The nurse came around the desk with her mouth open. A security guard reached for his radio and then thought better of it.
And that’s when my road captain, a man who has known Carol since 1985, walked up to the desk. He set his phone down in front of that nurse, screen up, and said, “Ma’am, you’re going to want to look at this before you finish that chart. Because the man who did this to her is her son.”
I need to back up, because that sentence deserves more than one line.
His name is Danny. He’s 38. He was born in that same hospital, on the third floor, at 4:12 in the morning. I remember because I was pacing the hallway in my riding boots and a nurse kept telling me to sit down. Carol pushed for nine hours and never once asked for anything. When they put him in her arms she looked at me and said, “Well, Ray. Now we’ve got a reason to be careful.”
We were careful. We were careful for 38 years.
Danny was a good kid. I’m not going to sit here and tell you he was an angel, because no boy raised around a garage full of bikers turns out an angel. But he was good. He held the flashlight while I rebuilt carburetors. He rode on the back of my Shovelhead before his feet could reach the pegs. When he was fifteen he told me he wanted to be an EMT, and at twenty-two he was one.
He was good at it, too. Eleven years on an ambulance. He pulled people out of wrecks on the same highway I’ve been riding since 1978.
Then a drunk driver crossed the center line on Route 9 and Danny’s rig went into a ditch. His partner walked away. Danny didn’t. Two surgeries on his back, a plate in his hip, and a prescription that he was supposed to take for six weeks.
He took it for six years.
You know how this part goes. Everybody knows how this part goes now. The pills ran out, then the doctors ran out, then the money ran out. He lost the job. He lost his apartment. He moved back into his old bedroom at 34 years old and Carol made up the bed with the same blue sheets she’d washed for him in high school.
