I Saved A Woman's Life, And The Outcome Surprised Me

 

Arlington, Virginia

 

Howling gusts of wind are ripping thin branches off trees, and a foot of snow has already settled on the ground, turning icy and hard. It’s twelve degrees out, and at 2 a.m. anyone with common sense is either asleep or hiding in a house with the furnace blasting.

 

I, unfortunately, lack common sense.

 

I’m waddling down the driveway toward my car, trying not to slip and fall. The freezing cold air hitting my cheeks is painful. I know it’s stupid to be outside, and stupider still to be taking a car out in this arctic hellscape, but I’m driven by a force as great as the survival instinct, greater even than the craving to mate or eat. I’m out of cigarettes.

​

Do my housemates have some? Probably. It’s the 90s and they both smoke, because smoking doesn’t yet have the stigma it will acquire in a decade. One of them is in the basement pursuing some sort of metallurgical hobby that’s sending noxious fumes throughout the house, a source of increasingly bitter conflict; we haven’t spoken in weeks. The other is a 30-year-old compulsive masturbator whose bedroom door is locked. As if anyone would want to open that door, ever.

 

I do what any dedicated smoker would do. Brave the elements and go for it. I’m a salmon swimming upstream, but at the end of the stream isn’t some hot lady salmon; it’s a 7–11. Inside the 7–11 is nirvana for my nicotine receptors. Racks and racks of the stuff.

 

Inching toward nirvana

 

My British racing green sports coupe has a stick shift. I purchased it just before the storm, as part of my ‘move to a new city after grad school and kick-start my life’ initiative.

 

I had few requirements at the car dealership, but I knew I wanted a stick shift. There is romance in being out on one’s own and buying a brand-new car and feeling real freedom for the first time. Romance is mysterious and magical. There is a lot we don’t understand about romance, but this much we know: automatic transmissions are not romantic.

​

In between stepping down on the clutch and stalling and restarting the engine and tapping on the gas pedal and fumbling with the gear stick, I manage to roll the car down the driveway and, thank God, there is no one else on the road, because the car slides along the icy street at angles I didn’t know were physically possible.

 

It is terrifying, though not terrifying enough to shake me off my nicotine quest. One tentative pedal-tap at a time, I make my way to the end of the street and turn onto the main road. Through the blinding white haze of the blizzard, I can just make out the haloed orange-red-green colors of the 7–11 in the distance. There are no other cars around, which is a good thing, but also a reminder of what an idiot I am for being out here.

 

As I inch forward, I think I see a lump on the shoulder of the road, out of the corner of my eye. It’s hard to tell, but I am pretty sure there is something there. A dog, maybe? I can’t just drive away and leave it there, not in this kind of weather. A powerful gust of wind nearly blows me over when I get out of the car.

 

The lump is a woman about my age, in her mid-twenties, with long black hair. She is sprawled on the snow and barely conscious. She’s wearing sweatpants and a jacket but has no gloves or hat, and ice is crusted in her hair. There is a gash on her head, and frozen blood on one of her legs, with more frozen redness on the snow around her. I’d really like someone else — specifically, someone who knows what the hell they’re doing, unlike me — to come and deal with this, but mobile phones don’t exist yet, at least for non-millionaires, so I’m on my own.

 

I pick her up as gently as I can. She is cold and stiff. I put her in the passenger seat of my car, blast the heat, and drive to a hospital. She is silent and still and her eyes are shut, and I wonder if I am transporting a corpse.

​

“We’ll take it from here”

​

Hospitals are stressful, but in a way, liberating. They’re filled with people who actually do know what they’re doing, so that you don’t have to. The instant I say “There’s a badly injured woman in my car,” the on-duty nurse grabs a phone, and seconds later, men with serious miens and well-practiced choreography are heading into the blizzard with a stretcher.

​

The ER nurse has a million questions for me, but I have no answers. No, the woman is not a relation or friend. No, I have no idea who she is. No, I have no idea what happened to her. No, she did not say anything on the way here.

 

The police come by and interview me. They say it sounds like a hit-and-run and drill me about everything I saw, while taking notes. They want to know where it happened, so they can go to the exact spot — the scene of the crime? — and investigate. The woman has no ID on her, so there is no one they can call. They thank me for bringing her to the hospital, and then the nurse and an ER doctor thank me too, and then their attention turns to the next tranche of incoming human tragedies.

 

I sit on a plastic chair in the waiting room. I want to hear that the woman is okay before I leave, and decide to stick around until there’s word one way or the other. I bum a cigarette off an orderly outside the main entrance and freeze my ass off, resolving to quit this gross, dumb habit forever as soon as I’ve smoked it down to the filter; an hour later I bum another one. At sunrise, the woman is still in critical condition and unresponsive. The ER nurse tells me to go home and promises to call me with an update when they have one.

 

There are blood stains on the passenger seat and floor of my brand-new car. I have no idea how to clean them off.

 

People suck.

 

No one from the hospital calls me. A week later the police show up at my house. One policeperson, actually. A no-nonsense woman in an Arlington County PD uniform with a notepad in hand and a gun on her hip. She wants to know if I can answer a few questions. I’m happy to help. I like police, perhaps because I have never been in trouble with them. Not even a barfight or a loud party that went on too long. Not even a speeding ticket. Me and the cops, same team.

 

“What time did you have the encounter on the road, Mr. Burrows?”

 

“I think it was around 2 a.m. The hospital should have my arrival time. I got there about fifteen minutes after I found the woman.”

 

“Why were you out driving? That was quite a storm.”

 

“I needed a pack of cigarettes. I know it was foolish.”

 

“Mm-hmm. Where did you find the woman?”

 

“On Lee Highway, a couple hundred feet off Calvert Street. I already gave the officers at the hospital all the details.”

 

“Did you hit the woman with your car?”

 

Wait, what? “Me? No! She was lying on the shoulder of the road when I got there.”

 

“How did you see her in the dark? It was two in the morning.”

 

“I just sort of saw a lump on the ground out of the corner of my eye. It’s hard to explain.”

 

“Were you looking forward at the road while you were driving?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But you were able to see a woman wearing a dark blue parka, and dark brown sweatpants, on the ground. On the side of the road. At night.” No question mark this time. She is questioning me while not questioning me. Am I a suspect? It is very unnerving. Are we no longer on the same team? I thought I’d been a good Samaritan, but now I don’t feel as much like one. I feel 90 % good Samaritan and 10 % hit-and-run suspect. That sounds like good odds, but part of me is seeing my future self in a Supermax prison for a crime I had nothing to do with.

 

“Let’s take a look at the car,” she says, and I follow behind her obediently.

 

On the way to the car, I remember the blood stains, and my mind updates the Samaritan/Criminal ratio from 90/10 to 50/50. Now I am anxious. No, fuck that. I am scared.

 

“There’s blood in the car,” I tell her. “Blood stains. I couldn’t get them all out.”

 

“Blood.” Again the question without a question mark.

 

I open the doors so she can take a look, but she isn’t interested. She positions herself in front of the front bumper and spends a lot of time examining it. She takes pictures and backs up a step to look at it from a wider angle, then kneels down to peer at it close up, running her hands along it, and then comes in real close, her face inches from the metal.

 

Finally she stands up and turns to me. “There is no sign of this car being involved in a collision with a pedestrian. We have to look at all possibilities and rule things out one by one, you understand. That’s our job.”

 

“Yes, I understand completely.” I’ve passed the test and let out a small sigh of relief. I am now 100 % good Samaritan, 0 % criminal. There is a difference between knowing you’re innocent and being declared innocent, and suddenly I understand how huge a difference it is.

 

She examines the blood stains on the seat and floor. “Nice car. The stains are a damn shame. You can get this cleaned up, though. It’ll be good as new.” She recommends a product I can buy — some kind of magic stain remover — and writes the name of it on a piece of paper, handing it to me. I guess cops know how to deal with blood.

 

She takes some notes while I stand around awkwardly, but at least I know I’m not going to the Supermax. “I haven’t heard from the hospital,” I tell her. “Just wondering if the woman’s alright. They said they’d call. It’s been a week.”

 

“She’s still in the hospital, but she’s stable and talking now. We located her husband. He’s with her.”

 

I’m relieved, but also something else. Annoyed? Maybe a little hurt? “I wasn’t expecting flowers, but I’m pretty sure I saved her life. All I asked was to be contacted so I would know she’s okay. No one called me.”

 

“Hospitals are busy places. I wouldn’t be waiting for a call from the couple. They demanded we arrest you, and hired a lawyer. He’s a real piece of work. Won’t stop bugging us.”

 

A lawyer? What in the hell … A minute ago, I thought this was over. “I had nothing to do with what happened to that woman.”

 

She shakes her head sympathetically. “Situations like this can bring out the worst in people, especially when they see the hospital bills. Don’t worry. The police report will say you didn’t hit her.” She closes her notepad. “You did a good thing. Sometimes that has to be its own reward.”

​

That night, my sister drives over so we can hang out. I hear her car pull up and I go to the front door, which unfortunately requires passing through the living room. Blaine the Masturbator is sitting on the couch with his hand inside his jeans, watching an aerobics video on basic cable. Three hot blondes in spandex leotards are bouncing around and gyrating their hips.

 

“Blaine, could you please take that to your room…”

​

My sister opens the door without knocking and walks in. She looks at me, and at Blaine, who still has his hand in his pants, and back at me. “Let’s go out.”

 

“Yes. Out. Out of the house.”

 

She wrinkles her nose. “Smells bad in here. Like burning wires or something. You should get that checked out.”

 

Karma

 

A few weeks after the incident, I pay a final month’s rent to the metallurgist in the basement, who is also the homeowner, and say goodbye to Blaine without shaking his hand. I move into a different house with even worse roommates, and then a condo, and quit smoking, and then the earth goes around the sun seven or eight times, and at that point I’ve long forgotten about the incident with the girl.

 

I’m out in a new car — a BMW, because things have gone pretty well on the career front. It’s got an automatic transmission, because I’ve matured a bit and no longer expect inanimate objects to satisfy my romantic needs. My cell phone rings as I’m turning onto my tree-lined street. It’s sitting on the passenger seat with a bunch of stuff I just bought at Williams-Sonoma for my wife — a new colander, some steak knives, and a cheese grater. I reach for the phone with my eyes on the road, and jab my hand into a steak knife.

 

Fuuuuuuuuck, that hurts.

 

I fumble with the phone and hit the speaker button. “Hello?”

 

“Mr. Burrows?”

 

“Yeah? I’m in my car. Who is this?”

 

“I’m calling in regard to my client Rosaria Perez in Arlington, Virginia. I’m her attorney.”

 

“Never heard of her. I think you’ve got the wrong Lawrence Burrows.”

 

“You’re the right one. You took her to the hospital. It’s in the police report.”

 

The incident comes back to me as I pull into my driveway. “Yeah. Now I remember. I drove a girl to a hospital. That was a long time ago.”

 

“Eight years. We’re suing Arlington County, based on new evidence that the county knew that stretch of road was a hazard for pedestrians and ignored it. We need a signed witness statement from you.”

 

I am dumbfounded. “You expect me to help your client suck some taxpayer cash out of the county? I saved her life, and then she tried to get me arrested. I think I’ve done enough for her, don’t you?”

 

“Okay, then. Sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice day.”

 

I tap the ‘End Call’ button and notice my hand is bleeding. Not gushing, like in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan, but not a paper cut either. It’s dripping on my pants and the seat.

​

I go into my house and my wife helps me dress the wound. Afterward, I change my clothes and pull a bottle of stain remover from a shelf. It hasn’t been used in eight years. I go back out to the car and the stuff is magical, just as the cop had said. In minutes everything is cleaned up and new again, like it never happened.