obviously been involved in some kind of accident. Little did I know
how tragic this guy’s situation was.
His name was Kip, and he was from Wales. He had come to
Israel four months back and fell in love with a beautiful Israeli girl.
Originally just passing through, Kip decided to stay, and found a job
working at this hostel.
One evening about three weeks prior, he had been driving her
brother, her brother’s girlfriend and her friend in the brother’s car.
He was following a car containing his girlfriend and some friends of
theirs to a party somewhere in the new city of Jerusalem, and they all
had been drinking. Kip had been elected to drive because he had the
least to drink, but he was by no means sober. The car in front of them
was driving much too fast, as is common for Israeli drivers, he said.
Anyway, he was having a hard time keeping up as the car in front of
him flew around corners and sped down narrow streets. No one in his
car seemed to mind.
Then the first crash suddenly occurred. The car he was following
had hit another car that had suddenly pulled out of a driveway, and
spun around to face his oncoming vehicle. He had no time to react.
The last thing he saw before being hurled through the windshield was
his girlfriend’s screaming face in the passenger seat of the car he was
about to collide with. She was killed instantly, and her brother died
the next evening. Two of the friends were still in the hospital,
suffering from internal injuries. Kip had come out of the tragedy in
the best shape of the group, which was really no shape to speak of: his
face had been crushed, he had broken three ribs, and they had to
completely rebuild his heel. To make matters worse, Kip had no
insurance to pay off the hospital bill of over ten thousand dollars, and
his mother in Wales, who was his only surviving relative could barely
make ends meet, so she couldn’t help. Furthermore, he had received
ominous threats from the family of his girlfriend, who were going to
press charges for manslaughter. I couldn’t imagine a fiercer tragedy.
Luckily, the hostel was letting him stay for free, or he’d be out
on the street. Since he couldn’t pay off his hospital bill, he also
couldn’t obtain a prescription for any pain killers, and was wracked
with excruciating pain most of the day. I had a bottle of Codeine left
over from when I had broken my leg the year before, and was now
using to fight off any really bad hangovers that might pop up. I
offered it to him with my condolences. He thanked me and said not
to worry about him, that everything would work out.
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
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