Dear Ann (Part Five)

Dear Ann, Part Five :

I will now return to the narrative from where I left off, at the point where Howard Schaller was handcuffed by the reluctant policeman. I remember kneeling down on the pavement after that, to see if Lillian was okay. She was not, and in fact she had fainted as I mentioned previously. I have some vague recollections of people gathering around as I knelt next to her in the parking lot. One strong memory is of Terry's mother, standing a few feet away, looking down upon us. She must have remained in the parking lot after Lillian exited her car. She was very nervous as she stood there, seeing us on the ground and knowing that her son was part of the reason we were at the hospital in the first place. I will always remember what she said : "Someday you will be so happy"!

It seems like an unusual thing to blurt out, but that is what my mind retained from the memory of Terry's mother, hovering over Lillian and myself in the Northridge Hospital parking lot. She may have said it as part of a longer utterance, and I suppose it was just her way of "wishing us the best", seeing as how we were both down for the count at the present moment.

I have very vague memories of other people being on the scene, including Dave S. and his brother Gary. In 1998, when my Northridge Hospital memories were first coming bac  in detail, my recall of Dave and Gary being present was very strong. It has since faded, but I trust my first impressions, and in any case it makes sense that Dave might have gotten a call that night if he was involved in the Howard Schaller drug deal.

Those memories, of people appearing in the parking lot after the fact, are side issues. I only mention them, Ann, for the sake of completeness. As I stated earlier, nothing could be more important than to tell this story in full, right down to the most minor detail. This is what I am trying to do as far as my memory will allow me.

For many years, my memory became discontinuous after this point. I had an image of your sister and I sort of huddled on the asphalt of the parking lot, and there my recall ended. It wasn't until 2018, only last year, Ann, that I finally remembered that an ambulance was called for Lillian, too.

I thought and thought about it, and I remembered an image of Lillian being given oxygen, laying on a gurney just as I had been earlier in the evening. What brought this recall about was that I seemed to remember a substantial period of time passing before we finally left the parking lot, and as it turned out, this was because you had gotten out of the car and were very concerned about your sister.

You already had me in your charge and now Lillian needed medical attention as well. It took me 29 years to remember that she was taken away in an ambulance herself, but such are the complexities of amnesia, especially when it has been artificially and hypnotically induced. But I clearly remember that an extended period of time passed, because there was no way you were going to leave that parking lot until you knew that Lillian was being attended to by medical personnel.

My next memory is of being back in Mary's car, all four of us including you, Lys and myself. I can visualise us driving east on Rayen Street toward Rathburn Avenue. I may have been giving directions myself at that point, to guide Mary to my house. My guess is that you had no other option than to take me home following the debacle at Northridge Hospital. My memory is fairly strong, Ann, that we pulled up to my house, and you got out to see if anyone was home, but nobody answered the door. The house was silent and empty. At the time, it was likely that I was the only consistent occupant. My Dad had moved into his own apartment in March of 1989, my Mom was often staying at my sister's house in Santa Monica, babysitting her three year old son, and my brother Chris was rarely home and usually staying with his girlfriend in those days. Also, it was Labor Day weekend, a holiday. The house was dark.

To your great credit Ann, you refused to leave me there alone. Though I don't know you well, I can say that you are a nurse in the truest sense of the word. You must have felt a lot of pressure that night, but you never lost your composure. I remember you coming back to the car and saying that we couldn't leave me there, at the house, because nobody was home to look out for me. And so back on the road we went, in search of a solution, and this leads to one of the strongest memories I have of the entire night, the drive that we made back down Reseda Boulevard, heading south, after leaving my house at 9032 Rathburn Avenue.  /////

(to be continued tomorrow)