The Social Climber of Davenport Heights Read Online Free PDF Page A

come ahead of me in the first ambulance.
    There had been some confusion initially. EMS had thought that he was the accident victim and that I’d pulled him out. The fellow had done very little to dispel that notion. When the attendant asked him if he was okay he’d nodded.
    “I’m going to be fine,” he said. “Thanks to her.”
    I figured that the explosion must have rattled him. I’d certainly felt rattled. I still did.
    Abruptly the curtain jerked open and I startled. My nurse, in a uniform that was more tie-dyed hippie than starchy and efficient RN, entered. A good-looking young policeman was beside her.
    “Doctor is going to let you go home soon,” she said to me in that slightly too loud and inherently condescending tone professional people often use toward those within their control. “Officer Norton needs to ask you about the accident.”
    He was writing something in a small notepad.
    “It happened so fast,” I explained before he’d even asked one question.
    The policeman looked at me, then at the nurse, and chuckled as he responded, his words clearly for her entertainment rather than my enlightenment.
    “It couldn’t have happened too fast,” he said. “From the road evidence, the tanker was only traveling about thirty-five when it jumped the median. By the time it hit you, it must have been closer to thirty.”
    “The driver was asleep, I suppose.”
    “Dead as a doornail before he ever veered out of his lane,” Officer Norton replied, his matter-of-fact tone seemed almost jovial. “We’ll have to wait for the full report, but the ME on the scene says it was most likely a stroke.”
    I nodded. He had been dead already. Somehow that terrified me even more. I had been the only person on that highway. I would have died all alone.
    “The man who saved me,” I asked them. “Who is he? Is he all right? Is he still here in the emergency room?”
    The policeman flicked back a page in his notepad.
    “Chester W. Durbin,” he read. “Seventy-eight years old. Widowed. Resident of Bluebonnet Manor Assisted Living Center, 177th East Loop and Toronto.”
    “He’ll be fine,” the nurse said. “We’re getting ready to transfer him upstairs. We’ll keep him a couple of days.”
    “He’s hurt?”
    “Not as bad as you’d think,” she said. “He’s got some cuts on his feet, a few bruises and skinned knees. Other than that, he’s fine.”
    “Then why are you keeping him?”
    The nurse was looking at me as if I was an idiot.
    I am not an idiot. I was fine and therefore going home soon. If Chester Durbin was fine, why wasn’t he going home, as well?
    “He’s an old man,” she answered.
    Of course, I recalled how he looked sitting beside me on the pavement, ancient, barefoot, striped pajamas. But a flash of memory had me feeling once again the firm strength of his hand as he grasped my wrist and the sturdy arms that pulled me through the ripped opening of the soft-top.
    “He’s in pretty good shape,” I told her. “He must be one of those seniors who pump iron or do tai chi.”
    The policeman looked at me incredulously. The hippie RN actually cackled.
    “I don’t think so,” she said. “The gentleman is very frail.”
    “It’s pretty amazing that he managed to help you out of that car,” the policeman commented. “It must be five hundred yards from the nursing home to the site of the accident.”
    The nurse was shaking her head disbelievingly. “It’s hard to believe the old guy could even walk that far, let alone be of any help when he got there.”
    The policeman obviously agreed. “What blows me away,” he said, “is the image of him racing down the hill with that big butcher knife.”
    “He had the foresight to bring a knife, but not the good sense to put his shoes on,” the nurse pointed out, chuckling.
    I lay there trying to reconcile the person they were talking about with my rescuer.
    “I have to see him,” I stated suddenly, adamantly, surprising myself. The