The Three AM Phone Call - by Matt Bacon

I sat bolt upright in bed. My heart was pounding, hands shaking and a phone ringing in my head. Darkness greeted me. Most Americans don’t really understand what darkness really is like, no glare of an LED alarm clock, no amber light from a street light seeping around the curtains, no neighbor’s porch light, just pure natural darkness. I fumble to find my lighter and light the oil lamp sitting on my bedside table. Once I am finally able to get it lit, it casts a globe of flickering light around the cabin.

Katie looks up at me, the light reflecting off her glittering golden eyes, head tilted as if to say, “Why the hell are we getting up?” “It’s still dark!” I should have known better than to expect sympathy from a lab that was, moments before, sound asleep. She just looks at me a moment and then lays her head back down on the bed. Soon she’ll be sound asleep and dreaming of chasing birds or rabbits, or whatever it is that dogs dream of in the middle of the night.

I envy her. I well know that I’ll not be getting back to sleep anytime soon. I just look around the cabin. Taking in the warm honey colored logs that make up the walls, the wood floors worn smooth by several generations of foot traffic, the old black cast-iron cook stove in the middle of the room pouring out what heat it can to combat the cold of the bitter Northwestern Montana winter. Finally I look to the door where the firewood rack sits. Damn, I didn’t fill it yesterday. I really need to stoke the fire, but that means I’m going to have to go outside and get some wood off the stack on the porch. With a groan, I slip my feet into my fleece lined slippers and stand up. With all this, Katie decides there is no use trying to go back to sleep, so she slips off the bed, doing the silly Labrador stretch. Leaving her hind legs on the bed and walking away with her front legs. This obviously provides her with a good stretch, and usually provides me with a bit of a smile, but not tonight. My mind is stuck on the ringing telephone in my head. I look down at Katie as I head for the door. “So this is what it’s come to, huh Katie? Here we are in the middle of nowhere, in a log cabin, no neighbors, no electricity, no running water, and definitely no telephone, yet that damn telephone still wakes me up and leaves me in terror afraid to go back to sleep.” She just looks up at me, eyes twinkling and her semi-sweet chocolate coat shining in the candlelight.

“So we’re going outside, right?” she asks with her eyes and her wagging tail.

Setting the lamp down on the little shelf by the door I grab my Carhartt jacket from the peg, mentally preparing my self for the bitter blast of cold when I open the thick wooden door. As I pull the door open, I am pleasantly surprised. “Not bad maybe about 15 or twenty degrees.” Katie streaks out in front of me bounding off the porch and into about a foot and a half of soft new snow, tearing through the soft blanket like a maniac. A moment of pure joy for her, and I can’t help but smile a bitter smile. I grab a large armful of wood from the pile. I call Katie and we head inside. After stoking the fire to a nice roaring pitch, I light the big oil lamp over the table finally surrendering to the inevitable. I’m not getting back to sleep tonight. As the oil lamp throws it’s more substantial light across the entire cabin I glance at the antique clock on the wall beside the stairs up to the unused upstairs rooms. Four AM. I used the big bedroom upstairs when I first got here in March, but with the cold of winter I found that it got so cold up there that you’re my breath would freeze to the blankets in the middle of the night covering them with frost. So I moved my bed down stairs and closed the big insulated door at the top of the stairs. Now I only go up there to get a few of the food items that I keep up there that I need to keep cold but don’t want quite frozen.

I fill up the coffee pot and put it on the stove to boil before I add the grounds. Making what I used to call camp coffee, now it’s just coffee and it’s just about the only thing that can get me going in the morning. As I wait for the pot to boil I head upstairs to get some stuff for breakfast. Katie leads the way upstairs to remind me that, in her opinion, my first priority should be to get her fed. Receiving the message clearly, I get some of her dog food and a few things for myself and head back downstairs to fill her bowl. I start another pot for my oatmeal breakfast and pickup my sketchbook.

As I wait for my coffee to get ready I sketch absentmindedly. The image of a fine-boned hand with a small diamond ring slowly emerges. I look at the hand and the burning starts behind my eyes. I fling the pad away, full blown tears now streaming down my face. Burying my face in my cupped hands, I realize that this is going to be a really long winter.

The summer hadn’t been too bad, even though the pain was fresher. There was enough work to do during the long days to get ready to spend for a winter spent in isolation and without an easy route for supplies that I was able to bury myself in it. Gardening and canning so I would have some vegetables and fruit for at least the majority of the winter, wood to cut, so I could keep a fire burning all winter, and repairs to make on the old cabin, to keep out the drafts. Along with all this I had plenty of country to explore around the cabin. The fall brought hunting season and a need to acquire some game to provide Katie and I some meat for the winter. All these activities kept me from remembering, kept me from going back, at least during my days. With each night the nightmares came again. That damn ringing telephone every night. Now that the short days and long nights of winter had arrived there would never be enough distractions to keep me from going back to that night and the days that followed.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I was sound asleep that night in March, buried under a pile of covers as defense from the cold damp of another Northern Idaho spring. I was startled awake by the most obnoxious noise I had ever heard. I reached over and smacked the alarm clock, thinking that it was the offender, but the sound continued. Finally, my sleep-fuzzed mind realized it was the phone. I glanced at the clock. Three AM. “It’s probably just one of my drunken friends.” I rolled over and waited for the answering machine to pick it up. “Oh damn I forgot the answering machine is broken.” I realized that it obviously wasn’t going to stop ringing and that I had better just answer it. I threw off the covers and stumbled across the room in the strange orange light of the streetlight outside the window to the telephone. “This had better be good”, I groaned.

“Hello sir, is this John Cunningham?” The woman on the other end of the phone asked with a tired voice.

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, sir, my name is Colleen, and I work at the Pullman Memorial Hospital, and you are listed as the emergency contact, for a…” My heart began to drop as she paused, “Nikki Harris.”

“Yeah, she’s my fiancée, what’s happened?” I asked breathlessly.

“Sir, there has been an accident, and Miss Harris has been brought here.”

I slipped to the floor in shock.

“She is in critical condition, but she appears to be stable at this time.”

I dropped the phone and grabbed a shirt and threw on my jeans. Snatching up my shoes I struggled into them as a half ran, half hopped down the hallway. I bolted out the door and down the sidewalk to my truck, Katie barking furiously after I had slammed the door on her face as I left. I don’t remember much of the six mile drive to the hospital from our apartment, but somehow I arrived at the Pullman Memorial Emergency Room. As I burst through swinging double doors, I quite literally ran into a highway patrol officer that was headed out, knocking us both in a heap on the floor.

“What the hell!” he exclaimed as he stood up looking disheveled.

“My fiancée’s been in an accident!” I explained as I struggled to stand up.

“You must be Mr. Cunningham, the nurse told me that she’d called you.” he said with a new sympathy in his voice. “I would like to speak with you a moment, after you speak with the doctor.”

I just nodded dumbly and continued on my mad dash for the reception desk.

“Where is she, where is Nikki?” I frantically asked the middle aged woman in nurse’s scrubs at the reception desk.

She very calmly and slowly replied, “Sir, I need you to calm down.” “I need you to sign in on this form,” she said, handing me a clip board with a simple sign-in sheet and a pen.

With a shaking hand I filled out the form and handed it back to her.

“Thank you sir, I will let the doctor know that you are here, if you could have a seat over there.” She indicated a row of the most awful green plastic chairs, “He will be with you absolutely as soon as he can be.”

I walked in a shocked daze over to the chairs and slumped down into the first one I came to. At this time the Highway Patrolman, who had been standing quietly off to the side, walked slowly over to me. “Sir, my name is Officer Don Bradley. I understand that you are terribly worried right now, and I really don’t want to intrude, but I’d like to ask you a few questions for my report if that’s alright.”

I just nodded wearily.

“Sir, what was your fiancée doing on the road this time of night?”

“I really don’t know, she and a couple of her girlfriends were going to go shopping in Spokane for the weekend, but they were going to stay the night, and come back tomorrow.” Just at that moment I realized that I hadn’t even asked about our friends that had gone with her to Spokane. “What about Rebecca and Tana? They should have been with her. Where are they?”

The color quickly drained from Officer Bradley’s face. “Sir, they were with her.”

“What the hell happened out there?” I asked.

“Well, as far as we can tell about two am your fiancée and her friends was driving through the intersection of Highway 195, and Highway 26 when they were struck in the passenger side by a truck hauling grain down the Colfax hill. Both of the women on the passenger side were killed on impact and the car was forced across the intersection into the concrete wall of the Colfax Federal Credit Union Building.”

As I listened to him say these things I could feel my whole world coming apart around me. I cried. Tears pouring from my eyes tracing wet lines down my face.

I was still sobbing when a young doctor walked in my direction. He wasn’t alone either; with him was another middle aged woman. The doctor looked exhausted and defeated, hair disheveled and blood on his scrubs. The woman was not wearing the expected hospital scrubs, but was well dressed in a pair of tan slacks and a light colored blouse; she had short brown hair and was glaring pointedly at the Highway Patrolman.

The woman kneeled down beside me.

“John, my name is Sarah Williamson; I’m an administrator and counselor with the hospital. I understand that you are having a tough night but I need you to take a deep breath and pull yourself together a bit so Dr. Robbins here can speak with you for a bit.”

I nodded and took a deep breath and slowly stood up to look the doctor in the eye, and immediately wished I hadn’t. There was sadness in his eyes that I knew meant my unmaking.

“John, I’m gonna give it to you straight. When your fiancée’s car was driven into the wall of that the force of the impact collapsed the car around her to such a degree that her entire torso was crushed. The internal damage is just too great to repair. She is unconscious and is breathing with the help of a respirator, but even that won’t last with all the damage that has been done. We’ve been able to relieve most of her pain, but it’s really only a matter of time. I’m truly sorry, but we did all we could. You can go in now and say your goodbyes.” He just sadly shook his head and turned away, “I’m so sorry.”

The hospital counselor took my hand and led me down the smooth corridor, brightly lit and smelling of disinfectant, to another set of swinging doors labeled, Emergency 2, in red letters. As I stepped through those swinging doors, I realized that my life was coming to an end as those doors swung shut behind me.

I had met Nikki at one of those ridiculous dorm room parties where there are about thirty too many goofy drunk college kids jammed in a single dorm room listening to loud music and trying to B.S. I really didn’t notice her at first. I was intrigued by her roommate. Her roommate, Laura, was tall had dyed black hair and a kind of dangerous look to her that I found fascinating. In contrast, Nikki was shorter, about 5’5 and a little plain looking, with auburn hair and a nice smile.

Over the next couple months I actively pursued Laura, trying to get her to notice me romantically, but she really was out of my league and soon I came to realize that while she would be friendly and would hang out it would never go any further. During this time I spent a lot of time talking to Nikki about just about everything from relationships to family. She was always there for me when I needed someone to talk to. As a result, she became my closest friends. Over time, our friendship grew into something more. I realized that Nikki was really exactly what I was looking for in a person that I wanted to spend my time with, and we soon became absolutely inseparable. We became one of those awful couples that annoyed our friends with things like finishing each others sentences, and always looking for each other in a crowd.

Then I screwed it all up. Being a typical young college student I was a proud member of the party scene and I could drink with the best of them. However, I was different from many of my friends. I had an addictive personality, and as my friends started to outgrow the party scene I didn’t. Eventually my drinking started to affect Nikki and my relationship. Simply put, she got tired of dealing with an immature drunk for a boyfriend, and she dumped me. That summer I was in a car accident of my own while I was living in Kalispell, Montana working my summer job. I went to the bar with a couple of coworkers and ended up getting completely drunk. On the ride home that night in my drunken stupor I started to mess with the door latch and somehow opened the door I was leaning against. Of course, I fell out of the moving truck. I woke up in the hospital three days later only to find Nikki sitting next to my bed in tears. It turns out that a coworker of mine had called her the day after my accident. She had immediately left her job and flown to Kalispell from her home in Ketchikan, Alaska.

In tears, I told her how sorry I was, and how much I wanted to quit drinking and get my life back on track. She responded by becoming the strongest support pillar in my battle against alcoholism, and with her help I got sober. Of course, it wasn’t all clear sailing from there on out. We continued to through our rough patches, we fought from time to time, and considering we both had tempers we actually had some real shouting matches that led invariably to one of us storming out of the room. Somehow, we always overcame these fights. We would eventually cool off then we would talk calmly about whatever the fight was about and generally reach a consensus, well not always of course, but for the most part we defused our battles in a way that left neither of us feeling like we lost. As a result of all these trials our relationship became stronger and stronger. We began to really know each others strengths and weaknesses and were able to support each other through nearly any problem

Eventually we moved into together and started doing the domestic thing. We bought a car together, (for her) and we even got a puppy to raise together. The puppy was a little strain on our relationship at first. Nikki almost lost it when Katie, the new chocolate lab puppy, would go swimming in the irrigation ditch behind the house and then promptly run inside and jump on our bed, but Katie’s lab charm soon won her over. Katie became a great buddy to both of us and a great bird hunting companion for me.

After about two years of this domestic bliss and about 3 years of being together, I finally bit the bullet. We had developed a routine in going up to Spokane about once a month, getting a nice dinner, and doing something fun. We went to plays, concerts and art galleries, things like that. Well, on one of the trips I upped the ante and took her to a great little Thai restaurant I had been saving for just this occasion. I had made an arrangement with a florist and the restaurant manager to have a bouquet of her favorite flowers delivered by every waiter and waitress. As Nikki’s face grew redder and redder I waited until the last bouquet, and finally went down on one knee and asked her to spend our lives together. Well, she just broke into tears and smiled down at me and nodded as I carefully slipped a modest engagement ring on her fine boned hand.

Now, I took that same hand in mine and was appalled by how cold and light it felt in mine. This is where most people talk about the tubes and wires clinging on their loved ones, or they talk about the sounds of the machines and monitors. I, however, only noticed the sunken eyes, the blood on the beautiful auburn hair, oh how I loved that hair. I simply sat at her side and rested my forehead on her shoulder, wishing that I could believe that she was going to a better place, but faith has never been my strong point. I held her hand until the monitor beside me showed a flat line. Tears streaming down my face I slowly stood bent over her and carefully kissed her on the lips.

I walked in a daze towards the door only to be met by the doctor and the counselor. The doctor went to Nikki’s bed and began unplugging equipment and working on some unknown paperwork. The counselor confronted me.

“Sir, I would like to sit down with you and talk a bit.” She guided me down the hall to a small office and gestured me to a chair at the small table. “I want you to know that I understand how you must be feeling, and I am here to help you get through this.”
I began to feel my temper rising, but she seemed oblivious to this and went on.

“We need to be sure that you are going to be alright with this, and I need to be sure that you are not a threat to yourself.”

Well, that did it I was really angry. I stood up in a rage and pounded hard on the table. “How the hell could you possibly even begin to know how I’m feeling? You don’t know me! You’ve never had your heart ripped out! I’ve had a life that is over before it began, so you can just go to hell!” I stormed out the door and ran down the hall for the exit, shoving a nurse aside in the process. I just wasn’t in the right state of mind to understand that, as a counselor, she was trying to help, but she was exhausted and woefully unprepared for a situation like this. After all she was dealing with a accident that led to the death of three young women and all that stress that comes with a situation like that. I am now ashamed to admit it but, I even punched an orderly right in the jaw when he tried to stop me.

I ran all the way to my truck and smoked the tires leaving the parking lot, turning down a dirt road that would take me home to the back way through the rolling wheat fields. As I tore down the soft damp dirt road I kept seeing the sunken eyes and the blood on her hair in my mind. As I came into the outskirts of Moscow I was having trouble seeing the road in front of me from the tears, so I stopped on the last hill before town and looked down on the town gradually waking up as the sun slowly rose. A few cars were moving around in the various campus parking lots at the university, the same parking lots where I taught Nikki how to drive a stick shift. I could just see the Residence building on the far side of campus where we met. I just knew I had to get the hell out of this town as soon as possible. I drove on into town, trying to make my traumatized mind think rationally about all the things I needed to do as I drove.

The first thing I needed to do was call Nikki’s parents. Damn that was going to be rough, I just didn’t know I had the strength. I parked outside our duplex and heard Katie start barking, but she was barking from the upstairs unit instead of our downstairs place. I walked up the stairs and was greeted at the door by my hysterical dog. She jumped up on me trying to lick my face. As soon as Katie settled down a bit, my upstairs neighbor, Mike, set into me.

“What the hell, dude, three o’clock in the morning you’re fuckin dog starts barking and you tear outta here, then that stupid dog of yours starts to howl and cry. I finally I had to go down there and get her, jeeze man you didn’t even lock your damn door, she just kept cryin after I brought her up here. What the hell happened?”

I just looked at him. “Nikki was in an accident.” I said in a flat voice.

Just then Julie, Mike’s girlfriend, pushed past him and hugged me around my neck. “Oh my god, Is she alright?”

“She’s gone.” I replied.

“Dear God,” she whispered squeezing me tighter. I could feel her tears dampening the shoulder of my shirt. Julie and Mike had been good friends of ours ever since we had moved into the duplex underneath them. She and Nikki had been very close and Mike and I had been hunting partners for a couple of seasons now. “Are you going to be alright?” She let go of the hug and stepped to look at me, and I could see the pain and sympathy in her eyes. Behind her, Mike just stood there shocked.

I simply looked back at her and said, “How the hell should I know?” In my tortured state I didn’t even recognize the hurt expression that flickered across her face when I said it. I turned my back and Katie and I headed downstairs. I wandered into the bedroom and lay down and flooded my pillow with tears. Katie climbed up next to me and lay down right against my side looking up at me as if to say, “I don’t really know what’s wrong, but I’m here for you.” I slowly fell into an utterly exhausted sleep.

I woke up later in the evening and immediately picked up the phone to call Nikki’s parents in Alaska.

“Hello?” The voice of her father answered. He sounded tired and his voice was unusually rough.



PHONE CALL WITH PARENTS GOES HERE. NOT DONE YET.



After that horrible experience I tried to work on getting things packed up around the house, but I just couldn’t function. Everything I touched seemed to carry too many memories. Finally Julie came down from upstairs and without a word and a simple hand on my shoulder started to help me pack Nikki’s stuff. She understood that I needed to get out of town and never judged me for running away. I had to go somewhere I just didn’t know where just then. After a few days of sympathy calls from friends, I had about as much as I could handle and took the phone off the hook in order to be left alone. The whole town went into mourning after losing three young women, and the newspaper and TV station showed up at my house looking for interviews. This is when I found out that the driver of the grain truck had been drunk. This piece of critical information combined with my own history with alcohol sent me into another spiral of emotion that continued until Nikki’s parents showed up. They set up the memorial service and took over the legal stuff smoothly. Watching the two of them support each other in their grief further filled my soul with a feeling of utter emptiness.

By the time the memorial service was over I was absolutely finished emotionally. I was just so tired of people, and I wanted, no, I needed some peace and quiet. I had always turned to the mountains when I needed peace. Whether it was hunting, fishing, or just hiking or working in the mountains they always seemed to have the power to comfort me. Now, I needed that power more than ever. I called an old coworker of mine that had told me about the cabin that his family had lived in all his young life. I remembered admiring the lifestyle that didn’t include running water, electricity, or even a phone, and was isolated in the far northwest corner of Montana with the nearest neighbor seven miles away. He told me that no one was using it these days, and he would be glad to let me use it for as long as I wanted. I loaded all our stuff in my truck, and Katie and I headed for a place where the phone would never ring, or so I thought.