One rough fucking weekend

So it was spring break of '08 I guess, last year, around the very beginning of April and my life was pretty eventful. For one, Ben and I had fallen in love and Amanda had moved out of the trailer in hurt and disgust and many of my friends from Americorps thought I was a sleazeball or something, except my comrades and brothers, Jake and Diarmid. Regardless, since we were all working in schools, we all had to find something else to do for a week because of spring break. I drove Ben to the airport in Seattle because he was going home to Chicago for the week and it was the first time we had been apart since we had been in love. And I had too many dogs because Pierre and Brautigan were both living with me and Judy and Juliette and my landlords said they would shoot them if they went near their heirloom rabbits again so I had to keep the dog door closed and I was really having a lot of trouble keeping the trailer habitable because everyone was shitting and pissing everywhere. For spring break I got a great job cleaning out this old lady's house in Leavenworth. She had died. She lived with some other old ladies I guess and they never threw anything away and they kept it immaculately organized. The basement walls were lined with narrow shelves that had little peanut butter and baby food jars with different kinds of screws and nails and bread bag ties and different colors of thumb tacks. Notebooks of every variety and just tons and tons of really neat shit. I took as much as I wanted. A pretty cup, a yellow polyester pantsuit, a poster of a cat, a scary retro hairdoll, a bamboo bed tray with sidebaskets and a cupholder, etc. Oh and tons and tons of matches, she collected matchbooks and there were boxes and boxes of awesome old matchbooks. I have been disappointed in how well they light, but at least there are always more. It was really great, I loved this job. Leavenworth is unbelievably scenic, that is kind of the point, and we were right on the river. She was donating her house to the audubon society. And I could bring the dogs, so they just ran around and swam and drank the neighbor's coffee all day. It was really nice and I got the trailer really clean and shit. It was so pleasant that I didn't even think about or worry about the ticket I had gotten on my way home from taking Ben to Seattle.
Listen to how bullshit this is. I got pulled over for being right of center. Not speeding, not failing to wear my seatbelt (which they can pull you over for over there), not even being left of center, which could conceivably be dangerous, but right of center. Really the cop pulled me over because I had a whole bunch of bumper stickers about peace and the environment and I was lighting a rolled cigarette, so he figured it was a joint. Regardless, I didn't have my driver's license or insurance on me. I think that I had had to take them out of the car to make a copy for something stupid and never put them back in. So I got tickets, like 500 bucks in tickets, but I could have gotten 400 of it waived because I really did have insurance, but they make you drive back to the city where you got the ticket and Wenatchee is a good 20 minutes from my trailer, and at least 40 from Chelan and I was working full time and thought that I could just put it off for a little.
Ok, so spring break ends and I am going to pick Ben up from the airport in Seattle, maybe 3 and a half hours away. I had all of these little gifts for him you know; a letter, a picture, that creepy hairdoll, and I was wearing the yellow polyester pantsuit and was going to hold a sign and be very funny. I get halfway up Bluitt pass and my car is not accelerating too hot and there's this noise. I had meant to get an oil change, I swear to God I had meant to get an oil change, but I was just too excited and I couldn't wait and I didn't. So some people pull over and we are all looking at it knowing that it is dead, but they drove me to get some oil 15 miles away and back to my car, and it just isn't going to work. I don't know what to do. At this point in my life I had never hitchiked, but none of my friends were answering their phones. I just cried and cried on the side of the road because now I couldn't get Ben and my car was dead. It is hard to believe even now that people can be so sad. A cop or something picked me up and took me to the big Y, a familiar spot to anyone familiar with the drive from Seattle over the mountains, it's at the beginning of the pass. I called a tow truck from there and drank a lot of coffee and didn't know what to do. The buses weren't running and I was still an hour from home. Finally my parents said I needed to call my uncle Bob who lives in Wenatchee and I'd met once. He was nice enough to come get me and was taking me back to my trailer when Diarmid called. Diarmid said that he would take me to Seattle to get Ben, even though it was now approaching 8 pm. I had left home at 2. I was happy, I couldn't believe what a good friend I had to drive me all the way there so I could see him just a little sooner, because he was going to have to take a bus or something the next day. So we drove to Seattle and we found him and got him and were on our way back and we were so in love, we sat in the back seat together and held hands and kissed and didn't wear our seatbelts and Ben told us about his trip and we were listening to the Love album Forever Changes and Diarmid was driving. And we went around a curve too fast and the road was kind of frosty because we were on the mountain pass and we crashed and flipped and rolled and I thought I was going to die and then we landed right side up in the ditch. Everyone hopped out of the car. There was broken glass everywhere and I wasn't wearing any shoes and all of the gifts were strewn all over the road. We thought, with relief, that we were alive and it was o.k. and maybe we could even start the car back up. Ben was saying that he was hurt and we didn't know how much or if we needed to go to the hospital or what. A car stopped and asked if we needed a ride, we almost said no, but the car was obviously not starting back up and Ben was actually very hurt and we got into this kid's nice car. T.J. was his name and he drove us to the Wenatchee hospital. I swear to God that was the longest fucking car ride of my life. Every bump was unbearable. Ben was moaning and crying in the back seat and I was so afraid to touch him even though I wanted to. No one said a word for almost the entire drive, which was at least an hour. We got to the emergency room sometime around 1 or 2 in the morning. I was wearing the yellow polyester pantsuit that was now stained with a little blood. None of us were bleeding much that we could see, but I didn't know what sort of injuries Ben had inside, I thought he might die. I thought he was going into shock. I was terrified. At the emergency room we had to fill out so many forms. I quickly learned his birthday. There were cops there and they wanted statements and I asked if we were going to get in trouble for not wearing our seatbelts and said that I thought I had the right to not get myself in trouble, but they said they just needed statements and I didn't know what to do but cooperate. Ben had to have his shirt cut off and he had x-rays taken of his right arm. The nurse wouldn't give him any drugs until the x-rays came back and even said "It sounds like you're asking me for narcotics, blah blah blah" until she saw the x-rays and then she wasn't such a bitch. We had to ask them to x-ray his left hand too, because they apparently forgot that that was also hurting him. Regardless, he got all bandaged up, with a sling for his right arm and his left hand wrapped up because both were broken and we were out waiting in the parking lot for a cab, joking about how he might have to quit smoking because he wouldn't be able to do it himself. Diarmid admitted that he was going to have to switch to a bicycle for a while (as was I) and Ben said that he had known it might take some sacrifices, but he was glad Diarmid was finally coming around to his point of view. Ben, as we all know, doesn't drive and hasn't had a car as long as I've known him. (except for the new Saturn wagon that I consider ours, even though I'm the only one who drives it) Once the taxi driver got there we took Diarmid home and went to the drug store to get his prescription pain pills. That Walgreens was apparently run by idiots because they couldn't give him the prescription because their printer wasn't working and they couldn't print labels. So it is now 5:30 in the morning and we are paying this cab driver to sit and wait with us at the Walgreens and he is getting more and more pissed about the lost work and about how he is off work at 6. Eventually he did leave and got another cab driver to come. The pharmacy never did get us the drugs and we just left because I was going to die I was so tired. Back at the trailer, there were 3 crazy dogs who had shat everywhere and were insanely excited to see Ben. We had to tie Pierre up so that he couldn't reach the bed and he was trying to jump on Ben and it was awful. I am pretty sure that Ben was hungry and I made spaghetti. Spaghetti, of all things, was what he wanted. The drugs must have been working pretty good at that point because he was smiling like a kid as I tried to feed him. We were still so in love, we thought this would be the best test of our relationship ever.
The next morning I had to help him go to the bathroom and we had no pain medicine and no car to go get it and it was Sunday so the buses weren't running. The trailer was 7 miles from Entiat, which has a single grocery store, and 12 from Wenatchee, and we were stranded.
Things got less romantic from there.