Rescue

It is as inescapable as Fresno, only more diffuse.  I feel it all the time, sometimes describing the thing as age, at other times loss of confidence.  But it boils down to this.  Things are slowing.  They are also seizing up, refusing to flex and, increasingly, pretending to be lost.  I reach for a glass of wine and knock over the salt.  I reach for a glass in the cupboard and find that I have lost my balance, or almost.  There is no one single neuromuscular failing I can cite.  Just a general sense of failing.  And why not?  I have been bounding about the quadriplegic world rather successfully for decades.  So what if I have to pull in and pull back?

Furthermore, there is a general disturbance in the atmosphere.  My atmosphere, that is.  Or, as we say in California, my aura.  The personal force field around me has gone jagged.  I can feel it, particularly when I am driving north on 101, the main motorway that leads up the coast from San Francisco.  Actually, the first thing I notice is the smell.  Someone is burning rubber, which is fine, since it must be someone else.  I'm not pressing on the brakes.  I relax.  And relaxing is a good thing, because this other thing is happening.  It's a shuddering, sinking thing, and it is accompanied by a floppy sound.  Having just relaxed, it is a simple enough matter to steer to the right.  My heavy Ford fan is slowing drastically, while my adrenaline is giving me something of a surge, forgive the expression.  Now the van is halted.  Early rush-hour traffic whooshes by, just inches from my left door.  I know what has happened, and there is not much I can do about it except extract my mobile phone and call the auto club.

I have no hesitation in telling the AAA operator that, in addition to having blown a tire, I have also blown out much of my spinal cord.  The picture emerges from my lips in stark, even poignant, detail.  There is a disabled driver, a man who uses a wheelchair, and he is now stranded just south of Cotati.  How you spell that, the operator asks?  I spell Cotati, trying not to sound snotty.  What state is that in?  The state of emergency should be obvious, and maybe it is, that we go through this fumbling Cotati-finding stuff at his end, while I try not to hyperventilate at mine.  

It seems to me that since I parked at the edge of this 60 mph steel torrent, the traffic flow has actually increased.  When the man tells me that a tow truck is on its way, I start the engine and limp a few inches closer to the edge of the freeway.  The trouble is that I am on an overpass, a bridge over a stream or a road, I cannot tell.  A concrete wall just high enough to obscure the view blocks what is probably a perfectly pleasant section of Sonoma County.  This is farm country, dairy country, wine country, suburb country and, as in my case, weekend tourist country.  I am on my way to see Jim, a friend in Sebastopol.  Why the Russian name?  Someone knows, but that someone is 10 miles away as the crow flies.  And, trust me, the crow is flying.  So is the buzzard.  They have spotted carrion on the roadway.  It's not carrion yet, but give it time.  The quadriplegic in the white van is a sitting duck.

Marlou has cancer, and I, in fact, don't have much of a spinal cord left these days, which may make me a little more worried about getting rear-ended while I wait for a tow truck.  But mostly I am anxious.  It is Marlou, and me, and everything.  I don't know.  There's a truck in the distance backing down the freeway.  

There's always a turning point in a plot, and the element of surprise is essential.  You don expect to see salvation backing down the shoulder of the motorway.  You expect it to drive up behind you and flash its lights, speak through a loudspeaker mounted on the roof.  Or, in another scenario, to pull up alongside, park in front and disgorge its driver.  The latter will be uniformed and readily identifiable.  This backing-down-the-freeway technique, while credible, also arouses suspicion.  This guy could be a freeway marauder.  This could be one of the most sophisticated carjacking ploys ever invented.  In fact, my mobile phone conversation revealing my cripple plight could have been intercepted.  Who is this guy?

The answer soon appears.  For he has parked 100 meters up the motorway and is now walking toward me.  Hello.  He tells me that he is from the Highway Patrol, the California state troopers.  I am unconvinced.  He hands me a brochure.  As a former brochure writer, we are now 50% closer to credibility.  My mobile phone rings.  The auto club towtruck is drawing closer.  This guy from the State is telling me to start my van and drive to his own State-of-California towtruck.  He can't change my tire on a freeway overpass, he explains.  I don't know what to do about the AAA towtruck.  So I give the State guy my mobile phone.  The crippled man cannot drive and talk at the same time, he must have observed.  I have put this man in charge.  He sends the auto club towtruck away.

The Highway Patrol guy is now jacking up my van, whirring a pneumatic wrench, rolling the flat tire into view.  The thing has exploded.  The side of the tire has separated from the tread.  There is a steel and rubber loop lying floppy on the ground, and beside it, there is a cross-section of black doughnut, what used to be sidewall.  

When this is over, I try to give the man some money.  He refuses.  Instead, he askes me to fill in a survey.  To complete the experience, he talks me through the process of getting up to speed and getting back on the freeway.  The latter, he understands, is not so simple.  I drive a heavy truck, and the motorway is climbing a northbound hill.  Not to worry.  When the time comes, his left turn signals flash like the approach lights at San Francisco Airport, rush-hour drivers slow in alarm and I follow the towtruck into traffic.  The whole thing, from disaster to rescue and restoration, has taken half an hour.