Streetlights Part 6 (fiction)

When she regained consciousness it was with a jolt: the last conscious memory she had was that of the airbags deploying in her face. She realized she couldn't see and her hands flew to her face, fluttering over the contours there and she noticed something was covering her eyes. It took a while to process that she had gauze pads over her eyes and the steady beeping of some machine nearby helped her to determine she was in the hospital. Panic welled up in her like an enraged beast. She heard the beeping increase and then sleep overtook her once more.
A couple of days later she was at home. Her glasses had indeed shattered, but because she had closed her eyes seconds before the airbag blasted against her face she needed only fifteen stitches to close the ragged gashes around her eyes (that had sliced her eyelids but had miraculously left the corneas unscathed). Her car was a write-off. Apparently the jaws of life had been necessary to extract her from her car. She had severe whiplash, a dislocated shoulder, two broken ribs, and a broken arm. One of the nurses told her that she had heard that the firemen approaching the scene thought that it would be a body removal: they hadn't anticipated anyone being alive.
She had been hit by a stockbroker that had closed a huge deal the night before and had gone out partying. Dinner and champagne downtown had turned into drinks at a strip club which had led to more drinks and a lot of blow at an after hours club. After passing out for a couple of hours, waking up and having another couple of beers to take the edge off, and some more coke to help him focus, he had climbed into his BMW and headed for home. He had been doing close to eighty kilometers and hour, while checking his Blackberry, when he had run driven into her car. Unfortunately he hadn't put on his seatbelt and upon impact had been partially ejected through the front windshield of his car. His head was a misshapen and bloodied mess when the paramedics arrived on the scene but, amazingly, he was still alive. After coughing up copious amounts of blood because of the jagged edges of his ribs that had pierced both lungs and moaning a lot, he expired.
Kate's parents had taken her back to their place to keep an eye on her for a couple of days. Allegedly Thomas had visited her while she was in the hospital, but she had no recollection of it. She wondered what he possibly could have said to her, and she hoped her response had been articulate and dismissive.
She sat at the kitchen table at her parents house, her hair unwashed, the pain of breathing stabbing through her torso and considered the hand that she had so recently been dealt: losing her job; losing her boyfriend; being in a horrific car crash and facing months of rehabilitation. Her mother had to dress her this morning as the pain in her neck and from her broken ribs and arm was too much to even allow her to pull a shirt over her head.
She gave a sharp laugh and stopped as the pain stabbed through her. Her mother, with her auburn hair streaked with grey looked at her daughter with concern. "What's so funny?" she asked.
Kate stroked her hands up and down the steaming mug of tea in front of her. "I don't know," she answered. "I just did a mental inventory check of everything that's gone wrong: my job; Thomas; this accident, and I compared it to where I was a couple of weeks ago.
Right now? Right at this exact moment? I'm just so incredibly grateful that I was wearing my seatbelt, that the airbags went off, that I'm not dead. Today I'm happy that I'm not dead. I just never realized how much of the day to day I took for granted. You're only ever a couple of days away from a complete reversal of fortune."
Her mother started to respond, but was interrupted by the insolent chime of the doorbell. The quizzical expression on her face led Kate to believe that this was an unexpected solicitation.
After a couple of moments her mother called to her and Kate shuffled slowly towards the front door.
In the foyer stood a man that looked vaguely familiar. He was dressed in a pair of khaki pants and a golf shirt. He was gaunt and looked vaguely ill at ease. He looked like he had had a difficult life, but that he had endured.
"Do I know you?" Kate asked.
"Well, sort of," the man answered, retreating into himself. "We met a few days ago: you gave me some spare change downtown Vancouver."
"You... you were... you gave me an electric shock," was all she could muster. She tried to reconcile the dim recollection of the man to whom she had unceremoniously given her spare change to. She remembered how he had focused his gaze on her, as though exerting his pride and his dignity, silently apologizing that he should have to ask for money, but wanting her to know that he was deserved of it.
He cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. "I bought a coffee and a donut with the money that you gave me, and I won a car. It's worth almost $30,000 and I wanted to give you your half," he told her and thrust an envelope in her direction.
Automatically she took it. "What?" she said.
"Well," he answered. "You helped me out. I wouldn't have been able to buy the coffee if you hadn't given me-"
"But how did you track me down?" she asked.
"Your security pass," he replied. "It's got your company logo on it, so I was able to do some research. I, uh, I heard you lost your job and I'm sorry."
Kate started to cry. The utter absurdity of it was too much. The homeless man with the ethics of a saint tracking her down to give her $15,000 because she had given him her spare change. The timing of it: her jobless and carless.
He looked very uncomfortable, but Kate threw her good arm around him nonetheless, her broken one pressing painfully against his chest and stomach. His shirt was new and starchy and it scratched against her cheek. She was surprised by his thinness and he smelled like cheap aftershave. "Thank you," she told him, feeling some of the rigidity subside in his body as he awkwardly patted her on the back.
She withdrew from him and handed her cheque back. He looked at her curiously.
"I don't need this. Please," she insisted, thrusting it at him. He tentatively took it. "You're the best person I know and you need this more than I do." She was glad that he didn't insist, but then she hadn't really expected him to.
"So... okay," he said and inched towards the door, his eyes furtively scanning her face and then darting away.
"Wait," she said, halting his progress. "I'm Kate. I guess you know that. I never got your name."
"Jake," he told her. "Like Jacob."
"Jake," she said. "Thank you for tracking me down, Jake. I'm glad I met you. Thank you." She realised she was being very effusive and that he couldn't be aware of the juxtaposition of feelings that were vying for dominance in her heart at that exact moment.
"Alright," he said, now walking down the path that led to her parents' front door. "Get better soon. You look pretty beat up."
"Yeah, I'll do that," she said with a laugh, wiping some of the dampness from her cheeks.