THE
STORY BEHIND THE POEM THE NURSE AND THE COP
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This poem tells the story of how I
met my wife, Diane. I have always been a very shy guy when it comes to
asking women out. On this occasion, I was working in Traffic Division,
riding motorcycle. Our Traffic squad was tasked with monitoring traffic
and parking around Winnona Park in South Vancouver. The East Indian community
was having an event there and there were reports that a group called The
Marxist/Lennonists led by a man named Charles Boylan were going to attempt
to disrupt the festivities.
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Across the street from the park was
Children’s Hospital where Diane was working as a nurse. She was out walking
with a young patient and saw the police motorcycles in the parking lot
and walked over. She later told me she was quite taken by the uniform and
wondered how to start a conversation. She sent over the young girl.
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She then came over and while the little
girl was looking at the bikes, we started chatting. I amazed myself, by
getting up the courage to ask her out and we agreed to meet after work
at a local restaurant.
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I went to my Corporal later and explained
I had a date, who got off work at 11 PM, so I arranged to take the last
three hours of my shift off. It turned out my pockets, and wallet was empty.
This was around the time that Automated Teller Machines first came out
and there was only a few in the whole city.
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The closest one I knew of was at Georgia
and Burrard streets in the Downtown area. I went down there and withdrew
some money and was heading back to HQ to get changed. As fate would have
it, at that moment I heard a high speed chase start up, units chasing a
motorcycle with a fellow wanted on a warrant. The chase was coming directly
at me.
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No car stands a chance in a chase
against a bike and I was riding a big Kawasaki 1000. I took up the chase.
This guy was nuts, but I was even crazier for trying to chase him on a
bike. He went down one way streets the wrong way and at one point going
down a main street called Georgia we hit speeds of 140 mph. He slowed down
at one intersection and went onto the sidewalk through a group of pedestrians.
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I was hot on his tail. Georgia Street
had three lanes going our direction. The center lane was empty but the
middle lane was full. We raced down the center lane, thank god we had slowed
down considerably. At the end of the traffic, a patrol car decided to help
out, by cutting off the bike or ramming him. Unfortunately, he missed but
was in a position that I could not stop and slammed into the side of the
police car right over the driver’s side front wheel.
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The impact launched me off the bike
and airborne over the hood of the police car. To this day I remember thinking
to myself, "this is going to hurt when I hit". Being somewhat athletically
inclined I managed to do a shoulder roll, summersaulted and came up on
my feet running for all I was worth. The fellow I was chasing looked behind
him, saw all this, hit some gravel and went down himself. Just as he picked
himself up, threw off his helmet, and got set to run, I arrived. I have
never been so angry in my life (before or since). I screamed that he was
under arrest, along with several other "choice" statements. He turned to
run and I punched him once, on the jaw, and he went down, out cold.
.
I was about to hit him again, since
I didn’t realize he was out, when other units arrived and stopped me. It
was about this time that I realized I was hurt and sank to the curb. It
turned out I had fractured a vertebrae in my neck, although I did not find
that out until several years later. I ended up in hospital that evening
and missed the date.
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Needless to say, Diane thought I had
stood her up and was probably as angry as I was. Luckily I had gotten her
phone number and my Corporal phoned her roommate and explained what had
happened. Things worked out though, I went out with her the next day and
eleven months to the day later, and we were married.
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