One day Tom called to let Alex know that he had been promoted to manager of the fast food restaurant. He did not think of this as a job that he would settle for and was going to keep looking for something better, but it would pay enough that he was no longer dependent on Alex to subsidize him. We all decided to get together for dinner to celebrate.

Alex had a late photo shoot that day and we all decided to meet at the restaurant. It was in a neighborhood that Tom was familiar with but neither Alex nor I were. When I got there I saw Tom waiting out front and we shook hands and made small talk while we waited for Alex. A few minutes later Alex parked across the street. She got out and put money in the parking meter, then hurried around the front of the car and started across the street. None of us heard the electric car that was speeding down the street. It struck Alex at about 30 miles an hour, hurling her through the air towards the corner of a brick building. Her body twisted in the air and she was facing the wall when she struck. She put her right arm up to protect her but her arm was crushed as she struck the wall. Her body, including her face, struck the wall hard.

We ran across the street immediately and found her lying there unconscious. I dialed 911 and just kneeled there, not knowing how bad she was hurt, but seeing blood everywhere. I rolled her over on her back and saw that her face was bleeding in many places and some bones were clearly broken. I wanted to do something but didn’t know what. I felt so scared and helpless.

The ambulance finally arrived and this time I went with her in the ambulance. Once at the hospital she was taken immediately to the emergency room and I was once again forced to sit in the waiting room. Tom was there also; he had followed in his car. We waited for several hours, sometimes making small talk, mostly pacing back and forth.

Finally the doctor came out to talk to us. He had a grave look on his face and I feared the worst.

“Doctor?” I said, questioningly, not able to say the words.

“She’s going to live,” he said. “She has a broken arm, broken leg, some internal injuries, but all of those will heal. The worst part is that her face is badly damaged. Her left cheek bone and left eye socket are both broken and she has many stitches in her face. She is not going to look the same ever again.

I was elated that she was going to live, but concerned about her face. Tom was crying openly.

We were allowed to see her but she was asleep. Her face was completely bandaged.

“Tom,” I said, “you may as well go home. I’ll stay here until she is awake and I’ll call you and let you know how she is.”

Tom left and I took a seat next to her bed. It was not until the next day that she was awake and aware enough to acknowledge me. I talked to her but all she could do was nod or shake her head slightly. I was at the hospital as much as possible over the next week and was there the day they removed the bandages and took out the stitches in her face. Her skin was a patchwork of blue and purple. Her left eye was still swollen closed and they quickly put clean bandages on that side of her face. The doctor examined her closely and then asked me to step outside of the room with him.

“She’s going to need reconstructive surgery,” he said, “and it’s going to take more than one, perhaps as many as 10. Even after that she won’t be on the cover of any more magazines.”

I let that sink in and considered how she would to take this.

“Have you told her this?” I asked.

“Not yet. This is not something anyone relishes saying to someone. How do you tell a woman who was incredibly beautiful that her face has been irreparably damaged?

“Well,” I said after a moment, “I don’t envy you, but I’m not going to volunteer to be the one to tell her. I agree, I would not know what to say. Sorry, but I’m glad it’s you and not me.”

I walked away, my head spinning with this realization. “This is going to be devastating to Alex,” I thought. “Hell, she probably already knows, she’s not stupid. Oh shit, she does know, how stupid of me not to have already realized that. She’s too smart not to know. My God, she must feel terrible.”

I waited outside of her room until the nurses were done, then I walked in.

“Hey Alex,” I said. “I would ask how you’re doing but I already know the answer. I can only imagine how you must be feeling. I just want you to know that your face was never the most beautiful thing about you. And I know that you are going to be a pretty woman, at a minimum, when this is all done. Please don’t despair; you have a lot of happiness in your future. I promise.”

She smiled at me, but I could tell it was not sincere. She was deep in despair, and my heart wept for her.

Alex was released from the hospital with a few bandages on her face and riding in a wheel chair.

With one broken arm and a broken leg, she couldn’t manage on crutches.

She didn’t tell me that she was being released; she called Karin to pick her up. I found out the next day when I went to the hospital to see her. I was hurt and a little bewildered, that she had left without letting me know.

Over the next few weeks Alex did her best to not let me see her. She would avoid my invitations to dinner and was always feeling ill when I tried to visit her at home. I knew that she had two more reconstructive surgeries because I was talking to her doctor, but she would not let me see her. I told myself that I understood how she felt, but I was getting impatient with her for not having enough confidence in our relationship.

Fortunately I was able to learn her schedule with the doctor and I arranged to meet her after one of her appointments. Her face was bandaged and had been anesthetized. Karin was there to help her to the car. I walked along with them and tried to talk to her, but she was unresponsive. I didn’t know if it was the drugs or if she just refused to talk to me.

I saw them to the car and watched them drive away.

A week later I went to the doctor’s office, expecting her to have an appointment. She never showed up. I drove over to her apartment but no one answered the door. As I drove home I wondered where she could have gone, where she would have gone, looking the way she did.

I stopped by every couple of days and knocked on her door, but no one ever answered. I was convinced that she must have been there at least one of those times that I knocked, and I finally got angry and yelled through the door.

“Alex, I know you are in there. Open the door. Do I have to yell louder so I’ll know for sure that you can hear me? I’m going to do that.”

Suddenly the door opened and Karin was standing there. She did not look happy to see me.

“Alex is not here,” she said. “She has moved away and I had to promise not to tell you where.”

“What? Why wouldn’t she want me to know where she is?

“She made me promise not to tell you, and I did, but there is something that I can tell you. She left because she loves you more than anything, and she believes that without her beauty she does not deserve you. She knows the type of person that you are. You’re the hero type and you will make a point of being there for her, but in the long run you will not find her attractive enough. She believes she would not be able to compete with all of the beautiful and available women who would be there to tempt you; who are already there to tempt you. I’m sorry, but you are not going to see her again unless she decides to see you.”

I walked away with a severe heaviness in my heart. “What a fool she is,” I thought. “Can’t she see that I’m in love with who she is? What haven’t I said or done that would have made that evident to her?”

I brooded for the next couple of days, and then decided to try and find her. I went to the clinic and waited for a chance to talk to her doctor. He would not tell me where she was, but he didn’t try to hide the fact that he knew.

“Ok,” I said, “I realize that you can’t tell me where she is. But maybe you can educate me in a general way. Suppose I needed plastic surgery and I didn’t want it to be in Los Angeles. What is the next best option?”

“Well,” he said, “there are a number of options. It depends on how much you want to pay and how far you want to go.”

“Well,” I said, “what if I could not afford the most expensive and I didn’t want to travel too far, but I wanted an experienced doctor who had a good reputation?”

“I think the doctor I would recommend is in the Sacramento area,” he said, “and I can’t tell you more than that.”

To me that was his way of telling me where to look. I did some research and found a renowned doctor in a rural town east of Sacramento. I decided the only thing I could do was to hire a private detective to hang around the doctor’s office and watch for her. I knew that the doctor had planned to space her surgeries a month apart, so it could be weeks before I would know if I had the right doctor.

I could not focus on my work and had stopped taking on new business. I delegated as much as I could to the new hire but I knew that I was not giving my usual high level of service.

Two weeks later I was contacted by the P.I. She had been there for an appointment and he had followed her home.

My first impulse was to go there immediately, but I quickly realized that she would probably not answer the door for me. I decided to retain the P.I. and have him find out what her habits were, when she went out, and where. If I ran into her in a public place she could not avoid me so easily.

During the time after the accident Tom and I had become friends. He was intelligent and had again become driven professionally. We went out to dinner together a few times and I told him everything that was happening, or not happening, with me and Alex. Tom didn’t know Alex the beautiful model, he only knew Alex the Good Samaritan. I filled him in on what was happening with Alex and he asked me to keep him in the loop. He owed her a lot and was deeply bothered by what had happened.

I sent an email to all of my clients letting them know that I was taking a two week vacation.

The city where the doctor and hospital were located was in Folsom. I drove up there and got a room at the same motel that the Private Investigator was staying at. He filled me in on what he had found out so far.