-Hebron

It was right around 10 AM and the rain clouds that had come around that morning had began to clear up.  Kim and I chatted excitedly as we drove west on I-80 out of Lincoln, toward the highway that led to Hebron.  

We had been anticipating this part of the trip the entire time and now the excitement of it was overflowing from us.  At the small town of York, we turned south on Highway 81 and the conversation tapered off.  We sat in silence and spent our time looking off into the distance of the road, towards the clumps of trees that dotted the landscape, wondering if they were the place.  Neither of us had any idea as to where the crash had actually happened.  Only that we ended up in Hebron.

Eventually a big red billboard appeared announcing to all that Hebron was just ahead.  We stopped to look at it for a few seconds, perhaps to consider what we being there meant.  I stood and looked at the sign.  I was nervous.  Afraid of what I was about to find.  I shook it off and got back behind the wheel of the Pontiac, and we continued eventually turning off of the highway and into town. 

The main street was brick, like it had been there forever.  We drove slowly over it through the little town, taking the place in while we followed the blue signs emblazoned with a big white H that guided us toward the hospital. 

The town was neat and clean.  All of the houses had neatly trimmed lawns and freshly painted fences.  American flags fluttered proudly in the spring breeze everywhere we looked.  The place wasn’t at all what I had pictured it would be; rather it defied every image I had kept of it.  It was beautiful and peaceful.

We rounded a corner and saw the hospital up ahead on the left.  I wondered if this was the same road we had come up on that night, and if dad saw the same things then that we saw now.  It was a strange sensation, like de-ja-vu. 

We pulled into the parking lot of the Thayer County Medical Center right on time for our appointment and found a place to park.  The hospital was small, but modern looking and clean.  I felt suddenly dizzy as I strode towards it - not like falling down dizzy, but like dream dizzy.  Surreal dizzy.  It all hardly seemed real all of a sudden.  There was no way I could know this place, but yet I knew that I did.

We went through the sliding glass of the entrance doors, and immediately saw an older and pretty lady standing there, beaming at us widely as we came in.  She immediately reminded me of my grandmother, and I felt an instant bond to her. 

I knew it was Helen.  With barely a word I went to her and gave her a long warm hug, and she hugged me back, like we’d known each other for our whole lives, which I guess we had.

When I pulled away, there were tears in her eyes.  Surprisingly to me, there were tears in mine too.

“I have thought about you so often all of these years,” she told me.  “I am so glad to see you now.”

She took us around the corner and into an office where we were greeted by Joyce, who hugged us both and offered us a seat.

We told Joyce and Helen what we knew, which at that point wasn’t much.  They both shook their heads in disbelief the entire time.

“That poor, poor man,” Joyce had said repeatedly as I told her the story of dad’s ordeal that night.  I had never thought of it that way.  I never saw my dad as the victim that he was until Joyce said that.  Hell yes, he was a victim.  He’d survived a plane crash!

I turned to Helen.  It was strange to finally meet her.  She had cared for me so long ago, and I never even knew who she was, now here she sat, next to me.  I felt very privileged.

Presently, she took us into a small conference room.  Around the table sat Dr. Bunting, and Blanch and Evelyn, and Dick and Gary.  They had all been there that night, and now were all here.  It was truly amazing to me.  I could see that Kim felt the same way.  It was almost like a dream.

I looked at Dr. Bunting.  He was 82 years old now, but still held a sparkle in his eye.  He had long retired and he and his wife had moved into a retirement home directly across from the hospital.  I felt warmth and sincerity coming from him.  I liked him immediately, and now hoped I could get him to talk about me and my family.

“What happened that night, sir?”  I asked him.

He looked at me for a moment, sizing me up.  Then he asked:

“Do you want the watered down pleasant version, or do you want to know what I saw?”  He said.  I was taken with his honesty. 

“I just want to know what happened,” I said.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said.  “Throughout my entire medical career, I had never had a more frustrating night than that…”

Blanch stood chatting quietly with Evelyn, sitting at the small desk in the emergency reception area of the Hebron Hospital.  It had been pretty quiet that night.  Outside, it was cold, but the fog and clouds had lifted.  She was glad that there weren’t a lot of people out on the highway tonight.  It would have been a lot worse. 

The hospital was empty of most staff, except for them and a few others, as usual.  Not enough going on to warrant paying a doctor to hang around doing nothing.  Besides, Dr. Bunting was right down the street should the police scanner near the desk or a phone call report a bad accident or other emergency that might be headed their way.  Then they would call him and the on-call staff and have everything ready by the time the patients arrived.  That was how it was done.

            They had locked the big sliding doors overlooking the emergency driveway just after dark, once Dr. Pembry went home for the night.  It wasn't long ago that that wayward goat had gotten through the automatic doors and into the reception area.  In panic it had run amok and made quite a mess.  It took them almost an hour to get it out!  They had had other past visitors as well including cows, lots of snakes, and once even a deer, which had tripped the automatic door mechanism before it scampered away into the night.

            Besides, nights like this had a foreboding nature about them.  She had heard stories lately of armed drug addicts bursting through emergency room doors of small hospitals elsewhere, and terrorizing the night staff as they rampaged to find something to get them high.  It was just safer to keep the doors locked.  The second someone called, they'd call the emergency staff, and unlock the doors, just like always.  So far, the scanner and telephone were silent.