7. Nicola
Nicola
It’s the ring of my cell phone that wakes me, pulls me back. Nubia. I don’t have time to answer. My hands shakily reject the call. Checking the time—I always check the time—I realize it’s been about ten minutes. Shit.
Oh yes, and I got fired, didn’t I? The reminder is quick and harsh, the pull of nails over my skin.
Traipsing to my car in the employee parking lot, I remember the roughness of the security guards, the way they threw me out without question, without much warning. The way he appeared and almost hit me.
Almost, I think bitterly. I suppose that’s an improvement from the last time.
I get to my car and drive straight to see Dr. Constance in the high-rise building on Wilshire. When I arrive, I don’t bother sitting down in the waiting room and go straight to her office. Silvia, the gray-haired assistant, runs after me, calling my name.
Dr. Constance is on the phone when I burst into her office.
She looks up, mildly concerned but not alarmed, and gives a wave to Silvia, signaling it’s okay that I’m here.
Reluctantly, she leaves. I take a seat and realize I’m breathing heavily.
Sweat has formed across my brow. I shut my eyes and hold my head for a moment, trying to relieve the pressure in my skull.
“I’ll have to call you back,” she says, staring at me, and hangs up. “Well, this is a surprise.” Dr. Constance pauses, waiting for me to elaborate.
“I saw the man. The driver,” I blurt. “I know who he is.”
For a moment, Dr. Constance looks alarmed. Then her quiet composure returns. “You seem very upset, Nicola. Let’s take a few deep breaths together.”
“Did you hear what I just said?” I demand. “I saw him! I saw his car. He drives the same white Rolls-Royce. The Wraith!”
Dr. Constance nods and listens for a moment. She makes some notes in her file. “You’re saying you believe you saw the man who hit you?”
I sit forward in my seat, a thread of frustration climbing into my chest. “Yes.”
“How do you know it is the same car, the same man?” Constance replies, her voice steady.
I pause, my voice catching in my throat. How do I? How do I?
“I just know it. It’s the same car.” I feel suddenly desperate and at a loss. “It’s him,” I repeat, aware of my voice breaking. Tears start to form, and I try to suppress them. “The shoes …” I say helplessly. How to explain something so simple that I feel, that I know in my bones to be true?
Dr. Constance writes something, and I think I see the word irrational upside down. “You know the police don’t have a record of what color or make the car was. No one saw it, and no one saw the driver either, remember?”
I slam my fist on her desk, my voice growing angry. “I saw it!”
Her head tilts to the side. “But Nicola, you yourself told me only in our last session that you don’t remember everything from that day, do you?”
“I—” my voice falters. “I don’t remember everything,” I admit. “But I know it’s the same car. It has the same emblem, the lady with wings.” My hand finds the scar beneath my shirt and feels the indentation in my skin. “And he—the way he drove, his mannerisms, everything … it’s him!”
Dr. Constance shakes her head. “Nicola, we’ve talked about this. Your anger and eagerness to place blame are understandable. This is part of your PTSD, remember?”
“That’s not what this is,” I tell her.
“Oh? Then what is it, Nicola? You tell me. What is happening here?”
“What’s happening is the driver is out there, scot-free, and someone needs to do something about it. We’re suffering, and he’s not. He just goes on and on, living his life like nothing has happened. No consequence, no nothing.”
“What kind of consequence would you like to see?”
I know what she’s really asking. It’s the same question, asked another way to gauge my level of rage, my volatility. And of course, how bad my PTSD might be getting. Yet I still can’t help it when my voice rises, and my hands slam down against the surface of her desk, hard. “I want him to pay!”
Dr. Constance nods once and starts scribbling something down on a pad of paper.
“The panic attacks are getting worse,” she says flatly.
“We can no longer rely on therapy alone to deal with them and your PTSD.” She tears off the paper and hands me the sheet.
“I’m going to recommend some medication.
Take this when you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed or upset.
Or angry. You don’t take it every day. Do you understand? ”
I look at the paper, the writing almost unreadable, but I know what it is. Diazepam. The generic for Valium. “I’m not taking any more drugs,” I tell her.
“It will make you feel better.” Dr. Constance sighs. “You need to work on being honest about the things that you feel, Nicola. You must learn how to express your grief and your anger in healthy ways. Otherwise, your emotions will control you, and you’ll never heal from this.”
“I am being honest right now,” I say under my breath. “But you don’t believe me.”
I begin to cry, hot moisture gathering in the corners of my eyes. I steady my gaze and let it burn away, rage searing up from within like a firestorm.
“Take the medication,” she instructs me. “You’ll feel better.”
Outside the window, the street is flooded with sunshine. A woman runs to her bus stop, arms waving, bags trailing. The bus rolls on and leaves her behind.
As I get up to leave, I glimpse Dr. Constance’s notes on my case, all in pencil, barely legible. A few words come into focus in the center of the page, bigger than the others. “Recommend further psychiatric treatment.”
Outside the office, I throw the prescription in the trash, then dart to the elevators to the seventh floor.
When I get there, I make my way into the sleek waiting room, full of steel and glass. I can already feel the familiar migraine pain moving into my right temple. I press my finger against it to feel the coursing pressure mounting. Very soon, it will take over, and I will be …
On your back.
Pounding.
Vomiting.
Take a pill.
I grab an Imitrex and swallow it dry, the bitterness catching in my throat and making me gag.
When the secretary isn’t watching, I nip back to the hallways of offices, black name plates on the doors.
When I open the door to Steve’s office, I’m struck by the smell: Chinese food and dirty socks, which is exactly what I see.
His feet are propped up next to case files and an open container of takeout in his hands. My stomach lurches.
Steve bats his hand at me without looking up. “Not now, Jonel. Gimme ten.”
My throat clears involuntarily. “It’s me.”
He jerks his head up and bolts to his feet. “Mrs. Holiday! How are you? Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I say, irritated. “I don’t have an appointment, Steve. But I do have a breakthrough in our case.
He laughs and smiles at me, wide and flat, like he doesn’t believe me. “Mrs. Holiday, I’m sure you do, but you can’t just—”
Maybe it’s the Imitrex taking hold, but for a moment, I really don’t care what I say or do next. I feel myself unspooling.
“I saw him, Steve. I saw the guy who hit us. It’s him. We need to get the police involved and file a new report.”
A quizzical look comes over him. “How do you know it was him? Do you have proof?”
How to prove it? Same goddamned question. I know because I know. “It’s him. He drives the same car—it’s that white Rolls-Royce.”
He sniffs and wipes his mouth with a balled-up napkin. “You told the police you didn’t see what kind of car it was. Remember?”
I don’t.
“Put your investigator on this.”
“I could put my investigator on it, but we’d be racking up hours, and that’s going to cost you.”
“I’ll get the money.”
He sighs, visibly frustrated. “It’s not just that. We don’t have anything to go on. No plate number, no description of the driver. No witnesses. You remembered the car, but so what? This is LA. There are plenty of Rolls-Royces around here.”
“But it’s not just a Rolls-Royce. It’s a white Wraith, okay? And besides, I know where he lives.”
Steve waves his hands like he doesn’t want me to say anymore. “Mrs. Holiday, I can assure you that we are doing everything we can. And I can’t just bring on an investigator without some sort of retainer.”
“How much are we talking about?”
A look of surprise forms on his face. “Ten grand should buy you a couple of weeks.”
Where am I supposed to get that kind of money?
The sparkle of my wedding ring glitters under the false light.
I consider for a moment and then dismiss the idea.
“My husband was killed, and the man who did it has not been charged with a crime. I know who it is now, so why can’t you pursue this?
Isn’t wrongful death enough of a payout? ”
“We have no evidence against this person you say that you saw. You don’t have a wrongful death case if you don’t have a defendant and evidence against said defendant.”
“What about suing the city?”
He folds his arms defensively. “You want to sue the City of Beverly Hills for the wrongful death of your husband?”
“Whatever it takes.”
He shakes his head. “I told you before, I can’t open a suit like that on contingency. You’d actually have to pay me something.”
I started pacing, unable to contain my frustration. “I can get you the money, but I need you to start on this. Every moment we lose …” My voice trails off. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.
Steve stares at me concernedly. “Look. Let us do our job and file the personal injury claim. We’ll get you some money, more money from the insurance, but these things take time.”
“Please.” My voice falters, and a low sob escapes me. “Please. I just need to know that I’m not crazy. Because I’m not crazy. Tell me I’m not crazy, Steve.”
Steve sighs and shakes his head. He reaches below the desk and pulls out a file with a manila envelope sticking out. “I wasn’t going to show you this because it doesn’t prove anything.”
He hands it to me. I fumble with the envelope and remove a single printed photograph.
“The driver ran through a red light, and the camera snapped this.”
For a moment, I cannot believe what I’m seeing. The emblem at the front—the lady with wings—glints with the flash of the camera.
“It’s a white Rolls-Royce,” I mutter, my voice faint. “It’s the Wraith.”
“Yep,” Steve answers.
It’s there, black and white, the image of the driver, a faint dark shadow behind the windshield. The face is totally obscured, as is the license plate.
“Normally, you’d get a plate number in a photo like this, and the city would mail a ticket to the driver,” Steve tells me. “There was one of those illegal security films over the plate, though, so the camera didn’t pick it up.”
I nod, my eyes fixated on the dark shadow behind the windshield. I stare into it, trying to make out any detail, but there’s nothing. Beside the driver is another figure, but smaller, more obscured. The whiff of a single arm visible. A female, perhaps?
There’s a small date and time stamp in the corner. It was taken just minutes before the accident. “Where was this taken?”
“Sunset and Crescent,” Steve says. “Same area, around the same time, but police dismissed it. No plate. No name. No address.” Steve sighs. “We’re back to square one.”
“No,” I answer. “We’re not.”
Steve looks at me curiously. “Mrs. Holiday, it doesn’t prove anything because the car wasn’t at the scene. This was blocks away. And we have no driver. Do you understand? It’s not proof of anything.”
My eyes scan the photo, disbelieving. “Yes, I understand,” I tell him. “But it’s proof that there was a reckless driver in the same area, at the same time, with the same car.”
Steve just stares at me apologetically. “It isn’t proof that this car hit you,” he repeats.
But it could be the beginning of proof. “What if I can get it?”
He sits back down, defeated. “Look. You’ve been through a lot. Just let me take care of the insurance claim and go live your life. Can you do that?”
“I have a kid, Steve. She’s fourteen. We lost our house, our car, her college fund—everything—to pay for her medical bills and mine. How exactly are we supposed to live our lives?”
He sighs, at a loss. No therapy here. No pills to numb the pain. “We’re doing all we can,” he says.
This line gets repeated to me everywhere I go these days. Doctors and nurses, attorneys and secretaries. And it’s always, without question, a big fat lie. No one is doing all they can. Absolutely no one.
“But you won’t help me? You won’t investigate this any further?”
Steve shrugs. “My hands are tied, Mrs. Holiday. Please understand.”
On the surface, I may appear calm, but inside, I’m raging. “Can I keep this?” I ask him. He nods, and as I pocket the photo, the room starts to spin. I steady myself on the corner of the desk.
“Mrs. Holiday? Are you all right?”
Overhead, the stark white lights flicker. The sickly scent of Chinese food returns, and the air in the room feels close. I can hardly get a breath. My legs start to buckle as the voice returns to me.
See? No one’s going to help you. Why don’t you let me, Nicola?
“No,” I hear myself say, my voice barely a whisper. “I can’t, I can’t.”
My stomach rolls as a thumping returns to my skull.
A sudden wave of disgust rises within me.
All of us consume each other like cannibals, I realize.
No wonder Emmy went vegan. We buy big fancy cars so we can drive fast on big fancy roads, fueled by our booze and our oversized plates of dead animal flesh.
We barrel down our well-paved roads and our well-lit streets reserved for certain kinds of people in certain kinds of houses and take our turns crawling into our oversized California king-sized beds when we’re done with it all.
Except, of course, for those of us who get left behind, those who get left for dead in the middle of the street on a brightly lit winter afternoon.
Before I know it, I’m trapped in the elevator, heading down to the ground floor.
Everything slows down. Time stops. The world stills. I pinch my fingers between my eyes and try to steady myself.
When the doors open, I bolt for the exit and out onto the street.
As my feet hit the pavement, my lungs seize, and I release a scream into the cacophony of rush-hour traffic.
I scream and scream until my throat burns and my gut aches with the effort.
I scream until not even a breath of air could flow out of me.