The Man Who Helped Me
by Kim Chinquee
My apartment got so hot. I finally shut the windows. It’s hotter to keep them open, which lets in the heat and the noise of motorbikes blaring off the Interstate doing wheelies. And the bus: loud even in its rule-following, letting people off and on and off…
I’m healing from a bike crash. It was my fault. It was a time trial. I was going fast, then tried to stop and couldn’t unclip my shoes right.
I found a way to use my SkyMiles to get myself and my two dogs a hotel that has AC.
We’re on the 12th floor. I look down into the city and out to the great lake—where I ride along it on the bike path. I look out to the break-wall. I know what it’s like to walk there.
The dogs tilt their heads. I tell them: Hey guys, I could’ve found a better hotel, but not every hotel likes you.
On the bed, I sprawl the best I can. One of my ribs is fractured.
I turn up the AC.
I go to Walgreens for the third time since my crash. Buy more dressings. I’m getting to know which kinds work better for the road rash on my knuckles, on my fingers, on my elbow, knee. The raw skin on my shoulder.
I take off my old dressings. The bruise on my hip has turned a lighter purple.
I run the shower and feel the water with my fingers. The sting.
I step in, adjust the temp. I address my wounds and wash them.
It’s my goal to find the man who helped me. He picked me up and drove me to the ER. He even brought my bike there, all banged up except for a wheel.
Kim Chinquee grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and served in the medical field in the Air Force. She’s published hundreds of pieces of fiction and nonfiction in journals and magazines including The Nation, Ploughshares, NOON, Storyquarterly, Denver Quarterly, Fiction, Story, Notre Dame Review, Conjunctions, and others. Her seventh collection, Wetsuit, was published in 2021 with Ravenna Press, and her debut novel, Pipette, is due out July 2022, also with Ravenna Press. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a Henfield Prize, Senior Editor of New World Writing, and co-director of SUNY—Buffalo State’s Writing Major. Her website is www.kimchinquee.com.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “The Man Who Helped Me”? This flash resulted in a set of prompt words from my Hot Pants writing room–worldwide, suit, joint, hip, salute. (Though it appears some of those words were edited out.) I had also experienced a bike crash, tried to endure the heat and live through the pandemic; this is a fictionalized/revised account of that.
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