The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain [16]
She started up to the road, and I dived for the car. But all of a sudden, I found I didn't have any hat. I had to be in the car, and my hat had to be with me. I began clawing around for it.
The car was coming closer and closer. It was only two or three bends away, and I didn't have my hat yet, and I didn't have a mark on me. I gave up, and started for the car. Then I fell down. I had hooked my foot in it. I grabbed it, and jumped in. My weight no sooner went on the floor than it sank and I felt the car turning over on me. That was the last I knew for a while.
Next, I was on the ground, and there was a lot of yelling and talking going on around me. My left arm was shooting pain so bad I would yell every time I felt it, and so was my back. Inside my head was a bellow that would get big and go away again. When it did that the ground would fall away, and this stuff I had drunk would come up. I was there and I wasn't there, but I had sense enough to roll around and kick. There was sand on my clothes too, and there had to be a reason.
Next there was a screech in my ears, and I was in an ambulance. A state cop was at my feet, and a doctor was working on my arm. I went out again as soon as I saw it. It was running blood, and between the wrist and the elbow it was bent like a snapped twig. It was broke. When I came out of it again the doctor was still working on it, and I thought about my back. I wiggled my foot and looked at it to see if I was paralyzed. It moved.
The screech kept bringing me out of it, and I looked around, and saw the Greek. He was on the other bunk.
"Yay Nick."
Nobody said anything. I looked around some more, but I couldn't see anything of Cora.
After a while they stopped, and lifted out the Greek. I waited for them to lift me out, but they didn't. I knew he was really dead, then, and there wouldn't be any cock-eyed stuff this time, selling him a story about a cat. If they had taken us both out, it would be a hospital. But when they just took him out, it was a mortuary.
We went on, then, and when they stopped they lifted me out. They carried me in, and set the stretcher on a wheel table, and rolled me in a white room. Then they got ready to set my arm. They wheeled up a machine to give me gas for that, but then they had an argument. There was another doctor there by that time that said he was the jail physician, and the hospital doctors got pretty sore. I knew what it was about. It was those tests for being drunk. If they gave me the gas first, that would ball up the breath test, the most important one. The jail doctor went out, and made me blow through a glass pipe into some stuff that looked like water but turned yellow when I blew in it. Then he took some blood, and some other samples that he poured in bottles through a funnel. Then they gave me the gas.
When I began to come out of it I was in a room, in bed, and my head was all covered with bandages, and so was my arm, with a sling besides, and my back was all strapped up with adhesive tape so I could hardly move. A state cop was there, reading the morning paper. My head ached like hell, and so did my back, and my arm had shooting pains in it. After a while a nurse came in and gave me a pill, and I went to sleep.
When I woke up it was about noon, and they gave me something to eat. Then two more cops came in, and they put me on a stretcher again, and took me down and put me in another ambulance.
"Where we going?"
"Inquest."
"Inquest. That's what they have when somebody's dead, ain't it."
"That's right."
"I was afraid they'd got it."
"Only one."
"Which?"
"The man."
"Oh. Was the woman bad hurt?"
"Not bad."
"Looks pretty bad for me, don't it?"
"Watch out there, buddy. It's O.K. with us if you want to talk, but anything you say may fall back in your lap when you get to court."
"That's right. Thanks."
When we stopped it was in front of a undertaker shop in Hollywood, and they carried me in. Cora was there, pretty battered up. She had on a blouse that the police matron had lent her, and it puffed out around her belly like it