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CHAPTER 1
Steve Cochran drove as fast as he could. It was near 1:40 A.M., Saturday, April 18, 1998. John Paul Jones Hospital, just off Route 28 in Camden, Alabama, was about a twenty-minute drive from Steel Bridge Road, in Shawnee, Wilcox County. That was the location from where Steve and his passenger had taken off. Steve had no idea yet what had happened to his friend. He'd only heard bits and pieces of the incredibly violent situation.
It had been near midnight when Steve had taken a call from another friend, Jimmy Williams. In a calm manner, devoid of any emotion, Jimmy had said, "Hey ... someone is here and she's been shot while helping a stranded motorist. I need you to come and pick her up and take to her to the hospital."
Something bad had transpired, Steve was fully aware.
Jimmy had given Steve no other details at the time.
"It's going to be okay," Steve said as he drove, though he probably did not believe what he was saying. "Just hold on. It'll be okay. We are almost there. Stay with me."
The pain was like a thousand needles simultaneously stabbing into her back. Anne Bridges had a sixteen-year-old son at home — the one thought was keeping her from entirely giving up. She had also lost a child, but this was unlike any pain Anne had ever experienced in her forty-one years. The burning and throbbing were excruciating. By now, Anne's wounds had bled so much, the back of the T-shirt she had been given to wear by her attacker was saturated and sticking to her skin. This made the very idea of moving an agonizing proposition.
Steve liked Anne — and also Jimmy, for that matter. He hadn't asked any questions when Jimmy called out of the blue, in the middle of the night. He'd hopped into his vehicle and taken off. By the time he'd arrived at Jimmy's Steel Bridge Road home, Anne was fading in and out, talking slowly, having trouble breath-ing. Here they were now, approaching the intersection closest to the hospital. Steve had driven through red lights and stop signs, knowing only that Anne needed medical attention quick, or she was going to die.
"Hang on, Anne ... hang on. We're almost there."
Steve sped around the corner, made it to 317 McWilliams Avenue. He spied the hospital building in front of him, looked for the ER entrance sign, headed that way.
"We're in the parking lot, Anne. Hang in there."
Anne was dozing, in and out of it.
Steve screeched the tires to a halt in front of the emergency room doors.
"I'll be right back," he said, hopping out of the car, running toward the ER entrance.
Anne fought the intense pain, wincing, trying to stay awake, taking deep breaths. Her head bobbed back and forth, her breathing now shallow, labored, becoming slower.
Steve ran to the ER entrance. Looked left. Right. Then inside the entryway.
There it was.
He rushed back to the car with the wheelchair, opened the passenger-side door, and helped Anne into the chair.
"Easy now, honey ..."
Just that subtle move from the car seat to the wheelchair ratcheted up the pain ten notches. Anne's bloody T-shirt stuck to the back of the car seat. When she got up, it released like Velcro, snapped, and slapped her back, stinging those wounds yet again.
"I don't want you coming in with me," Anne said.
"What are you talking about?"
"You need to leave, Steve." Anne struggled to get the words out. Her voice cracking, tired. "You don't need to be involved in this."
Steve thought about what Anne said. He didn't want to leave his friend. However, he didn't want to answer questions from law enforcement, either. In addition, Steve knew that if Jimmy was somehow involved in what had happened to Anne, maybe it was best he scoot out of there before people started asking questions.
"My main thing was that I could hardly breathe," Anne explained later, recalling the moment Steve dropped her off at the ER.
Both of my lungs, come to find out, were collapsed. They were filling with blood. My diaphragm had been damaged — but of course we did not know any of this at the time.
Back at the house, near the time Steve showed up to get Anne some help, Jimmy had told him: "You take her to Montgomery Hospital. You understand me?"
Montgomery, Alabama, had three hospitals, all of which were about a ninety-minute drive from Jimmy's Steel Bridge Road home, where Anne had been attacked and injured.
Jimmy thought that if I was taken to Montgomery that none of this — what had happened back at his house — would come out or come back to him. He was being stupid. If I survived, of course it would all come out. I knew who hurt me. I knew what happened.
Inside the car, in Jimmy's driveway, as Anne and Steve prepared to leave, Anne had said, "Take me to the nearest hospital, Steve. Doesn't matter what Jimmy wants or what he says. I need help now."
And Steve, who's a good man, I call him my "Good Samaritan," took one look at me while we sat there in his car and he could tell it was bad, really, really bad — that I needed medical attention immediately.
Back at the entrance doors into the ER, Anne struggled to say, "Steve ..." Her words were raspy and gurgled. "Steve ... please ... leave. ... Go now. I do not want you involved in this. I appreciate your help."
I was so thankful for what he had done — driving over to Jimmy's in the middle of the night and picking me up. I could have died there at Jimmy's. But Steve came. He came and he helped. I did not want to burden Steve and his life. One of my worst fears, or maybe my greatest disappointments in myself, is to cause people problems while doing things for me.
Steve took a look at Anne. "Are you sure you want me to leave?"
"Yes, Steve. Now get going."
Steve pushed Anne up to an area by the entrance, next to a buzzer to push for help. As he did that, several nurses, who had seen them pull up and suspected something was going on, walked toward the entryway.
"Take care of yourself, Anne," Steve said. He ran back to his car. Hopped in. Took off.
Anne pressed the button.
A nurse was already on her way out the door.
"They had seen us pull into the parking lot, come to find out later," Anne recalled. "And they kind of knew there was something fishy about the whole thing."
"Ma'am ... ma'am ... what is going on?" the nurse asked. "Are you okay?"
"I'm hurt ... badly. ... I cannot breathe."
Had Anne been stabbed? Shot? Beaten? Blood was all over her. She was barely conscious. Barely able to string a sentence together. Barely able to take breaths and exhale. She shivered and shook. A cold sweat beaded up on her skin, now white as chalk, pasty, turning gray.
The nurse ran to Anne, took the wheelchair by the grips, and rolled her into the ER.
CHAPTER 2
Margaret Bridges went by her middle name, Anne. Born in 1957, Anne had lived in Linden, Alabama, her entire life. Linden is a small, rural town about halfway between Birmingham and Mobile. The subdivision Pecan Grove provided Anne with some of her fondest memories of childhood during the sixties. Back then, a community spirit existed, along with a true sense of caring. Both seem to be all but forgotten about today.
Our house was the first to be built in the subdivision. Dirt roads were all around us. It was a great place to raise a family. The neighborhood was full of children, so there was always someone to play cops-and-robbers with, football (I was a tomboy), make forts in an undeveloped lot, play follow-the-leader on a handmade trampoline, ride a tiny scooter around and around onefriend's house, swim in a cattle trough (a new one).
During summer, when school was out, we started playing every day right after breakfast and headed home at dusk. We were very fortunate also to have a Dairy Queen right down the road. I could see it from my bedroom window.
As she got older, that bedroom window became important to Anne, almost a focal point of her life. All the neighborhood teens hung out at the DQ, and she could see who was out for the night from her bedroom.
I remember, I could purchase two small Cokes and five pieces of bubble gum for a quarter from the DQ. Everyone knew the DQ owner and he helped raise us all. You could cash a check and he would hold it for you. On Halloween we used his water to fill up balloons, and he would call our parents if he thought we were doing something wrong. He is a man I will always admire and be thankful for.
By most accounts, the Deep South consists of Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. Linden sits in the middle of what is sometimes called the Bible Belt, located roughly one hundred miles north of the Florida state line. Anne remembered her hometown as a place where neighbors helped one another, where residents took the time to stop and chat at the post office and general store. When one community member suffered, the whole town reached out with open arms and helping hands. The essence of community.
One of Anne's most comforting feelings stemmed from recalling the summers she spent as a small child and teenager at the city swimming pool.
I took all kinds of lessons, including junior lifesaving. I loved the water — and still do, really. We had no pool, so the next best thing besides the city pool was the sprinkler for our grass, or even the bathtub on superhot days.
For an Alabama child, one of the most "loved" events was the snow. Any amount of snow in the South is such a rare "treat," as she put it, to get two or three inches would close the schools, with everyone running out to clear the stores of bottled water, milk, and bread.
"I still love it and still get out in it, to catch snowflakes on my tongue."
Anne was one of those kids who "absolutely loved elementary school." Hers was a day and an age when most kids walked to and from school each day. Yet Anne's concerned (and caring) mother still insisted on driving her.
Anne's father was the Linden chief of police for thirty-five years. She looked up to him then as a larger-than-life figure, and the fact that everyone knew him made her feel "special and protected."
"It was kind of cool leaving school in the chief of police's car — I was the envy of first grade. I have fond memories of the Dick and Jane reading series, but a memory of fear of my first-grade teacher." She laughed. "That woman would pop your hand in a minute with her ruler. I don't think I ever moved a muscle in her class."
Anne grew up in a spacious, redbrick, three-bedroom home, which she would ultimately own and live in for the rest of her life.
In 1999 my mother deeded the house over to me and my sister, who later deeded it just to me. It was, and is, a nice middle-class home, in a nice middle-class subdivision. Three bedrooms and one bath, it sits on 1½ lots (not acres) with a large fenced-in backyard. None of us would ever let the house get run-down or neglected. We always kept it up to date. I guess you could say I am emotionally attached to this home. This is where my favorite memories are from.
Her parents bought a few parcels of land in the neighborhood as an investment. Life seemed to be moving along rather perfectly, at a placid pace. Anne's family had no real problems to speak of, and, for the most part, their lives had been mostly trouble-free.
Tragedy had struck the year before Anne was born, in 1956, when Anne's sister passed away at the age of five after a long battle with a kidney disease.
My oldest sister was ten when our other sister died; eleven when I was born. She and Mom have both told me that our sister who passed away was an angel. She never complained the entire time she was sick. The only halfway complaint she gave them was when she asked my mom, "Why won't God make me better?" Mom told her, "I don't know."
I cannot imagine the pain Mom felt trying to answer that question. My older sister and I had a difficult time getting along, and I believe my late sister would have been a mediator to help us along. I would have loved to have known her.
Anne has two living sisters. Her oldest, Joyce, "still thinks she is my mother — very aggravating, but it also shows her love for me, I guess. She has always been there for me. ... At nineteen, Joyce had her first child, John, so I was an aunt at eight years old, and then again at ten, with the birth of Russell, her second child. I basically grew up with my nephew, and to this day my oldest nephew and I are very close," she said.
Tragedy struck Joyce's family when her son Russell perished in an automobile wreck at the age of twenty-six.
"He was an awesome man who left behind a two-year-old son. Obviously, it was heart-wrenching for the entire family, but his parents never got over it. Then, in November 2015, my brother-in-law passed away. This has made things even worse for my sister."
Anne has nothing but accolades and love for her parents, noting, "God could have never given me two other people who would have been more perfect."
Dad was the disciplinarian and Mom was the soft-spoken, loving mother. I was a "late-in-life" child for them. Mom was thirty- nine and Dad was forty-eight. So, of course, being the baby, and after their just losing a daughter, I was spoiled rotten.
Even though she was originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mom was the epitome of a Southern belle. She never cursed, smoked, drank alcohol, or even wore pants (until she was in her eighties). She is still living (age ninety-nine in 2017) ... and she still reads, which is her favorite pastime. Mom and I are tight. She gave up so many things in life so I could have whatever I wanted.
Anne's father was in many ways the polar opposite.
But, boy, did I respect him! When my dad said "jump," I said, "How high ?" Dad and I were never very close. He never hugged me, never bragged about me. He never had much to do with me, except when it came time to discipline. This might sound harsh, but I don't mean it that way. I was the third, their last child, and I feel he had some resentment that I wasn't a boy.
The only time I remember Dad telling me he loved me was the day before he died, while the ambulance was getting ready to take him to the hospital. I was twenty-six. My son was two. One thing I have to remember is that he was like this because that was the way all the Southern men I knew were raised: to be tough, don't show emotion, and always be the boss of your home.
CHAPTER 3
As Steve Cochran drove away from the hospital, Anne Bridges was rushed into a trauma room. Nurses were on the phone asking for a doctor and surgeon. No doubt about it: Anne was in trouble. She had lost a lot of blood. Her complexion pale white, cold sweat beading up on her skin, she faded in and out of consciousness.
According to Anne, one unnerving characteristic about people she had grown up with was that, unfortunately, who you were and where you lived was how you were treated in life. Anne had lived during a time and in a place, she insisted, when people, for the most part, "categorized you." She believed this was why she did not want to admit or talk about what had happened right away.
You see, I was a city clerk. I was not the type of person who should have been with a guy like Jimmy Williams on that night. How we got there, and why I wound up over his house and subsequently fighting for my life, was a complicated story few would understand. But, look, people think: You're a member of the country club. You work for the city. You're an upstanding citizen of your community, and you do all this stuff for people. So why in the heck are you with a "con man" like Jimmy Williams?
It's almost as if you are to blame for the violence perpetrated against you. So, to say the least, I was a bit reluctant going into the hospital. People would judge me. I knew it. This town, when they found out what had happened, was going to be in shock. People would want to point fingers.
Losing blood, bleeding internally, Anne handed the nurse her purse.
"My ID and insurance information is somewhere ... inside," she managed to find the strength to say.
The nurses wanted personal information from Anne, not to mention what happened and who had hurt her. They needed to get as much information as they could, as quickly as possible, in case Anne did not make it.
"My sister," Anne said next. "Please contact my sister. Joyce is her name. Joyce. Please ... let her know where I am ... what's happening."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "She Survived: Anne"
by .
Copyright © 2018 M. William Phelps.
Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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