing way in which the body shuts down, takes a break to heal itself. I think Cloey’s paralysis is a similar occurrence.”

“So you’re telling me the paralysis is self-induced?”

“Crudely put, but not completely inaccurate. And trust me when I say, this is not something she is doing consciously. It’s just the way in which her brain is dealing with the horror of the accident. We could have lost her at any time, Nick. You should be thankful you still have a wife.”

“I didn’t mean...”

“Of course you didn’t. Look, Cloey could come out of this tomorrow. Or maybe next month. Or next year. There’s no way of telling. But physically, she’s in excellent health and I am prepared to release her from the hospital.”

“Really?” Suzie exhaled abruptly. “You think that’s wise?”

The doctor looked puzzled but then turned his attention back to Nick. “Cloey will need special care. I can provide a list of capable women trained to provide the necessary home-nursing skills. Cloey will need therapy, daily exercise to ward off muscle atrophy. Baths, massage, grooming. Plus mental stimulus.”

Nick dragged a hand along his face. “Mental stimulus?”

“Yes. You need to set up a hospital bed where she can look out a window. She needs to see children playing. Her neighbors going to work in the mornings, coming home at night. She needs music, movies and television if she wants. Fill her life with photographs, artwork, flowers. And talk with her. Reassure her. Tell her how you feel, that you love her. She isn’t comatose, Nick. Cloey can hear and understand. You know what she likes better than anyone.”

“She loves her puppy.”

“Ah. So you do understand. Good. Her puppy may prove to be a better physician than me. A hell of a lot cheaper as well,” Doctor Evans chuckled. “Have faith, Nick. It’s my belief you’ll have Cloey back in no time. Now, get outta here, I’ve got sick people to attend to.”

Nick and Suzie stood at the elevator, watching the numbers go up and down. Suzie moved close and reached, placing a hand in Nick’s. “At least we can still be together.” Suzie squeezed and pushed a breast into his arm.

The elevator doors opened and Nick had the unshakable sensation he was about to step into the gas chamber.