A Modern Jack and Jill
The beginning
Dear reader,
I have a stupendous story to tell. For reasons of privacy, I change the names of the characters; these incidents are actual and to the point. Some is total fiction but mostly, this ghastly story is possible to occur. If one understands the true beauty of ‘to trust thy neighbor rather than thyself’ and ‘one can handle thy enemies but not thy friends’. Well… we will see what you believe and what you don’t by the end of this walk of memories.
---
She was in a dark green Dodge Taurus on her way back home from college. The sun was setting on route 80, as this college student crossed the Connecticut / Massachusetts boarder, when her phone rang. Taking up her head set, she pressed the ‘talk’ button, answering, “Yea-hello.”
“Hey, Sandrine. What’s up?”
“Yasmine! Hey, sorry I didn’t recognize your cell number. But um, yeah, just driving home, you know.”
“Huh, well I’m home. That’s the perks of going to UMASS Amherst. Are you on the headset?”
“Yeah.. Why?”
“Just like your dad.”
“Yup, just like daddy dearest.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. He could be dead for all I know. Oh yea, I thought about asking you something a long time ago, junior year in high school. What do you think er… how do you suppose my life will turn out?”
“Knowing the men you obsess over, no doubt you will marry, but it probably won’t be ‘happily ever after’. Like you’ll have kids but… I don’t know, I mean I’m not psychic! How do you suppose my life will turn out?”
“I think that if you do wind up marrying someone, you’ll prolly meet them through work. Wait. That sounds so cliché. Sorry.”
“Meh, just as long as it’s not Jon.” Yasmine chucked out
They laughed and chatted a smidgen longer and had to hang up. Sandrine, being close to home and liable to loose connection, and Yasmine had to do homework. Sandrine drove quicker now that all distractions were gone from her attention. She turned into her drive way and drove up the sand and stone road. Dragging in her stuff, she pushed her way into the house.
Like most college students who didn’t party hard, play on the teams or dated any of the players on the teams, she went over to the computer and surfed the net. However, unlike most students, she had two horses to feed; everyday at four-thirty she went out to feed. Usually as she came in her brother, Bubba, went out to water. Being a senior at BHS made him more arrogant or self centered, he had a tendency to have a higher boiling point.
Bubba came back in mad as a hatter, Sandrine, being on the computer had no idea why, so she sat there minding her own business. She heard a crash, sounding like glass but, not wanting to get too hurt, she left him alone. Then something split, her sibling growled in frustration, so that’s when she entered. “A-are you ok?”
“What does it look like?”
“S-sorry, just asking.”
“Well don’t be so stupid.” Said with sarcasm so thick it was suffocating.
<now, dear reader, usually the word stupid is just as casual as homework. In this household, when you are called stupid, you are belittled.>
Sandrine, becoming pissed, “You know, why are you such a dickhead?! What’s wrong with you? You want to grow up like dad? Be alone?”
“You know what, Sandi, go to hell!”
“Fine, I will!” with that, she took up a piece of the broken glass she had heard minutes before break and she stabbed it threw her left wrist.
Bubba turned around just as Sandrine fell to the floor in an ocean of red. He gasped, dove for the phone, and dialed 911.
“Belchertown police department.”
“Help my sister is bleeding!”
“How bad, sir?”
“Profusely! Please send someone quick!”
“Where are you, sir?”
“ 641 Federal Street . Please her pulse is slowing!”
“Sir, help is on the way but I need you to stay on the line with me, is she conscious?”
“No, she’s out cold.”
“Sir, I’d like you to tie cloth around her wrist to help clot the blood.”
“I can’t, she’s got glass in her arm!”
“Oh my god.” The receptionist switched to the CB to radio into the ambulance,
“Guys, this one has glass in her arm, hurry NOW!” going back to Bubba, she said,
“Don’t worry, sir, help’s coming quickly.”
“Yeah, they’re here.”
“Ok, you’re going to hang up with me and do whatever the paramedics tell you to do, ok.”
“OK,” he hung up, just as the men busted threw the door with a stretcher.
“Sir, move. We need to get her to a hospital quickly. What’s your relation to this lady?” the paramedics put Sandrine on the stretcher and asked for quick information.
“Sandrine, she’s my sister.”
“How old is she?”
“22.”
“And you sir?”
“17 almost 18”
“Ok, thank you for your co-operation and help. Your sister will be alright.”
As the ambulance was about to go down the driveway, Bubba and Sandrine’s mother pulled in. “What’s going on?”
“Ma’am, your daughter needs medical care, please we need to hurry.”
Dedrie, their mother, moved her car to allow the medics some passage, she sped up the drive and turned her car around, screaming, “Bubba, get in the car!”
He came out in tears, and got in.
Dedrie put the car in drive, and followed the ambulance to Bay State Medical Center . On the way there, Bubba spilt the beans on what happened.
Sandrine was put into the intensive care unit because she lost a great amount of blood, as well as the glass floating around her body. It was a three hour procedure; taking x-rays, the operation, and sewing her arm back up. She had to stay in the ICU for twenty-four hours incase of infection.
Her room did have a window so Dedrie and Bubba could look in to see her. Dedrie shook her head, ‘born to have tubes attached and die to have tubes attached’.
The doctor came over, “Ms. Beech?”
“Yes?”
“After surgical removal of the glass shards, your daughter will be okay and sent home within the next three weeks.”
“Three weeks!?”
“Well, seeing how big her record is…”
“Excuse me, Dr Harvard, how big my daughter’s record is, is no matter concerning her condition as of now. And you have no business assuming that my daughter having a large file is a call out for attention. She was a sick little girl.”
“Well, none the less, we still with to have her undergo a psychiatrist.”
“Heal her and send her back!” with that said, Dedrie had nothing else to say to the arrogant college student asshole that called himself a ‘doctor’.
The doctor stiffened at the ‘cold shoulder’ treatment that was inflicted upon him, so he turned on his Calvin Kline heel and left. “Cocky bastard.” Dedrie muttered. Silently she said a prayer, the Hail Mary, asking for quick recovery and forgiveness for her swearing.
In the closed room, Sandrine smiled that moment, although she wasn’t in a coma, it was a deep sleep. Most would consider that moment a coincident but knowing this mother, it was a miracle. Small, miss able, almost mom-existent, but Dedrie saw that slight twitch of the mouth, no doubt that there would be hell to pay but for now, she knew her baby was safe.
---
For the next three days, Sandrine slept. She slept like there was no tomorrow, but of course, as inevitable as the course of the moon, tomorrow always came. On the third week, she awoke on the third day around twelve thirty on a Wednesday afternoon; the first thing that came out of Sandrine’s mouth was, “Bubba! Momma!”
A nurse came in to check on her, “Hello pumpkin, you finally woke up! That’s good to hear. Your mom and brother aren’t here right now but Dr. Nickles will see you.”
“I don’t want to talk to him, I want Bubba! I need to talk to him. NOW!”
“Sorry dearie…”
“No! You aren’t sorry, don’t say it if you don’t mean it! Now, get me a phone and get out!”
“Yes ma’am.” She left the room and went out to call for Dr. Nickles, the psychiatrist. She gave him a cordless phone, pointed to room 205, and ousted, “There she is, the little darkangel of 205. She wants a phone so, there ya be. Good luck!”
Dr. Nickles raised an eyebrow at the nurse, but walked away with the phone in hand. He knocked then entered, “The nurse said you wanted a phone?”
“Yeah, can I have it please?”
Dr. Nickles handed over the phone, “Who are you calling?”
“Bubba.”
He was about to ask another question but Sandrine had put the phone to her ear. Knowing that most people, including himself, hate being interrupted while on the phone, he thought it better to talk once she hung up. Sandrine used her ‘nice and polite’ voice he noticed and she spoke to her brother for a few minutes. The doctor zoned out for listening in on other’s phone conversations was a big no-no in his book.
When she hung up, he took back the phone, “You know your mother will be here. She comes in everyday.”
“Yes, I thought as much, she loves us, I’m her girl, Bubba’s her boy.”
“Sandrine, why did you stab yourself?”
Sandrine looked out the window, “It’s Miss Beech, please.”
“Sorry, Miss Beech, but why? What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m only here to help.”
“Ok, then help by leaving me alone.”
Dr. Nickles shook his head and left her alone. She looked at her bedside table expecting to see a remote but instead she found paper and a pen. She took up the pen and paper and wrote Yasmine, Adrien, her boyfriend; and her family notes. After they were finished she tucked them under the sheets.
That night her mom and brother came to visit. They chatted for a while and Sandrine was informed that Adrien would be stopping by next week Friday. After a while, they left and said that they would be back soon, as Sandi went back to sleep.
That’s how the next week went, eat, sleep, until next Friday. Adrien came finally that Friday, about three o’clock . Sandrine was getting her arm bandages cut to be changed. The same pigheaded doctor and too honey dipped nurse were bandaging up her arm. Adrien came to the door hearing, “Now, your arm’s all scratched up from the glass. You’ll be nothing but a gargoyle to society.”
“Yeah, and you are an idiotic dumb-fuck. Plus, all I’ll have is some scars.”
She looked to the door way and saw Adrien, her face softened but hardened looking back at the doctor, “Go.”
The doctor and nurse left and Sandrine hid under her covers.
Adrien asked, “Sandi, what are you doing?”
“Pretending I’m dead.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“W…Why’d you do this? What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat in silence, but after a while Adrien got up, “Well, since we have nothing else to say, I’m going. See you.”
“Ok, I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah, sure.” He was at the door and turned his head 90 degrees about to look at her but thought better of it to walk away and not look back.
Sandrine rolled her eyes, after he left, she mumbled mockingly, “Yeah, sure.”
Night came and the nurse did the usual night rounds when Sandrine took out the pen and stabbed holes in the sheets. She tied them together, tied them to the window pane, and climbed down to the cement canopy. She jumped the rest of the way down onto the pavement and ran out of the hospital’s vicinity. She ran to an office building and asked to borrow a phone and phone book. Sandi flipped through and found a taxi service; she rang in and asked for a ride home. She waited for about ten minutes until the cab showed up then she hopped in the car. The college student drove her to her residence and told him to wait out at the end of the driveway. Sandi ran up the driveway, walked in the house silently, ran up the stairs to her room, grabbed her money and ran back out of the house.
She told the kid to drive her to the boarder. She paid the guy then started to walk. She walked all night until she came to a rest stop. She walked in, ate a cinnamon bun, used the bathroom, bought deodorant, and then left. She walked right straight out onto the side of the highway and walked for about a mile.
A big purple van pulled up on the side of the highway, “Hey, need a lift?” some hippie woman asked.
Going with her gut instinct, Sandrine said, “Yes, thanks.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Out west or at least down south.”
“Well hop on it!”
Sandrine smiled and happily obliged. The hippie woman had another friend in the back, her sister. These two believed in the whole ‘save the earth and its creatures’, but, they did use deodorant and perfume so it wouldn’t smell like major BO and they did take showers at lease once every two weeks.
They were headed down to Georgia and Sandrine was most welcome to tag along. They had a small condo for when they didn’t want to travel. They also told her that she could stay there as long as she pleased. Sandi was overjoyed at the thought of a place to stay, so all she had to work for is clothes to put on her back and food to keep her going.
They arrived at the condo around 9 am . It was a nice quiet peaceful place, which was something new to Sandrine, her whole life was chaos. Since they had been driving all day and night, the three women went to sleep.
I have a stupendous story to tell. For reasons of privacy, I change the names of the characters; these incidents are actual and to the point. Some is total fiction but mostly, this ghastly story is possible to occur. If one understands the true beauty of ‘to trust thy neighbor rather than thyself’ and ‘one can handle thy enemies but not thy friends’. Well… we will see what you believe and what you don’t by the end of this walk of memories.
---
She was in a dark green Dodge Taurus on her way back home from college. The sun was setting on route 80, as this college student crossed the Connecticut / Massachusetts boarder, when her phone rang. Taking up her head set, she pressed the ‘talk’ button, answering, “Yea-hello.”
“Hey, Sandrine. What’s up?”
“Yasmine! Hey, sorry I didn’t recognize your cell number. But um, yeah, just driving home, you know.”
“Huh, well I’m home. That’s the perks of going to UMASS Amherst. Are you on the headset?”
“Yeah.. Why?”
“Just like your dad.”
“Yup, just like daddy dearest.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know. He could be dead for all I know. Oh yea, I thought about asking you something a long time ago, junior year in high school. What do you think er… how do you suppose my life will turn out?”
“Knowing the men you obsess over, no doubt you will marry, but it probably won’t be ‘happily ever after’. Like you’ll have kids but… I don’t know, I mean I’m not psychic! How do you suppose my life will turn out?”
“I think that if you do wind up marrying someone, you’ll prolly meet them through work. Wait. That sounds so cliché. Sorry.”
“Meh, just as long as it’s not Jon.” Yasmine chucked out
They laughed and chatted a smidgen longer and had to hang up. Sandrine, being close to home and liable to loose connection, and Yasmine had to do homework. Sandrine drove quicker now that all distractions were gone from her attention. She turned into her drive way and drove up the sand and stone road. Dragging in her stuff, she pushed her way into the house.
Like most college students who didn’t party hard, play on the teams or dated any of the players on the teams, she went over to the computer and surfed the net. However, unlike most students, she had two horses to feed; everyday at four-thirty she went out to feed. Usually as she came in her brother, Bubba, went out to water. Being a senior at BHS made him more arrogant or self centered, he had a tendency to have a higher boiling point.
Bubba came back in mad as a hatter, Sandrine, being on the computer had no idea why, so she sat there minding her own business. She heard a crash, sounding like glass but, not wanting to get too hurt, she left him alone. Then something split, her sibling growled in frustration, so that’s when she entered. “A-are you ok?”
“What does it look like?”
“S-sorry, just asking.”
“Well don’t be so stupid.” Said with sarcasm so thick it was suffocating.
<now, dear reader, usually the word stupid is just as casual as homework. In this household, when you are called stupid, you are belittled.>
Sandrine, becoming pissed, “You know, why are you such a dickhead?! What’s wrong with you? You want to grow up like dad? Be alone?”
“You know what, Sandi, go to hell!”
“Fine, I will!” with that, she took up a piece of the broken glass she had heard minutes before break and she stabbed it threw her left wrist.
Bubba turned around just as Sandrine fell to the floor in an ocean of red. He gasped, dove for the phone, and dialed 911.
“Belchertown police department.”
“Help my sister is bleeding!”
“How bad, sir?”
“Profusely! Please send someone quick!”
“Where are you, sir?”
“ 641 Federal Street . Please her pulse is slowing!”
“Sir, help is on the way but I need you to stay on the line with me, is she conscious?”
“No, she’s out cold.”
“Sir, I’d like you to tie cloth around her wrist to help clot the blood.”
“I can’t, she’s got glass in her arm!”
“Oh my god.” The receptionist switched to the CB to radio into the ambulance,
“Guys, this one has glass in her arm, hurry NOW!” going back to Bubba, she said,
“Don’t worry, sir, help’s coming quickly.”
“Yeah, they’re here.”
“Ok, you’re going to hang up with me and do whatever the paramedics tell you to do, ok.”
“OK,” he hung up, just as the men busted threw the door with a stretcher.
“Sir, move. We need to get her to a hospital quickly. What’s your relation to this lady?” the paramedics put Sandrine on the stretcher and asked for quick information.
“Sandrine, she’s my sister.”
“How old is she?”
“22.”
“And you sir?”
“17 almost 18”
“Ok, thank you for your co-operation and help. Your sister will be alright.”
As the ambulance was about to go down the driveway, Bubba and Sandrine’s mother pulled in. “What’s going on?”
“Ma’am, your daughter needs medical care, please we need to hurry.”
Dedrie, their mother, moved her car to allow the medics some passage, she sped up the drive and turned her car around, screaming, “Bubba, get in the car!”
He came out in tears, and got in.
Dedrie put the car in drive, and followed the ambulance to Bay State Medical Center . On the way there, Bubba spilt the beans on what happened.
Sandrine was put into the intensive care unit because she lost a great amount of blood, as well as the glass floating around her body. It was a three hour procedure; taking x-rays, the operation, and sewing her arm back up. She had to stay in the ICU for twenty-four hours incase of infection.
Her room did have a window so Dedrie and Bubba could look in to see her. Dedrie shook her head, ‘born to have tubes attached and die to have tubes attached’.
The doctor came over, “Ms. Beech?”
“Yes?”
“After surgical removal of the glass shards, your daughter will be okay and sent home within the next three weeks.”
“Three weeks!?”
“Well, seeing how big her record is…”
“Excuse me, Dr Harvard, how big my daughter’s record is, is no matter concerning her condition as of now. And you have no business assuming that my daughter having a large file is a call out for attention. She was a sick little girl.”
“Well, none the less, we still with to have her undergo a psychiatrist.”
“Heal her and send her back!” with that said, Dedrie had nothing else to say to the arrogant college student asshole that called himself a ‘doctor’.
The doctor stiffened at the ‘cold shoulder’ treatment that was inflicted upon him, so he turned on his Calvin Kline heel and left. “Cocky bastard.” Dedrie muttered. Silently she said a prayer, the Hail Mary, asking for quick recovery and forgiveness for her swearing.
In the closed room, Sandrine smiled that moment, although she wasn’t in a coma, it was a deep sleep. Most would consider that moment a coincident but knowing this mother, it was a miracle. Small, miss able, almost mom-existent, but Dedrie saw that slight twitch of the mouth, no doubt that there would be hell to pay but for now, she knew her baby was safe.
---
For the next three days, Sandrine slept. She slept like there was no tomorrow, but of course, as inevitable as the course of the moon, tomorrow always came. On the third week, she awoke on the third day around twelve thirty on a Wednesday afternoon; the first thing that came out of Sandrine’s mouth was, “Bubba! Momma!”
A nurse came in to check on her, “Hello pumpkin, you finally woke up! That’s good to hear. Your mom and brother aren’t here right now but Dr. Nickles will see you.”
“I don’t want to talk to him, I want Bubba! I need to talk to him. NOW!”
“Sorry dearie…”
“No! You aren’t sorry, don’t say it if you don’t mean it! Now, get me a phone and get out!”
“Yes ma’am.” She left the room and went out to call for Dr. Nickles, the psychiatrist. She gave him a cordless phone, pointed to room 205, and ousted, “There she is, the little darkangel of 205. She wants a phone so, there ya be. Good luck!”
Dr. Nickles raised an eyebrow at the nurse, but walked away with the phone in hand. He knocked then entered, “The nurse said you wanted a phone?”
“Yeah, can I have it please?”
Dr. Nickles handed over the phone, “Who are you calling?”
“Bubba.”
He was about to ask another question but Sandrine had put the phone to her ear. Knowing that most people, including himself, hate being interrupted while on the phone, he thought it better to talk once she hung up. Sandrine used her ‘nice and polite’ voice he noticed and she spoke to her brother for a few minutes. The doctor zoned out for listening in on other’s phone conversations was a big no-no in his book.
When she hung up, he took back the phone, “You know your mother will be here. She comes in everyday.”
“Yes, I thought as much, she loves us, I’m her girl, Bubba’s her boy.”
“Sandrine, why did you stab yourself?”
Sandrine looked out the window, “It’s Miss Beech, please.”
“Sorry, Miss Beech, but why? What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m only here to help.”
“Ok, then help by leaving me alone.”
Dr. Nickles shook his head and left her alone. She looked at her bedside table expecting to see a remote but instead she found paper and a pen. She took up the pen and paper and wrote Yasmine, Adrien, her boyfriend; and her family notes. After they were finished she tucked them under the sheets.
That night her mom and brother came to visit. They chatted for a while and Sandrine was informed that Adrien would be stopping by next week Friday. After a while, they left and said that they would be back soon, as Sandi went back to sleep.
That’s how the next week went, eat, sleep, until next Friday. Adrien came finally that Friday, about three o’clock . Sandrine was getting her arm bandages cut to be changed. The same pigheaded doctor and too honey dipped nurse were bandaging up her arm. Adrien came to the door hearing, “Now, your arm’s all scratched up from the glass. You’ll be nothing but a gargoyle to society.”
“Yeah, and you are an idiotic dumb-fuck. Plus, all I’ll have is some scars.”
She looked to the door way and saw Adrien, her face softened but hardened looking back at the doctor, “Go.”
The doctor and nurse left and Sandrine hid under her covers.
Adrien asked, “Sandi, what are you doing?”
“Pretending I’m dead.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“W…Why’d you do this? What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
They sat in silence, but after a while Adrien got up, “Well, since we have nothing else to say, I’m going. See you.”
“Ok, I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah, sure.” He was at the door and turned his head 90 degrees about to look at her but thought better of it to walk away and not look back.
Sandrine rolled her eyes, after he left, she mumbled mockingly, “Yeah, sure.”
Night came and the nurse did the usual night rounds when Sandrine took out the pen and stabbed holes in the sheets. She tied them together, tied them to the window pane, and climbed down to the cement canopy. She jumped the rest of the way down onto the pavement and ran out of the hospital’s vicinity. She ran to an office building and asked to borrow a phone and phone book. Sandi flipped through and found a taxi service; she rang in and asked for a ride home. She waited for about ten minutes until the cab showed up then she hopped in the car. The college student drove her to her residence and told him to wait out at the end of the driveway. Sandi ran up the driveway, walked in the house silently, ran up the stairs to her room, grabbed her money and ran back out of the house.
She told the kid to drive her to the boarder. She paid the guy then started to walk. She walked all night until she came to a rest stop. She walked in, ate a cinnamon bun, used the bathroom, bought deodorant, and then left. She walked right straight out onto the side of the highway and walked for about a mile.
A big purple van pulled up on the side of the highway, “Hey, need a lift?” some hippie woman asked.
Going with her gut instinct, Sandrine said, “Yes, thanks.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Out west or at least down south.”
“Well hop on it!”
Sandrine smiled and happily obliged. The hippie woman had another friend in the back, her sister. These two believed in the whole ‘save the earth and its creatures’, but, they did use deodorant and perfume so it wouldn’t smell like major BO and they did take showers at lease once every two weeks.
They were headed down to Georgia and Sandrine was most welcome to tag along. They had a small condo for when they didn’t want to travel. They also told her that she could stay there as long as she pleased. Sandi was overjoyed at the thought of a place to stay, so all she had to work for is clothes to put on her back and food to keep her going.
They arrived at the condo around 9 am . It was a nice quiet peaceful place, which was something new to Sandrine, her whole life was chaos. Since they had been driving all day and night, the three women went to sleep.