---

I didn’t see her standing there as I was pushing the apple cart. Then I heard her make a terrible noise. Something akin to a woman falling down the escalator at a mall in Nashville. It wasn’t really a scream; it was more like an exaggerated moan. Agghhhoooh, umph.

“Stop!” someone yelled. “You hit her!”

And there she was, sprawled out on the floor of the grocery store, groaning in pain. A crowd gathered. Fierce eyes crawled all over me. “You should be more careful,” someone snapped.

I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran to find a manager. “I hit someone with an apple cart,” I said.

“You did what?”

“She’s really hurt. She’s lying on the floor by the wine.”

“Is she whining?” the manager joked.

“This isn’t funny, sir. She could die.”

---

The ambulance came and they lifted her up onto a gurney and wheeled her out of the store. I followed them over to the hospital. I sat in the ER waiting area. A pharmacy tech doing med rec came over to me and said the woman wanted to see me.

“Me?”

“Yes. She seems pretty pissed off.”

I went into the small room and there she was lying on a bed with a forearm draped across her forehead.

“You wanted to see me, mam?”

She pointed a crooked finger at me and in a strained voice said, “You bastard. Look what you did to me with your apple cart. I’m going to be crippled now and it’s all your fault. Why couldn’t you have just watched where you were going? You shouldn’t have stacked your boxes so high.”

“I’m sorry, mam.”

“Sorry? You’ll be sorry when I sue your ass.”

“Well, I’d like to see you try,” I said to her. “And besides, you should have gotten out of my fucking way.”

“How dare you! Don’t blame me for your incompetence.”

I laughed. “And you’d make any man impotent. You’re so old and gross.”

“Nurse!” she screamed out.

“Shut up you old hag!”

“You’re a terrible, terrible person. You should be in prison.”

“And you should be in a funeral parlor.”

“Well, you almost saw to that, didn’t you,” she scolded.

“And maybe now I should finish the job.”

I grabbed a pillow and held it above her face. And as I was about to smother her, something suddenly hit me. What am I doing? I’m about to murder someone. That’s not cool.

I threw the pillow aside and walked out of the room. I wandered around the long shiny hallways of the hospital for a while. Then I smelled food and went to the cafeteria. I got a fish sandwich, coleslaw, and a chocolate milk. I sat at a table by the window. I looked out at the city rushing by. I took a deep breath and wondered, how did I get here?