Staring out a car window on a lonely country road.

I stared out of the window, trees passing by me at sixty miles per hour.  Music softly playing in the front seat, jazz.  Experimental jazz.  The kind of jazz that flows like the highway that I was currently on- curves.  One moment north, then northeast, then east then south then snaking back to north.  Undulating rhythm, undulating mountain  highway, undulating speedometer.

There are multiple turns on the road that look like each other, there is the one that my aunt wrecked her car on that snowy New Year’s Eve a few years back.  I think it was that turn. Or maybe it was the next.  I couldn’t be sure in this light.  But if I were closer back in time, the tire tracks in snow would guide me back.

That turn is Bundy’s Bend.  I remember my mom telling me about Bundy (I can’t remember his first name) getting in a car accident there.  Inconsequential now, but the memory etched in my mind as we pass the aspens shedding their yellow leaves.

Was that a deer?  I should tell my mom to slow down, where there is one deer, there are likely more.  But I stay silent.  The danger has passed and she doesn’t need any distractions.  We are already distracted enough.  

My mind wanders back two hours. “Shit” the doctor said.  The word repeats in my head, echoing through to the future.  Do I even have a future? The paper in his hands shaking.  The father of my friend.  I have spent hours in his wood floored home.  You can’t get away with anything noisy in that echo chamber.  

Shit. 

Shit. 

Shit.

Is that a patch of snow?  My body shivers at the thought of the night when I was driving with my girlfriend’s best friend. I should have scraped more of the ice off of the windshield and waited for the defroster to work instead of driving down the road.  We were laughing so hard, but I don’t even remember why.  It was actually really dangerous. But that hasn’t happened yet.  That is next year.

Right now, there is a highway patrol officer. Traffic is stopped. He has a flashlight and is looking into each vehicle as it slowly drives by.  What is going on?  I’ll never know, but the incident will reverberate through my mind for decades.  Nothing happens on forested highways in the middle of nowhere. 

The road is a stream that leads to a river that leads to the ocean. In California, all roads eventually lead to the ocean.  Down the hills, through the valley and to the ocean. Everything is concrete and asphalt now.  The road flowing noisily beneath us, mile after mile, thousands of revolutions leading me to my fate.

I am disoriented.  What time is it exactly?  I know that I slept, but for how long?  How many miles have rolled behind us?  The fear from the front seat is palpable as my grandmother and mother chat about anything, anything but what is most on their minds.

Shit.  The doctor turns onto the dirt road toward my house.  It is midnight and Green Day plays loudly through the speakers.  Is he trying too hard to be a cool dad? Maybe, but what really gets me is that he just used his blinker to turn into the driveway.  The only people for miles are asleep in bed.  It must be a force of habit.

The freeway melts behind me.  Halfway to Santa Barbara, halfway to a dorm room floor and a roommate who recites his Spanish love poetry, halfway to a first degree burn because 451 is ninety proof and flaming shots are cool. Didn’t James Dean crash somewhere near here?  On the way to the ocean. Always.

Jazz reaches my ears and I ease awake to see the darkened valley sky and the Sacramento skyline lit by the few buildings near the river. I hear more talking.  The family, always those women analyze the family.  It is a pastime that I grew accustomed to throughout the years.  Trying to figure out why we do the things we do.  Trying to figure out the genetic flow that led to me traveling down this road that has always led me to family.

Shut up! I disgustedly say to my drunk aunt as we walk down her street.  I am exuberant that the 49ers won the Super Bowl, but not so much at the behavior of adults.  

Toward the Pacific Ocean the car hurtles.  I’m riding the rocking horses at the Nut Tree, watching the miniature train travel through the grounds.  Back and forth, throwing my head back laughing, freedom and wind and youth.  Lightness.

A hospital room.  I am staring at my reflection in the window, San Francisco lights glowing.  I stop moving, holding my breath and squinting my eyes .  This is what it would look like to be dead.  The idea is strangely comforting that night. I watch myself not move and wonder what it would be like on the other side of death looking back at me.

The Bay Bridge buckles, double decker destruction.  I only hear about it on the news and wish that I had felt the earth shake in the mountains. But I was in the car, on my way to soccer practice and I missed it.  If I was older, this trip would have taken me on the lower level of the Embarcadero, but now, where dozens were trapped, I sit at a stoplight in the dark, two scared women trying to find their way to the hospital.

We are lost.  Nighttime in a city is not the same as nighttime in the country.  It is easy to get lost on the rolling streets, to lose sight of the ocean.  To not know the direction to the Golden Gate. Every street looks the same. vThe lights disorient.

We park two blocks away.  You always turn your tires toward the curb so that your car doesn’t roll away if the brakes fail.  Accidents happen all of the time.  The Bay Bridge is clogged again.  We are waiting with the weekend traffic to get into the city.  The flow of traffic is a tide, in come the workers, out go the workers, in come the tourists, out go the workers, in come the partiers.  There is an accident blocking the left lane.  Isn’t it always the left lane?

A motorcyclist drives by, fifty miles per hour and popping a wheelie.  I was too scared to do that going ten on my BMX bike on a back country road.  I guess there is more to fear here on this road than on the curves near home? The deer passes by behind the car, unseen, and trots down to the river to drink. Is fear the past or the present?

The final two blocks are hardest.  My body is weak and deteriorated. The doctor in Reno said he didn’t want to take me on as a patient because he was going on vacation the next day. A phone call made, a world class doctor on board, hurry.  THe water is always flowing to the ocean as fast as it can.  The cars always flow as freely as they can.

I stare out the window at the end of a long hallway, the city below me. I know the grandchild of the man who donated the money to create this floor beneath my feet. It is a small world.  The cycle of life creates a business, the owner creates a family, the business creates wealth and that wealth creates a hospital wing and I can sit here and watch San Francisco not sleep while I am not sleeping either.

Shit. My mother and I sit, dazed, wondering what the word means as the doctor ponders his next move. You have Leukemia.  You need treatment as soon as possible.