I skid down Main Street, cursing Bill’s name. He promised to put the snow tires on yesterday, but I suppose I shouldn’t have expected him to develop a sudden sense of responsibility overnight. The kids shout and kick in the backseat, fractioning my attention into sharp and shiny thoughts, utterly disconnected. Up ahead a red light glows like a beacon. I need to work on my sleep schedule, I feel like my brain’s imploding on itself. Ok, go through the motions, drive the kids to school, go home to start dinner and do the laundry, just like any other day. I break for the red light and my heart thunks as the engine grinds. “Please, please, please.” My toes curl as I press down on the brake. Skid, skid, skid: the grinding sound from the engine combines with the kids’ shouts. I close my eyes as the red light passes overhead.
…
I scowl at the falling snowflakes. My eyes dart between the road and the clock. 8:59, 9:00, 9:01, each minute that ticks by increases my anxiety. I can’t be late again. She won’t like it, and I can’t take her anger twice in the same week. I accelerate into the snowstorm. I thank God for each green light. I flip off the slow truck drivers. Brake lights ahead, despite another green light. What the hell? I check the clock, 9:05. I pass the car in front of me and race forward, only then noticing the blue minivan drifting into the middle of the intersection from the side. I start to brake, but I know it’s too late. Too late, too late: instinctually, I glance at the clock: 9:07.
…
I grip the steering wheel, transfixed by the view. Two cars, only a couple meters in front of me, a blue minivan and a silver car. It plays out like a movie, the faster car speeding into the minivan, sending it spinning around and around with a splay of car parts flinging off, until coming to a crooked halt. The car careens into a ditch, tilting and landing on its side. Just looking, I can imagine that any moment now the cops show up to arrest the bad guys crawling out of the cars, ending an epic car chase. My sister made me watch an action movie with that exact ending just yesterday, for my sixteenth birthday. The illusion of fantasy shatters in the still silence after the collision. My breathe comes faster, “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.” That could have been me. If I’d been going a little faster…The thought of it makes me want to flee, get out of the car and never enter a vehicle again. I turn, expecting my parents to somehow appear in the passenger side, to comfort me and help me get home. They aren’t there. I’m all alone, all alone, all alone. No bad guys are getting out of the wrecked cars, nobody’s getting out. Right, right, I need to call 911, breathe in and breathe out, then I dial the numbers.
…
I sigh as the ambulance pulls into the hospital, snowy days are always hectic. I scratch on the clean blue scrubs that were getting tighter with each passing month. They pull a stretcher out and I grit my teeth: juveniles. I’m reminded that I have to call Riley and make sure he knows it’s my turn watch his kids this weekend. I direct the paramedics to room 8b, simultaneously jotting down the notes and observations they call out. Boy, nine years old, head injury, unconscious. Girl, six years old, broken arm, severe cuts, conscious and talking. Next comes the driver, wide-eyed and pale, but walking, trailing the kids down the hallway. Victor comes in last, closing the doors behind him, I raise an eyebrow, “Is that everyone?” He winces, nods, and I sigh again. Victor is one of the new paramedics, unaccustomed to failure, unlike some of us. I wave him through the hallway, then turn to stare at the thick snow coming down, finishing the notes to send on to the doctors.
Audrey Rabick is a junior at Comstock Public High School; writing has been her passion for many years now and has helped her through the ups and downs of high school life. This is the first time she’s flung herself into the abyss that is publishing. She lives a charmingly boring life in Kalamazoo, MI.