Road Kill Chapter 12

The Comeback

She’d stayed in the mountains for about two weeks as she hadn’t wanted to overstay her welcome. The couple that’d found her on the roadside had been so kind to her. One of their older children had been a nurse, so when her mom had told her the story about the young woman they’d found on the roadside, she’d taken a few days off from her full-time job in Denver and helped nurse LoyAnn back to life.

LoyAnn hadn’t remembered anything of the first few days because she’d been sedated heavily in order to help relieve the pain. After she regained consciousness, her memory slowly had returned and she remembered all the details of Sid’s botched attempt to kill her. But now that’d been water under the bridge. Her first job would be to get back to good health.

When Loy was ready to leave she’d offered them some money, but they’d been true Christians and wouldn’t take a cent from her, they said that the good Lord would reward them in heaven.

Their daughter had been returning to Denver so LoyAnn had bummed a ride back with her. Of course LoyAnn had no place to go as she’d wanted to remain dead. She’d wanted to start a new life. She’d lost her cell phone but did have some credit cards, however had second thoughts when she was about to use them. If Sid had reported her dead, the card company certainly would’ve cancelled her cards.

But what about her job? She’d made some good friends at work, maybe she would contact them, however she had second thoughts about that as well, Denver was a small city, if she reappeared, Sid would have found her and hunted her down. So she’d have to lay low for awhile.

She had some cash and found a flop house in which she’d been able to recover, but she needed more cash for food. Making the decision to hock her ring she found a pawnshop in the neighborhood and had gotten $200.00 for the ring.

“Two hundred measly dollars! This ring is got to be worth at least five grand!”

“Hey lady, to me it aint worth shit,” had been his reply. “Your lucky I’m offering you that. You know you don’t look like the type of broad to have such a bootiful ring. Maybe it’s hot or somthin like that. Ya know I don’t deal in hot shit. OK. Take it or leave it.”

Well of course she’d taken it.

God my fucking head hurt. My face was fucked, my nose was broken and my ass was killing me. . I was totally fucked up and needed to get my shit together. But first things first, I needed to pee.

She made her way down the hall of the flop house to the toilet. She took a pee and wiped.

This place had seen better days, of course so had I.

God the place was filthy, I looked like shit and felt even worse. I needed some help. After all that I had been through, I don’t want to die in this shit hole.

She went back to her room and rummaged around in the drawer in the night table that stood next to her bed.

Ah. Just what I need. A quarter. That should help me out.

Stumbling to the phone at the end of the hallway she dropped in the coil.

‘I need to make a collect call to the Twin Cities. The name is Julie.. just say that it’s LoyAnn calling…..Hello Aunt Julie? I need your help.. I really need your help.’

I picked up the money the next morning at Western Union. I didn’t want to take a plane, you never know, security would be tight at the airport and they might start to ask questions when they saw my condition, at that moment I wouldn’t have won any beauty contests. So I jumped a Greyhound to Omaha, then took the train into Chicago, then jumped another bus to the Twin Cities. It took a few days, but there was one thing that I had. It was time. After all I was dead!!

Aunt Julie was waiting for me at the bus station.

“God you look like shit,” had been the first words out of her mouth. “What happened to you?”
Hugging her I said that I loved her too. We laughed. I told her the entire gruesome story as we drove back to her place. However I didn’t tell her about my plan, my plan for coming back from the dead. But all in due time. There was plenty of time. I was dead!!

That first night we sat around her place, had a few drinks and reminisced about how she’d brought me up from childhood. I told her that she’d done a great job, I’d just made a bad choice of men and maybe her sexual preference had its advantages. We laughed about that as well.

Julie had some very interesting friends. Over the next few months I’d met them all, some were gay, some weren’t, didn’t matter to me either way. One day she introduced me to Claire. Claire was a well known plastic surgeon in the Twin Cities and one of Julie’s VERY close friends.

One day out of the blue Claire had asked. “Loy do you want me to help you to fix your nose and that nasty scar on your forehead?”

‘Oh my god yes, but you know I don’t have that kind of money!’

“Did you hear me mention money?” Claire responded with a smile. “Your Aunt Julie and I go way back and we have been there for each other through thick and thin. You know a few years ago it was difficult being a Lesbian here in the conservative Twin Cities. Sometimes people would make trouble, I mean real trouble for the both of us, but we never stopped caring for each other.”

Looking at her I smiled. So this was Aunt Julie’s lover. How interesting. ‘Well if you put it that way, of course. In fact if I’m going to go under the knife can you make a few more minor changes? I mean I really don’t want to be recognized, I’m dead you know!’ We both laughed and she of course agreed.

Each day I was getting stronger and stronger. Julie was kind of a health nut in her own way. No junk food; only organically grown fruits and veggies. I never felt better. I started to workout every day. Run, aerobics and martial arts. Julie’s friends helped me out. No cost. They were just friends.

Finally the big day came. I was going under the knife.

“OK LoyAnn we’ll be giving you some injections to numb you. You’ll still be awake, but there’ll be no sensation of pain. So don’t worry, you’ll be ok. Believe me!! Now after the operation we’ll put you to sleep. You’ll be wearing a very chic gauze mask for about two weeks.” She smiled at that. “Don’t worry you can still work out, just take it a bit easy, we don’t want to put any stress on that beautiful new face of yours.”

‘I’ve no problem with that. I trust you implicitly; I know that you’ll take the best care with my new face.’

“We’ve just given you the injection. Just try and relax.. relax.. relax”

The last clear thing that I really remembered was seeing Claire’s masked face above mine. When I first awoke, I was a bit woozy but there was no real pain. Instinctively I felt my face; it was covered with bandages just as Claire had said it would be. I was lying there just trying to imagine what I would look like when I heard the room door open; it was Claire, she walked over to the bed.

“Hello, I see that you’re awake,” she said. “You took a nice long nap. You’ll be happy to know that everything went well, no complications, no major issues, just a walk in the park.” She gave me a big smile and bending over gave me a hug. “Well I do have other patients here today, so I have to run, I’ll pop in later this afternoon. If your recovery goes well you should be able to home in a day or two and I know your Aunt will take good care of you. See ya.” She threw me a kiss and left the room.

What a cool lady. Now I knew why her and Julie were a couple. Both very cool. Both very caring. I laid back and after sometime fell back into a dream filled sleep. Some of the dreams were sweet, but some brought back vivid images of Sid trying to kill me with the knife. But they were only dreams and in his mind he had been successful. After all I was dead!!

I left the hospital in a few days and for the first week I just kinda laid around Julie’s place. Watched some daytime TV and during my recovery became a real fan of Oprah, well her AND Jerry Springer. Where did he get all those people? Were there that many trailer parks in the WORLD? Sometimes I would fantasize that Sid and his current flame would fit in well on The Springer Show. I’d often laugh about that. I asked Julie to pick up a few special books for me off of Amazon.com. ‘I need to do some research about a future project I’m considering.’ She just smiled

The second week I was feeling more like my old self, my energy was slowly returning, so I attempted to do some light exercises because I didn’t want to put any stress on my new face. One evening Claire came to the house for a visit. I knew she’d be coming because Julie was making something special for dinner.

“Hi Loy,” she said. “How you feeling? OK? That’s great. Let me take a quick look. All righty then, you look fine. Do you want to see the ‘new you’?”

I was jumping out of my skin. ‘Of course I want to see what I look like. I can’t wait any longer.’ Well she agreed to take off the bandages here at home as she didn’t think that it would be necessary for me to return to the clinic, after all she was my doctor. She sat me down on a chair that she moved from the dining room saying the she would need as much light as possible to make sure there would be no mistakes when she removed my mask. I had a difficult time containing myself, I kept fidgeting around in the chair and Claire told me to calm down. Finally as she removed the last strip of gauze from my face, I could see her smiling.

“Hold still,” Claire kept saying over and over again. “Hold still. Ah finally. Well I guess you want to see the new you? But wait… Hold on a sec. Hey Julie come in here and tell me what you think.”

“Oh my,” Julie said with a huge smile. “Oh my! She’s so beautiful! Claire you’ve outdone yourself on this one. True perfection. I don’t think her own mother could recognize her. Certainly I can’t.”

They were killing me. I needed to see for myself. Finally Claire handed me a mirror. I gazed into the mirror. It wasn’t me. Oh my god. It wasn’t me! Of course she’d fixed my nose and taken care of the scars, but also she’d changed my lips, raised my cheek bones and had given my eye lids a bit of an exotic look. I was looking at a new me. At first I didn’t know what to say. I looked more closely, there were no tell tale marks. Nothing. There was only a very beautiful woman gazing at me from out of the mirror. Breaking into tears I got up and hugged and kissed Claire again and again. I walked over to Aunt Julie and gave her a big hug and kiss as well. ‘Thanks.’ At that moment I had no other words to describe what I was feeling.

“You like?” Claire said.

‘Oh my god of course I like my new face. I mean I could be on the cover of Vogue or Cosmo. Men will be killing to date me, I am to “die for,”’ and that was exactly what I had in mind. After the unveiling so to speak we all sat down for dinner. Throughout dinner I kept picking up the mirror again and again and looking at the new me, I still couldn’t believe my own eyes.

Claire gave me some special medicated skin crème which I needed to apply twice a day for about a month and after that there was nothing really special that I had to do, just take care of my body. During my recovery I formulated a few plans that I had in mind for Sid and his playmate but they were going to take some advance planning, but I was in no real hurry. After all I was dead!!

Now the real work was about to begin. For the next six months I had a daily schedule, run every morning, then either aerobics or martial arts and swimming. I started to do some volunteer work at the Mayo Clinic. One evening when we were having dinner I happed to mention to Julie just in passing. ‘After all it would be rather difficult for a dead person to get a job.’

About two weeks later Claire paid us a surprise visit. She handed me a large envelope. I was very curious. ‘What’s in here?’ All she said was that it was something that I may need someday. Carefully I opened the large manila envelope, it was filled with documents. Birth certificate, social security card, driver’s license, passport and even some credit cards. “Maureen O’Shee” was the name on all the documents. I opened the passport, same name, but oh my god, it was MY photo. The only thing it lacked was the signature. I looked at her in amazement. ‘How on earth did you do this?’ She said that she had some friends who owed her a favour or two; she’d just called them to remind them of what they could do for her to repay her. I guess she must of had some very GOOD friends if they could do this for me.

Time moved on and I also was ready to move on. I had a few ideas as to what I’d do when I got back to Denver. ‘Yes I’m going to return to Denver.’ I remembered hearing someone say “Revenge is best served Cold.” So I needed to return to Denver to find Sid and his bimbo girlfriend and give them a good helping of it. I needed to get the lay of the land so to speak. I’d used my rebirth as a learning period, I’d done some research so now I knew I could execute my plan without many problems, but I had to get back to Denver.

The day came when I had to say good-bye to my new found friends. They’d given me a going away party and I’d shed a few tears when I’d said good-bye to each and every one of them. I packed my bags and said good-bye. I wasn’t big on long good-byes, so I had Julie drop me at the bus station and I booked a Greyhound to Denver. As the bus left the station I waved a good-bye to Aunt Julie. She and Claire were the best friends a person could have. I pulled a copy of ‘100 & One Home Projects Made Easy’ out of my bag and reclining the seat, paged thru the book. Now this looked interesting.. Um.. Very interesting, I smiled. Yes what I had in mind was going to be very interesting.

Arrived in Denver without any fan fair. Ha Ha. First things first. Needed to get a room, then a job and then a car. Exactly in that order. Had some cash that Julie had given me to tide me over ‘until you get a job’ she’d said, so reluctantly I’d taken it. Found a rooming house that was a few steps up from the last place I’d had here in Denver, this place at least had a private toilet. Now the job. Well that should be easy too. Needed fast cash and the best way for me to get the money would be to become a stripper. At the first club that I applied the manager almost fell off his chair when I walked in. He said, “ With that face and that body you’ll be my top act.” Smiled. ‘Is tomorrow too soon to start?’ “ Hell no! Hell no!” Is all he said. Well now just needed to save some cash, had time, after all LoyAnn Gordon was dead, very dead, but then again Mo O’Shee was very much alive and back in the game!!!