The ER
the angst of aimlessness
For paid subscribers, I will be posting essays from a collection I am currently writing called Americana: Mom, Baseball, and the Pursuit of Happiness. I welcome comments and responses to each of these essays.
My mother got home from work just as I was finishing breakfast and leaving for school. Her graveyard shift at Penrose Hospital, right across the street, meant that our paths might briefly cross in the morning before she ate her cottage cheese with sliced pears and her toast before she headed to bed.
“Do you know Anthony Santisteven,” she asked. I think she knew that I did, so her question was more of a way into the conversation.
“Yeah. He’s a friend of mine.” He and I had played on the same intramural basketball team in our senior year. In the championship game right before Christmas break, he got fouled and knocked to the floor. He grimaced and grabbed his leg in pain as it cramped up on him. I have an image of him on the gym floor, grabbing at his lower leg. Tony worked at a gas station after school to pay for his Mustang Mach 1. That Mustang, all muscle, was quite the impressive ride for a high school senior.
“Well, he spent the last six hours in emergency surgery. Broke his back.”
The police estimated he was traveling 100 mph when he lost control at the sweeping curve on Fillmore hill just past Coronado High School, became airborne, and rolled several times after he landed in the field beyond the pavement. Tony would be paralyzed from the waist down.
My mother seemed as shaken as I was when she told the story.
It wasn’t the first time she encountered friends of mine from Palmer High in the emergency room. She came home one Sunday morning and told me about the procession of kids that streamed through the ER doors late the night before, even into the early morning. They had all been at the same party. Somebody spiked the punch with a horse tranquilizer. A dozen kids were sick. Every time the ER doors slid open and the rush of cold air swept in, my mother feared I would be among them.
I don’t know when I came to realize how much worry I brought into my mother’s life. My high school years grew more tumultuous as I neared graduation. I had no real focus. Talk of attending college was usually initiated by others, my mom or school counselors. I didn’t have that ambition, really, and I merely went through the motions with college applications and ACT testing. Playing baseball was the only extracurricular activity I was in. So from mid-February through April or early May, I pursued an interest. And that carried over into the summer with Legion B baseball. But neither of those ruled out late-night drinking and cruising Nevada Avenue on weekend nights. I was aimless.
