by Jahn, Amalie
As the front bumper of the car made contact with the first section of rail, I knew immediately that I had miscalculated my speed and trajectory. Instead of scraping the guardrail gently and returning to the road, the car ricocheted across the road into the oncoming lane, spinning 360 degrees in the process. The airbag deployed and in a moment of panic, I gunned the engine before checking to see in which direction the wheels were pointed. The car shot back across the road directly into a tree.
I was conscious of the impact as my head hit the steering wheel with alarming force. The front windshield shattered all around me and I was aware that I was bleeding from somewhere on my body. My arms were pinned beneath the dashboard and the pain was excruciating. I closed my eyes momentarily in an attempt to visualize where my phone was so that I could call my parents. The next thing I was aware of was a strange woman speaking to me through the closed driver’s side window. She attempted to open the door.
“Miss,” she called to me, “are you okay?’
I tried to speak, but found that I was too dizzy. A wave of nausea washed over me and I closed my eyes to keep from throwing up.
I heard the car door opening and suddenly another voice was speaking to me. The voice belonged to a man.
“Miss, I need you to open your eyes and tell me your name. Open your eyes Miss,” he pleaded with me.
I attempted to tell him that my name was Brooke, but what came out of my mouth was nothing more than gibberish. I was aware that there were flashing lights around me and I heard the sound of an ambulance in the distance. My head was throbbing and I could no longer feel either of my arms. I closed my eyes again.
“Miss!” the same man was yelling at me again, “open your eyes! Stay with me!”
I tried as hard as I could to keep myself awake, but I was in too much pain. Finally, I succumbed to the darkness that was enveloping me. My last conscious thought was of Branson and his camping trip.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
I was aware of the darkness. There was nothingness all around me. It was not at all like a dream in that there was nothing to see or to hear. I found myself in a void of empty space.
After some time, I began hearing voices. I strained to hear them. The people seemed far away, just beyond where I could see them. I called out to them, asking them to come closer, to speak louder. It took all of my concentration. Finally, exhausted, I slept.
When I awoke, I was still engulfed by the darkness, but the voices were closer. They were unfamiliar to me and I was unable to make out exactly what they were saying. I could sense that they were doing something to me, but I could not imagine what that would have been. Listening to their voices and unable to understand depleted my strength and I fell once again into a deep sleep.
The sound of my mother’s voice jolted me awake. She was speaking directly to me. She was telling me that I was going to be fine. That the surgery was a success and I would regain full use of my arms. I struggled to understand what she was saying. What could be wrong with my arms? What surgery? I was frightened. I had no idea what had happened or where I was. All I knew was that I wanted to talk to my mother but she was unable to hear me. I screamed at her, frustrated with myself for not being able to speak so that she could hear me. It was more than I could handle. Sleep came once again.
Branson’s voice broke through the darkness and I was instantly aware of my surroundings. I could feel his presence in the space with me. I listened to his voice and felt him holding my hand. He was crying. It occurred to me all at once that he was crying about me. Something had happened and he was sad about it. I reached into my memory, straining, grasping at thoughts that drifted around my head like vapor.
“Please don’t die, Brooke,” Branson wept. “I can’t live without you. I’ll never be able to survive. Please, Brooke, open your eyes and wake up.”
All at once, images of the aftermath of the car accident flooded my mind. I realized immediately that I was in the hospital. I was hurt. I was dying. I panicked. I could not comprehend how it had happened.
I called out to Branson in my mind, “I’m here! I’m fine! Don’t be sad!” But as I thought the words, I realized I had no idea if I was fine. Perhaps I wasn’t. I was aware that no one could hear me. Perhaps I was already dead.
Branson continued to weep. I could feel that he was very close to me. He kept repeating, “I can’t live without you. I’ll never go on. Please don’t leave me.”
The thought of my brother being unable to go on because I was not there crushed my spirit. He could go on. He must.
A calm washed over me. I concentrated on communicating with Branson. “No,” I told him. “You will go on. You will be okay without me. You are strong. And brave. Live your life. Live well for me.” I squeezed his hand as tightly as I could.
Branson screamed. I heard him calling to the nurses to come quickly. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity surrounding me. I heard machines beeping and felt something being placed on my arms.
“Sis!” Branson cried. “Hurry up guys! She squeezed my hand! I felt it! I’m not making it up!”
My mother and father entered the room. They were there, calling to me, holding my hands, touching my face. I tried franticly to open my eyes. It was hard. So hard. I wanted desperately to stay with them but I was too tired. Slowly the voices faded and I drifted off to sleep once more.
Pain brought me from my slumber. My arms were heavy and felt restricted on my sides. I wiggled my fingers and found that if I concentrated I could lift my left hand off the bed. I attempted to open my eyes and I found that I could. Unimaginable brightness filled my world. I squinted, blinking repeatedly at my surroundings. There were flowers in several vases and the smell of them permeated the air around me. I wondered how it was that I had not smelled them before. My mother was asleep in an arm chair, a magazine draped across her lap. I attempted to call to her.
“Ma,” I whispered. She stirred, shifting her weight slightly. “Ma,” I repeated again. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked in my direction. I called to her one final time.
Beaming, she threw herself across the room at me, knocking over a tray of food in her way. I laughed at the sight of her, or attempted to, as the sound came out as more of a grunt. Tears streamed down my mother’s face as she covered me with kisses and called into the hallway for any available nurse. Within moments, she was whisked away and a large team of doctors and nurses surrounded my bed, taking vital signs and asking questions. When they finished, a psychologist was brought into the room, along with my mother.
Together, they explained what had transpired over the course of my hospitalization. After the accident, I had been in and out of consciousness during my transport to the hospital. As soon as I arrived, I had been taken into surgery to reset multiple fractures in both of my arms. After the surgery, the doctors were unable to bring me out of the anesthesia and I had remained in a coma for five days. I also suffered from a concussion, but all testing indicated that there was no lasting brain damage. And since coming out of the coma, the doctors expected I would make a full recovery.
“Dad and Branson?” I managed to ask with great difficulty.
Mother glanced at the clock on the wall to confirm the time. “They should be here any minute,” she said smiling.
Mother spent the next several minutes chatting with me about all that had transpired since Friday and then, true to her word, my father and Branson walked through the door.
Branson sprinted across the room and practically knocked the wind out of me, grasping me tightly in his embrace. Tears streamed down his face as he spoke.
“You didn’t die!” he cried.
“No,” I smiled.
My father held a bucket of chicken in his hands that I suspected would be dinner. “Hey Brookie,” he said.
“Hi Daddy,” I whispered.
My family and I spent the next three hours laughing and talking about how lucky we were to be together. They enjoyed the chicken while I was served a delicious h
ospital meal of broth and Jell-O. No one brought up the condition of my car or the circumstances surrounding the accident and I was grateful. Finally, a nurse passed by announcing that visiting hours were over and that it was time for my family to leave. My heart sank, but my mother promised to return first thing in the morning. Branson and Dad would return as soon as school and work allowed.
Conscious and alone for the first time since the accident, the reality of what I had done rested heavily upon my soul. I had caused the accident on purpose and although I assumed that Branson had not been camping while I was hospitalized, it suddenly did not seem to matter.
With great clarity, I acknowledged a truth that I had been unable to face every day since Branson’s diagnosis in the original timeline. Perhaps my brother was supposed to die. And if that was the case, then perhaps I was supposed to go on living.
I remembered how heart wrenching it was to listen to Branson begging me not to die while I was in the coma. He said that he would never survive. That he would be unable to go on. I knew in my heart that if I had died, the last thing I would have wanted would have been for Branson to stop living. I would have wanted him to live more. Live bigger. Live better. Live for the both of us.
I had dedicated the last few years of my life to saving Branson from dying. In turn, I had kept myself from living. At that moment, alone in a hospital bed, I promised myself that regardless of the outcome of my trip, whether Branson lived or died, I was going to return to the present and live my life. For both of us.
As I drifted off to sleep, I thought about all that had transpired. Everything I had learned over the course of many months about myself and about life. Perhaps it was all part of a greater plan. I could only hope that was the case.
CHAPTER THIRTY
My recovery progressed quickly, or so I was told by the hospital staff. I had casts on both arms, which prevented me from taking care of myself with any great efficiency. However, after three days, I had mastered feeding myself, albeit messily, and I was able to take long walks around the hospital grounds.
I was delighted by the number of visitors who came to see me throughout the week. Sarah and Chad came with Branson and a dozen donuts after school on Tuesday. Three of my teachers stopped by with a get well card that had been signed by almost the entire faculty at school. A handful of other classmates stopped by during visiting hours in the evenings to discuss schoolwork and the gritty details of my accident. Even Paul McGregor made an appearance. Although I enjoyed seeing each visitor, I strangely yearned for the tranquility that came with being alone.
On the Thursday following the accident, I was enjoying a beautiful Indian summer day out in the courtyard closest to my wing of the recovery ward. I had just been informed that if my morning MRI results came back indicating that there was no brain swelling, I would be released by the following afternoon. The prospect of spending the weekend at home with Branson elevated my spirits to new heights.
It was amazing how much more beautiful the world seemed since my brush with death. I had seen interviews with people who came back from debilitating illnesses or survived heart attacks who spoke of a renewed outlook on life. I remembered thinking how corny that sounded, but I found it to be true. After spending almost a week in the darkness, the spectacle that was life seemed surreal. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to change and the greens of the world were shifting into golds and reds. I sat for a while and watched a squirrel busy himself with the acorns that littered the ground. He scurried with such purpose, but I questioned if he had any idea what he was actually doing.
On my third lap around the garden trail, I crossed paths with a man in a wheelchair. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with greying temples and a patch of thinning hair on the top of his head. He wore a hospital gown with a heavy blanket draped over his legs. I could just make out the casts concealing his feet. He had a book in his lap and glasses were perched on the tip of his nose, but he was not reading. He was gazing off into the distance, at nothing in particular as far as I could tell. There was a melancholy sadness about him. I hesitated to approach him but felt compelled nonetheless.
“Whatcha in for?” I asked casually, walking up beside his chair.
His gaze shifted and he made eye contact. Several moments passed as if he was still processing the question. Finally he responded, “Car accident.”
I sat myself beside him on the neighboring bench and replied, “Me too.”
We sat in perfect silence for what seemed like hours, and I was beginning to regret having addressed him in the first place when suddenly he spoke.
“I lost my daughter,” he whispered.
A wave of nausea hit my stomach. I did not have to be a rocket scientist to understand immediately that the car accident that put him in the wheelchair had also killed his daughter. Initially, I found myself at a loss for words. But then, it seemed appropriate to share my truth with him.
“I lost my brother,” I said.
He had been fixated on his hands and looked up at me once again. “In the accident or a long time ago?” he asked.
“Not so long,” I admitted. He looked on expectantly at me, waiting for more. I did not know if I would be able to continue, but I was surprised to discover that I was not only able to go on, but I wanted to.
“He got sick. Really sick. And it happened very quickly. It was almost as if one minute he was fine and the next minute he was dying. We didn’t have enough time together to figure it out. We didn’t have enough time together period,” I admitted.
“It was hard,” I continued when he did not interrupt. “I didn’t know how to go on without him. There was this hole in my life and I couldn’t fill it up. I didn’t even want to. If I couldn’t have him, I didn’t want anything. So I stopped living. I did nothing for a long, long time. And then, when I decided to do something, it was all the wrong things.”
He was still staring at me and I wondered if he was even processing what I was saying. His eyes were glazed over and I was sure that he had retreated into his own mind. I started to stand up.
“What kind of wrong things?” he asked.
I froze, midway between standing up and sitting down. Part of me wanted to walk away and leave the man, who was little more than a stranger, to speculate about what I had done to ease the pain of my loss. I owed him nothing. It was none of his business. But another part of me, a bigger part, thought that maybe it would help if he knew. I sat back down on the bench.
“I used my trip and went back to try and keep it from happening…”
“Can you do that?” he interrupted.
I thought for a moment. “No,” I responded.
“Why not?” he asked, finally coming out of his fog.
“Because your life is bigger than you are,” I responded. “My brother died. And so did your daughter. And the reason they are gone doesn’t make any sense. And it hurts so bad. But there is a reason we had them and there is a reason why we can’t have them anymore. And for us to think that we know best about what we need in our lives is arrogant. We can’t stop living. Even though they are gone, we have to trust that we are right on course. Right where we are supposed to be. So we have to keep going. And maybe at first we just make it through the day for them. Because if they were still around, it is what they would want us to do. But then one day, maybe you’ll get up and start living for you again.
“Is that what you are doing?” he asked.
“I’m just beginning,” I said truthfully.
He thought for a while and eventually said, “Tell me it will get easier.”
“It will,” I promised, “but only if you let it.”
“My daughter,” he said as he looked carefully at me, “is a little younger than you. Was a little younger.” He paused, unable to continue for some time. “I was taking her to piano lessons. The truck came out of nowhere.” He stopped again, collecting his thoughts. “Alexis loved the piano. She was gifted. She filled our home with music. I don’t know if I will
ever be able to hear the sound of the piano again.”
“Do you think she would want you to enjoy music again?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered finally.
“Then you will find a way,” I said.
There was a voice at the far end of the courtyard, calling my name. My mother had arrived for her daily visit. I stood once again from the bench and held out my hand, cast and all, to my new companion in an attempt to say goodbye. He took my hand gently and pulled me into his chest, hugging me with great longing.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said.
“Thanks,” he replied.
I made my way back down the trail towards my room, feeling grateful for having met him, the grieving father. I prayed that I had helped him in some small way. There was a good chance that I would never know.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
I was released from the hospital around two o’clock in the afternoon, exactly one week from the date of my accident. My body was healing slowly, but my spirit was remarkably cured. The whole family arrived to escort me home and my mother prepared homemade lasagna for dinner in my honor. It was homecoming weekend, and as I was clearly in no condition to attend the dance, my friends decided to bring the party to me.