CHAPTER 9
It is rare in life to be graced with a true best friend. Someone who is willing to do anything for you. Good or bad times. Drop his or her life to be there, without any personal expectations. Nothing can replace the warm touch, kind embrace, or simple gestures best friends lavish on each other.
As Anne lay in her hospital bed thinking about when she was going to be allowed to go home, she looked up and saw Vickie Taylor, one of her two besties. She’d met Vickie in the early eighties while working for the city, and now she was coming around the corner and walked into her room.
“Vickie,” Anne said, her spirits immediately lifted.
“Anne—how are you, honey?”
Vickie brought an immense sense of joy and ease just by showing up. As Vickie stepped into the room, Anne could feel all of the fear she’d been harboring evaporate. It was as if her world was okay now.
Vickie had a McDonald’s Coke in her hand.
“Yes,” Anne said, taking it.
“For some strange reason, I love the taste of a McDonald’s Coke,” Anne recalled.
They did not talk much. It was Vickie’s presence that Anne appreciated more than anything else.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” Vickie asked. “Something I can do for you, Anne?”
When you are in the midst of dying, nobody thinks about your hair, or that your legs need shaving. Or any of the other common, everyday things we all take for granted. Especially for a woman.
Vickie got Anne out of bed and into a wheelchair.
“We’re taking you downstairs, honey.”
“Okay,” Anne said, putting her hand on Vickie’s in a simple, loving gesture.
Anne’s hair was shoulder-length and twisted into a “massive knot.” Vickie wheeled her good friend down to the beauty parlor inside the hospital.
“They could not get those knots out, so I wound up getting a ‘real’ haircut.”
Back inside Anne’s room later on that day, Vickie made sure Anne got herself a hot shower for the first time in nearly a month.
“You appreciate the things you take for granted every day, especially when they are taken away from you,” Anne said.
* * *
Anne and Vickie considered themselves “partners in crime.” They’d worked together and had always been there for each other. One thing they’d bonded over was, unfortunately, tragedy. Vickie had lost her son in an accident. So an unspoken wound of losing a child existed between them, which they both knew would never heal. And as Anne sat in the hospital and Vickie learned of the details behind how her best friend had wound up there, it brought back that trauma with her own boy.
“I have to give Vickie an ‘atta girl,’ ” Anne said through tears, recalling how Vickie had come to support her, even though the pain she was going through from the loss of her son just a few years before was being dredged up all over again by being in a hospital.
When they did have a chance to talk later on, after Anne felt clean and fresh for the first time since she’d been admitted, Anne asked, “How did you ever find out what happened, Vickie? How did you know I was here?” After all, Anne was registered under that fictitious name, Marsh.
Vickie explained that she was in a neighboring town attending a crawfish festival. While she was there, Vickie ran into a law enforcement friend. He explained what happened to Anne, without giving away any of the details. They were all close because they worked for the city.
Vickie broke down right there amid the festival and had to go home. Still not believing it, Vickie called another law enforcement friend. He confirmed.
After that, Vickie began calling Anne’s sister two, three times a day to keep up on her friend’s progress. Only family was allowed to visit Anne during those early days, when no one knew if she would live or die.
“That’s what friends do,” Anne said. “Vickie is special. What a person she is to be there for me like that. I am overwhelmed by her humanity.”
The day after Vickie took Anne down to the beauty parlor and helped with her shower, she returned for another visit. They were talking as Anne’s doctor walked in.
“If I could interrupt a minute,” he said.
“Sure,” Anne responded.
“You’re doing fantastic. I think if you eat all of your lunch today, I will allow you to be discharged. You can go home, Anne. How would that feel?”
Anne was ecstatic. She wanted nothing more than to get the heck out of that hospital and be around familiar surroundings. She’d been through so much. She’d battled for her life and won. It was time to heal and be around those who loved her and whom she loved.
“I wanted to go home so bad,” Anne said with a laugh. “I ate what I could, and then Vickie ate whatever I wasn’t able to finish.”
Vickie helped Anne pack. The hospital supplied Anne with a walker because she could not get too far without it. They drove to Anne’s sister’s house. Anne could not stay home alone, or even begin to think about taking care of her boy by herself.
The longest road Anne Bridges faced was ahead of her. But she was grateful to be alive.