Melanie Davies
The messages are drummed into you at every turn. Hells, the warning labels are printed on the bottles, like the no smoking warnings on cigarette packets. Yet, somehow, people don’t get it. People don’t get it for a myriad of reasons. Mostly, they believe they’re invincible and buy into the whole “it’ll never happen to me” school of thought. Or, worse, they think they’re “not that drunk”, when they can barely coordinate their hands into getting into the ignition. Whatever the reason, drinking and driving happens, more than it should. It seems a sense of personal responsibility barely exists in certain individuals.
It was a very irritating evening. Yet another night where I’d been left home alone with a little baby, while her dad went out and painted the town whatever colours he could find. It was a regular thing, one he had also lied about before, but it was something I tolerated for the sake of my child.
By the time he hadn’t answered his phone for the thirty-fifth time, or something, I gave up waiting and went to bed. I was awoken at about 3am by the shrill beeping of my phone. It was him, and he sounded like hell.
He was exactly 450 metres away from our house. He’d been making his way up the hill to our house when a metered cab had pulled out from their parking. His story goes that the cab driver didn’t check anyone was coming before pulling out. I don’t think anyone with impaired reflexes can blame the outside world for their slow reaction time. He smacked straight into the metered cab. Crash. He says he felt his stomach lurch. Thankfully, he’d had the sense to put his seatbelt on.
He got out of the car, and came full-face with an angry cab driver. An angry cab driver who immediately clocked that he was drunk. It wasn’t hard to notice, he was slurring and, of course, belligerent. Funny thing, really. He’s the nicest, calmest bloke normally but, six drinks in and he can become a shouting monster. The cab driver instantly called the police, and while he was on the phone, the always-there-seconds-after-an-accident tow truck drivers arrived.
Those tow truck drivers. I probably owe them a thank you. They went through hell that night too. But, more on that later.
So, angry cab driver, drunk father of my child, two tow truck drivers. The cab driver then launched into a full verbal assault with him, to the point that he became physically aggressive. The tow truck drivers intervened and safely stowed my then-boyfriend in their truck, whilst trying to calm down the cab driver.
Just then, the police pulled up.
They asked for the driver of the red car, and – bless them – the tow truck drivers tried to protect him, and pretend he wasn’t there. Unfortunately, the police clocked to the plan and they immediately pulled him out of the tow truck, demanded his licence and breathalyzed him. And, of course, they found him well beyond the legal limit.
Which is when I got the phone call. The phone call blaming everyone else. The phone call where he told me that cab drivers are shit people, and that they can’t drive. The same phonecall where he told me they were putting him into the back of the police van and there was nothing I could do to help.
The tow truck drivers were also arrested, for trying to help him, and this was obviously, trying to defeat the ends of justice. They impounded his car, of course.
When the phone call ended, I was tasked with phoning his parents. Waking them up, and sending them out to the police station to try and untangle some of this mess. His mum arrived at our house to sit with me, and his dad went off to the dingy hell of the police holding cells.
At the police station, they performed a blood test, and chucked him into the holding cells, alongwith the helpful tow truck drivers. Thankfully, he’d had some good sense, and kept his smokes on him, and a warm jacket.
And there he spent the night, with the unfantastic company of way-more-serious criminals. At least he had company with his newfound tow truck driver friends.
In the morning, after spending heinous hours trying to sort this mess out, a lawyer was found and dispatched. He got out after his parents paid his bail, and got his car released. Then he was brought home to me.
His parents pleaded with me before they brought him home, and asked me to be gentle with him, hold back on my vitriol and I-told-you-sos…I did. For a while. For two full weeks, in fact.
He came home, showered, and fell into bed. He stayed there until Monday morning, where he had to go into work with a screwed up car, to tell the woeful tale and ask for time off so that he could appear in court in a few month’s time. The notion of a criminal record against his name hovered above us daily. How it would prevent him from getting a job. How it would mean that he wouldn’t be allowed to work where he was then (part of the job prerequisites are a clean driving record and a clean criminal record). What would we do if he lost his job. What the heck I would do, living through this and not being able to berate him, because, to him, he’d had enough berating for something that wasn’t his fault.
Through bureaucratic bungles, his blood sample was lost. This is a common occurrence in these cases but, dudes, if you’re thinking you’ll get away with it this way, don’t count on it. His blood sample lost, the case was dropped and his life could carry on as normal.
But, the truth is, it didn’t. This situation deterred him from drinking for a very short time and then, the lesson wearing thin in his mind, he was back to old tricks soon. That led me down the path of choosing single parenthood.
I’m thankful that he was not injured, nor injured anyone else. I’m thankful he does not have to live with this mistake, and I can only hope he learnt from it. I’m thankful that my child has a father who has, for the most part, evolved enough to put what’s important first. And, seriously, beer is not that important.
