The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (25 page)

In May, Becca went to prom with Kevin. It was everything she’d imagined. Silk gown, rose corsage.

Later that night at the Holiday Inn after the sex-sex was over, Becca said what she’d been thinking all night: “Do you want to still be together when you leave for college?”

“What?” Kevin lit a cigarette and clicked on the TV.

“When you go to college, do you still want to stay together?”

“Don’t be stupid. Yeah, I want to be with you. Florida isn’t California.” He squeezed her shoulder and blew a smoke ring.

They dated into the summer, disappointing the Whitby boys, private academy students Becca had entertained before snagging Kevin. The Whitby boys missed Becca’s ability to roll a quarter off the bridge of her nose into a shot glass. They missed her fair skin, her no-nonsense way of speaking. She said, “Sex is sex. People fuck it up, thinking it’s all tied up with love. It’s just sex.”

Becca told Carrie the same things. Their views sharply differed. Although Carrie had sex with her boyfriend, Mike, she was never going to be with another man. She thought sex had everything to do with love and guilt and all sorts of emotions. She said, “It’s about your soul. You’re giving a small part of your soul to someone else.”

“You should write greeting cards.”

“I’ve been with Mike since eighth grade. He’s part of me. We’ll get married. We’ll be together forever. We’ll share our lives. It’s a gift.”

“Seriously, you should write greeting cards.”

“I guess you’re only screwing Kevin now,” Carrie said. “You’re not fucking those Whitby boys?”

“Kevin’s not exactly into the free-love thing.”

“Go figure.”

Becca laughed.

The two friends spent less and less time together. Becca was always with Kevin, and Carrie was always with Mike.

The summer wore on, and Kevin prepared to leave for college. Becca started asking, “Is everything okay? Are you mad at me?” because the scribbled love notes he’d once written to her had stopped.

“If you’d stop asking me that question, I wouldn’t get so pissed.”

With three weeks until Kevin’s departure for the university, he pulled up in his Camaro. “I just waxed her.”

“She looks good. Do you want to drive the Z?”

“What did I just say? I just waxed my Camaro. We’ll go to the mall in my car. I hate it when you act like you’re better than me just because your dad has money.”

“I don’t do that.”

“Sure you do.”

Becca waited for him to unlock her car door so they could go to the mall. He needed new jeans for school.

She slung her canvas bag over her shoulder. In a new summer dress—orange and yellow daffodil print—Becca rocked heel to toe in her flip-flops. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. You seem mad.”

“I’m not fucking mad.”

Becca plotted what to say next, how to make peace, when her right arm began to ache. The hairs on her left arm stood up. She thought that she knew what was coming, but she didn’t have time to react. There hadn’t been any other warnings, no rain, no black clouds, but it didn’t matter. The world exploded. Blinded by whiteness, Becca fell into a thundering, furious abyss. The boom was deafening. The insides of her eyelids were white. The rest of her body disappeared inside the sparks.

Only after feeling gravel in her back and a prickling sensation in her toes did she understand that she hadn’t died. Her fingers tingled. Her head throbbed. She felt her heart beating erratically inside her chest. She was on the ground five feet from where she’d been standing before the strike. Kevin looked like an umpire standing over her. He said, “You’re bleeding.”

He pulled her up, brushing the gravel from her sundress and retrieving her blackened flip-flop. He handed it to her. He didn’t speak, and neither did she. In the strike, her dress straps had fallen off her shoulders. She put them in place. She smoothed the daffodil
print across her chest and stomach. Her hands felt strange, like they were disconnected from the rest of her. Picking bits of gravel from her arms and thighs, she turned from Kevin and opened the side door to her house. She left it open.

In the bathroom, she saw bright blood streaming from her left nostril onto her lip. It tasted warm and salty. Outside, a light rain fell.

Mary appeared in the mirror. She stood behind Becca, holding on to a charred flip-flop. “What happened?”

“I got struck by lightning again.”

“Are you sure?”

“I guess.”

“I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“Where’s Kevin?”

“He left.”

“He left?”

“He said something about going shopping.” Mary took Becca’s head into her hands. “You’re bleeding.”

Blood trickled from both nostrils now. “It’s just my nose, but I don’t feel good.”

“It’s not just your nose. It looks like you hit your head.”

Becca pulsated, feeling every beat of her heart. It was like she could feel the electric current traveling through her bloodstream.

Unlike the last time, she felt heavy, her feet like bricks. It was too difficult to move. She just stood there, feeling a sudden familiarity with death, like she’d died, feeling what Bo must have felt as the fire shot through his brain.

Becca’s mother drove the 280ZX to the emergency room. Becca did not remember the drive; nor did she remember the triage nurse who checked her pulse and blood pressure. Both were low. “Did you see the lightning strike her?” they asked Becca’s mom.

“No.”

“Was anyone with her?”

“A boy.”

The nurse examined a burn on Becca’s heel. “Maybe this is where the lightning exited.” She slipped her pink stethoscope into her pocket. “Or maybe she wasn’t struck by lightning. Could the boy have done something violent to her?”

“No!” Mary said. “You think he knocked her in the head and burned her foot?”

The nurse asked Becca, “How do you feel?”

Becca couldn’t talk. This time, unlike last time, the lightning stayed with her, pulsing and circling through her body. She felt confused, like if she tried to put words together, they’d be in the wrong order.
Was Kevin going shopping
?

“Do you know what day it is?” the nurse asked Becca.

No response.

“We’ll take her back now. We’ll get an IV started, and we’ll get that blood pressure up. She’s going to be fine. She’s probably just in shock.”

From her spot on the gurney, Becca recalled Claire’s trip to Farmville General. No one held Claire’s hand, but Claire had wanted to die. Becca’s mother held on to Becca’s hand. Becca suspected that she was squeezing her hand for reassurance, but Becca couldn’t feel the hand so good. Her hands were still disconnected from her brain.

There was a new nurse now. She was bubblier than the triage nurse. “We’re going to start her on some atropine. It should help her come around.”

“She could talk earlier,” Mary said, “right after it happened.”

“If she was struck by lightning, there’s no telling how the electricity is going to affect her.”

They put blood pressure cuffs on both of Becca’s arms. “Once we get her heart rate and blood pressure stabilized, we’ll run some tests.”

“What kinds of tests?” Mary asked. She stood in a white-walled room. Becca thought,
There are no windows, no lightning, no thunder, no rain
.

“The doctor will be in shortly.”

Mary blurted, “She was struck once before.”

The nurse turned around. “When?”

“I can’t remember. When she was little.”

Becca managed, “Time went backwards.”

The nurse left. This was the nurse’s first lightning strike. It was unexpected, difficult to decipher, and hard to treat—except for immediate symptoms like low blood pressure.

Mary sat in a chair at Becca’s side. There was a telephone on the wall, and she tried calling Rowan. No answer. Next she tried phoning Kevin Richfield to get a better account of what had happened to Becca, but he was apparently out clothes shopping.

Time passed slowly. Later that night, the doctor entered. He shook hands with Mary. Becca slept. “How does she seem?” he asked.

“Okay, I think. She’s talking some. She says she feels heavy, like a sack of flour. That’s what she said.”

He smiled. “You’d think we’d know something about lightning, but we don’t. I’m not going to lie to you. Mother Nature is our greatest mystery. There’s this surge of electricity entering and exiting the body, possibly affecting circulation, major organs, brain synapses … We don’t know. What we’re going to do is start with some tests.”

“What about her blood pressure?”

“That’s right where we want it to be.”

“What tests?”

“A blood panel, one tonight and one tomorrow, a CAT scan, X-rays, and an EKG. We’ll want to monitor her heart for the next twenty-four hours to make sure there’s no late onset of arrhythmia. Millions of volts of electricity have passed through your daughter’s body. We need to find out what kind of damage has occurred.” He lifted the sheet covering Becca’s feet, glancing at her heel, glossy with salve. “Most likely the exit wound.”

“That’s what they said.”

“You can wait in here while they start the tests, or you can go home. It’s up to you.”

“I’ll wait.” Mary tried to tell him about the other strike, the one when Becca was little, when they’d done nothing but laughed it off because “if you’d been struck by lightning, you’d be dead.” Apparently, that’s not the case.

“I didn’t formally introduce myself. I’m Dan—Dr. Dan Oberman.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“The best I can say is ‘I hope. I think.’ Everything looks good so far. She’s stabilized. Like I said, lightning is not science for us, at least not yet: It’s a guessing game. Rebecca’s young. She’s resilient. No allergies or health issues to speak of?”

“No,” Mary said. This would have been a good opportunity to mention the former strike, but she didn’t. She was embarrassed that they hadn’t taken her to the emergency room then, but Becca had seemed fine. She hadn’t been bleeding or anything.

Dr. Dan said, “One thing I can tell you: She got the initial bolt. Had it entered and exited her body through the same path, she wouldn’t be here now. She’d be dead or brain-dead. She’s fortunate. The return surge of electricity is the more powerful charge. Why it didn’t exit the way it entered, I don’t know. That was the path of least resistance.”

Mary said, “My mother’s dog died.”

Dr. Dan said, “Nurse April will come for Becca. She’ll draw blood in here—hopefully without waking her. The rest of the tests will be performed upstairs, and depending on her status, she’ll be placed in the cardiac unit. That’s our biggest concern right now, not knowing how her heart and vital organs were affected.”

After he left, Mary called Claire. She dialed long distance even though there was a note taped to the phone reading
NO OUTGOING LONG DISTANCE CALLS.
She didn’t even say “Claire” when Claire answered; she said, “Claire Bear.” She said, “I need you.”

Nurse April entered. “I’ll make sure they get you a cot once we’ve got her in a room.”

The next morning, Claire Bear arrived with the sun. Stick thin, she took three-minute smoke breaks. She seemed manic, which was no help to Mary, who felt downtrodden and sad. Mary explained, “Her boyfriend went clothes shopping while Becca underwent a battery of tests, while Becca almost died.”

They went outside to smoke.

Claire said, “I’m glad you called. I miss you.”

“Thanks for coming. I ought to call Carrie Drinkwater. She’ll want to be here.”

Within twenty-four hours, Becca’s IV was removed. Her pulse and blood pressure were normal. The tests revealed no damage to her internal organs, and after thirty-six hours in a foglike state, she began speaking lucidly, even enthusiastically.

There were flowers in her hospital room. She wanted to know if Kevin had sent them, but then she remembered his position on Hallmark and the gift-giving racket. Carrie had brought the flowers. She came every day to visit Becca, as did Becca’s father, who still doubted that she’d been struck by lightning. “I just find that hard to believe,” he said. “Maybe there was something wrong with Kevin’s car, some spark or something, and you got electrocuted.” Becca didn’t care what he said. She was glad that he had come.

Kevin telephoned, but he did not visit. He said, “Don’t take it personally, but hospitals give me the heebie-jeebies. There’s all those sick people.” He didn’t send a card, but she didn’t expect one. She was anxious to go home and get back to a normal life. Soon, Kevin would be gone and she wouldn’t see him until his fall break in October.

Because Becca suffered headaches requiring pain medication, Dr. Dan kept her in the hospital for a week. He wanted to make
sure the headaches—which he felt confident were a result of her fall—subsided.

Just shy of her sixth day in the cardiac unit, her head stopped aching. She took a walk down the hall, visiting with the nurses and rushing back to her room when she heard machines beeping, paddles rubbed together. Jolts of electricity administered to someone’s chest. A heart had stopped beating. She felt closer to death than ever before, and it was terrifying.

In 1981, Buckley dropped out of the University of Arkansas, not because his grades were poor, but because he didn’t fit in there. He couldn’t talk to anyone, and after the Martin Merriwether incident, the student body treated him as if he were a sideshow freak. The only people he actually spoke to were Dr. Jack (who was paid to listen) and the cafeteria cook, Mr. Schumacher, who—after the Martin Merriwether incident—said, “Boy, you is troubled. I’d get to a church or find a good woman or both.” Based on past experience, Buckley ignored Mr. Schumacher’s advice, leaving Arkansas forever.