Reminders of Him(74)

I tried pulling you, but you still wouldn’t budge because the car was on top of part of you. Your shoulder and your arm were trapped, and I couldn’t pull you out or get to your seat belt and even though it was dark, I realized moonlight reflects off of blood the same way it reflects off the ocean.

Your blood was everywhere. The entire car being upside down made everything even more confusing. Where were your pockets? Where was your phone? I needed a phone, so I scrambled and felt around with my hands, looking for a phone for what felt like an eternity, but all I could find were rocks and glass.

The whole time, I was muttering your name through chattering teeth. “Scotty. Scotty, Scotty, Scotty.” It was a prayer, but I didn’t know how to pray. No one had ever taught me. I just remember the prayer you had given over family dinner at your parents’ house, and the prayers I used to hear my foster mother, Mona, pray. But all I’d ever heard people do was bless food, and I just wanted you to wake up, so I said your name over and over and hoped God would hear me, even though I wasn’t sure if I was getting his attention.

It certainly felt like no one was paying us attention that night.

What I experienced in those moments was indescribable. You think you know how you’ll react in a terrifying situation, but that’s the thing. You can’t think in a terrifying situation. There’s probably a reason for how disconnected we become to our own thoughts in moments of sheer horror. But that’s exactly how I felt. Disconnected. Parts of me were moving without my brain even knowing what was happening. My hands were searching around for things I wasn’t even sure I was looking for.

I was growing hysterical, because with each passing second, I became more aware of how different my life would be going forward. How that one second had altered whatever course we were on, and things would never be the same, and all the parts of me that had become disconnected in that wreck would never fully reconnect.

I crawled out of the car through the space between the ground and my door, and once I was outside and standing right-side-up, I puked.

The headlights were shining on a row of trees, but none of that light was helping us, and then I ran around to the passenger side of the car to free you, but I couldn’t. There was your arm, sticking out from under the car. The moonlight glimmering in your blood. I grabbed your hand and squeezed it, but it was cold. I was still muttering your name. “Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, no, no, no.” I went around to the windshield and tried kicking it to break it, but even though it was already cracked, I couldn’t break it enough to fit through it, or pull you out.

I knelt down and pressed my face to the glass and I saw what I had done to you then. It was a stark realization that no matter how much you love someone, you can still do despicable things to them.

It was like a wave of the most intense pain you could ever imagine rolled right over me. My body rolled with it. It started at my head and I curled in on myself, all the way to my toes. I groaned, and I sobbed, and when I went back around the car to touch your hand again, there was nothing. No pulse in your wrist. No heartbeat in your palm. No warmth in your fingertips.

I screamed. I screamed so much, I stopped being able to make sounds.

And then I panicked. It’s the only way to describe what happened to me.

I couldn’t find either of our phones, so I started running toward the highway. The further I got, the more confused I grew. I couldn’t imagine that what happened was real, or that what was happening was real. I was running down a highway with one shoe. I could see myself, like I was ahead of me, running toward me, like I was in a nightmare, not making any progress.

It wasn’t the memories of the wreck that took time to come back to me. It was that moment. The part of the night that was drowned out by the adrenaline rush and hysteria that bowled through me. I started making noises I didn’t know I could make.

I couldn’t breathe because you were dead, and how was I supposed to breathe when you had no air? It was the worst realization I ever had, and I fell to my knees and screamed into the darkness.

I don’t know how long I was on the side of the road. Cars were passing me, and I still had your blood on my hands, and I was scared and angry and couldn’t stop seeing your mother’s face. I had killed you and everyone was going to miss you, and you wouldn’t be around to make anyone feel appreciated or important anymore, and it was my fault, and I just wanted to die.

I didn’t care about anything else.

I just wanted to die.

I walked out into the street at what I’m guessing was around eleven at night, and a car had to swerve to miss me. I tried three times, with three different cars, but none of them hit me, and all of them were angry that I was in the road at dark. I got honked at and cussed at, but no one put me out of my misery, and no one helped me. I had already walked over a mile, and I didn’t know how far away I was from my apartment, but I knew if I could just get there, I could step off my fourth-floor apartment balcony, because that was the only thing I could think to do in that moment. I wanted to be with you, but in my mind, you were no longer trapped under your car in that wreck. You were somewhere else, floating around in the dark, and I was determined to join you because what was the point? You were my whole point.

I began to shrink with every second that passed, until I felt invisible.

And that’s the last thing I remember. There’s a long stretch of nothing between me leaving you and me even realizing I left you.