CHAPTER 7

It was nearly time for Anne to leave the hospital. She felt a little stronger and was placed in a sub-ICU room. She still needed around-the-clock care and could not get out of bed herself. Her body was depleted. She was exhausted beyond anything she had ever experienced or could recall. Nurses were continually pushing Anne to get up and move around, but just the thought of walking seemed almost impossible to her.

During this time the Linden chief of police and an ATF agent (who had arrested Jimmy on those gun possession charges earlier that same year) stopped in to see Anne and speak with her about Jimmy Williams and the ongoing investigation into what had happened at Steel Bridge Road.

While she had been battling for her life in a coma, Anne was told, her Good Samaritan, Steve Cochran, was questioned by law enforcement about what he knew. The ATF agent had told Steve during that interview, “Look, if she dies, you are going to be arrested for accessory to murder.”

Steve was, of course, alarmed by this. He’d taken a call from a friend. Hauled ass over to Jimmy’s house. Got Anne into his car and, against Jimmy’s direct orders, had taken Anne to the nearest hospital. Sure, he did not stick around to answer questions. However, it was because of Steve’s interaction that Anne had been in a position to fight for her life—otherwise, she would have certainly died.

* * *

In a statement Steve gave to the sheriff, he recalled it was around 12:00 A.M. when Jimmy called him.

“Stevie boy, it’s Jimmy. My honey, Anne, has been shot and she needs a doctor.”

“Call an ambulance,” Steve said. He could not understand why Jimmy was calling him and not 911.

“Nope, cannot do that,” Jimmy replied.

“Why the heck not?”

“’Cause the law gonna think I shot her.”

Steve dropped the phone and took off.

During his interview with the sheriff, Steve explained that when he arrived, he saw “Anne and Jimmy sitting in her blue car . . . in the yard.”

Steve parked. Got out. Ran over to Anne’s car.

Jimmy stumbled out of the vehicle.

Steve said he knew Jimmy was “intoxicated and high on drugs because he was holding on to the car to stand up.”

Steve looked inside the vehicle and saw that Anne was in big trouble.

“Listen here . . . Steve . . . ,” Jimmy said in a slurred mishmash of words, pointing a finger at him, poking it into his chest, “you take her to the hospital in Montgomery—you hear me on that?” Anne believed that the way Jimmy saw it, if he took her that far away, no one would find out what happened.

Steve ran around to the side of the vehicle where Anne was sitting. She was barely conscious. “Come on, Anne . . . I got you.”

“She was bloody and had several blood spots on her back,” Steve told the sheriff.

They took off.

“Where do you want to go?” Steve asked Anne, telling her to hold on, stay with him.

“Camden . . . closest hospital . . . ,” Anne said.

* * *

As she spoke to the ATF agent before leaving the hospital, Anne felt a reassurance that Jimmy was not going to be able to hurt her again. She had been terrified and paranoid Jimmy would show up inside the hospital. Nobody was saying much about what happened to Jimmy or where he was.

“Can you tell us what happened, Miss Bridges?” the ATF agent asked. Anne later said she got a sense from talking to this agent that “he was really on my side, a real tough guy who was looking out for me and cared about me.”

“Oh, my . . . that is a long story,” Anne said.

“What about any firearms, Miss Bridges, did you see any at Mr. Williams’s residence?”

“Jimmy has plenty of guns there,” she said.

A doctor came in and indicated it was enough for the day. Anne needed her rest.

While in the hospital those last few days, waiting to go home, Anne developed an intense paranoia. She was going to have to battle post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when she went home, but there it was already, exposing itself in myriad ways. Anne would sit in her bed and watch for hours as people came in and out of her room and through the surrounding area. She was scared Jimmy or one of his cronies would come back to finish the job.

I had no idea if the guy in the green smock was going to walk into my room with a needle and poison me. That was what went through my mind. I realized I did not know this man Jimmy Williams at all, especially the way in which I had thought I did. So I did not know then what kind of connections Jimmy had—he could have sent someone in there to kill me.

“Nurse, nurse, come here, please,” Anne said one night. “I saw some people roaming through the hallway there and I just wanted to know who they are. They seem like maybe they were looking at me.”

The nurse walked over. Stood beside Anne. Held her hand. “You’re safe here, Miss Marsh. I promise you. You do not have to worry.”

Anne looked at her, scared.

“I still didn’t believe her,” Anne said later.

 

I began to feel safer, or better, actually, when I was moved into the sub-ICU room, because I had a phone near me. Other patients were in there, too—even one woman, who had been badly burned, who had a sitter with her all the time. So I felt a bit better, somewhat safer. This was right before I went home.

 

Anne would sometimes sit in bed and think about her mother, who had become a tremendous source of inspiration and strength. She’d think about how hard her mother had worked to raise a family during the 1950s and 1960s. It gave Anne a sense of pause, putting things into perspective, helping her realize that she could get through anything.

 

My mother lost a child, who was just five years old. I thought about how hard that must have been for her as a parent. Is there a bigger pain in life a parent could endure? And my mother adored children.

As a matter of fact, she was the nursery coordinator at our church for twenty-five years, and she rarely was able to attend worship service, but she was doing what she loved. She also worked with the State Department of Human Resources, which she retired from after thirty-two years. I can remember her coming home completely exhausted and heading into the kitchen to cook dinner.

 

Anne was having trouble sleeping. More from the pain, she realized later, than the trauma at that point. The pain turned out to be much more severe than she had originally thought.

“I could not walk—I had to relearn how to walk because I had gotten so weak being in that coma for two weeks.”

Within three weeks Anne lost a lot of weight. She was frail. Boney. Could barely lift up her arms for more than a few minutes without the burning throb of fatigue setting in. Food didn’t seem all that appealing to her, either, and she had a hard time eating anything other than ice chips. Nurses had to force Anne to eat. Doctors continued with IV fluids and nutrients. Her entire body had been traumatized and sent into severe shock.

Anne was alive—but not yet living.

“Jell-O and ice,” Anne recalled. “I couldn’t really eat anything else.”