Vignette

The summers turn, and the flowers wither. The heather grows thick and strong where once fragile flowers bloomed, choking the craggy rock beneath the clutching, grasping tendrils. Lightly, slightly, the wind skips over the brushy brush, and it quivers momentarily. I could almost fancy the rock sighs. I do.

Above in the crystal heaviness, splotches of featherwhite cotton dot across the skyline. Against the blueness a lone bird is silhouetted, screeing and crying, dancing on the wind currents. I shut my eyes, smile to myself. It's crazy, but I'm happier here than anywhere else, and God knows, I've had some wonderful times in my life. Wonderful times, and lucky breaks. God knows I've had enough of them as well, more perhaps than any one person should.

I lean against the brushy rock, enjoying the feel of the fresh new sun against my skin, impossibly white since the accident. It's been too long since I came up here.

Somewhere inside my soul [skull] the accident replays itself in slow motion, and I wish that I could just erase it forever. The physical scars will heal, in time, they tell me, but sometimes I find myself wondering if the emotional ones ever will. I'm happy, yes, but I can't stop myself remembering.

Like scuttling beetles, the cards hurtle down the freeway. Eighty, ninety, a hundred km an hour. Young mother in a ford sedan trying to turn around in the gutter. Car catches on the embankment. Spins out of control, sails into the traffic. Fighting for control she does a sharp right turn in front of us.

I squeeze my eyes shut tightly, willing the images to fade even as they play on, oblivious, to their final heartrending conclusion.

I reach forward, slowly, as if caught in a slow-motion picture. Only my mind seems to be working at a normal speed. Grasping the back of the seat in front of me, I brace myself and cling closely to the vinyl. My fingers are sweaty and slippery and leave hot marks on the surface. Almost idly I bite my tongue. The car spins out in front of us; Frank forces the brake down but it isn't enough. Slowly, slowly, it comes towards us and my eyes shut of their own accord. My body curls and trembles yet my writer's mind keeps clinically noting what happens. So this is what a real car accident feels like, maybe I can use this someday…

Time passes, perhaps. I wake up wedged between two front seats (how did they get there? Surely I was at the back?) face down, salty blood filling my mouth, trickling idly down my neck and crusting on my cheeks. Breath comes slowly, raggedly. Is this how they do it on the movies? Idly I wonder. But I can't move, and I think the actors fake it. And why can't I feel my legs? Maybe I'm cut off at the waist, like the men you sometimes see in the arcades, in their funny little chairs with a blanket over their (stump?) selling badges and sweet things for the kids. Mum always used to buy me a lollipop from the grandfather at the corner of our street. I always hung back but he never seemed to mind, so maybe you get used to that kind of thing. He had kind eyes though, blue like that dress I used to have, the one Mum painstakingly made and I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't like it…

I wonder if he's still there. How long can you sell sweets anyway?

They lift me out and I know something is wrong. I still can't feel my legs, and the doctor diverts my attention each time I try to look at them. My mouth feels funny; each time I try to talk the words refuse to come out properly, as if they get derailed on the path from my brain to my lips.

Fragments of conversation flicker in my ears; "sedative," "shouldn't try to move," "poor woman" are all I can make out. Of course. It all becomes clear to me, and I breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Some poor woman has had a car accident, and we are all gathered around to look, and things seem fuzzy because I am tired. Thank God. They must have given her a sedative, poor thing, she must really be in pain…

Time passes, it must. I am lying on something soft, and warm, and flat, and rain no longer spatters my crimson cheeks. Slowly I try to reach across, reach out for the warm body that my fingers tell me I should find, but my touch meets only cool, hard wall. Some kind spirit takes my hand and replaces it by my side, but I hardly notice. I am alone. A feeling wells inside me, a dread that rises threateningly from within, like the waves of guilt you feel when you're waiting to be found out for something you shouldn't have done.

I am alone. I wasn't before. Frank! Dear Lord. Frantically I try to ask about, need to know with a desperate urgency, need them to do something for him rather than clustering about me. The way they avoid my questions, near incomprehensible as they are, and avert their eyes when I try to look at them fills me with a greater fear than the idea of the accident itself.

I learnt full details later in hospital, between bouts of the nausea brought on by the anaesthetic of the 'mystery surgery' that left me in plaster and bandages.

Frank; husband, friend, colleague and soul mate, died instantly. As driver he was the first target of the spinning runaway car as it ploughed into our vehicle. Peter, brother, friend, and self-named 'Casanova', was in the passenger seat, enjoying the luxury of stretching out all six foot two inches, while little me, a whole foot shorter, got stuck in the cramped confines of the back. In a way I was slightly protected from the impact, though any protection that comes at so dear a cost is no protection for the rawness of a wounded soul…Nor is mine the only spirit with scars etched upon it. The driver of the other vehicle died at her wheel, neck snapped forcefully in the collision. She left behind two young children.

I always feel guilty when I think of them, even though the accident wasn't my fault. I lost my husband, lost a friend, but these two innocent children – babies really- will never know their mother. I cannot but know who had the greater loss, and the relief tastes sour in my mouth. At least I can remember; have keepsakes to treasure and remind me…

The strength of the sun is making me sleep and I feel no compunction against giving in to the temptation to remain here a while longer and doze in the sun. At last I am free enough to do so; free of the sterile world of needles and bandages, of little scuttling black beetle-y doctors and tall, stalking preying nurses with shiny clipboards marching down starkly polished hallways. It's a world Frank never had to know, and that thought alone makes me smile. "Better to die than to live without life," he always used to say. Maybe someone 'up there' heard and granted him a final wish.

Slowly I stretch, digging my toes deeply into luxurious heath and letting my fingers play across the smooth surface of the craggy rock I know so well. It is light and warm to the touch, making it easy to imagine him still here with me. My hands slip down and I place them palms against the fresh earth beside the rock, burrowing my nails deep into the loose soil. Resting my head gently against the answering warmth of the gravestone, I shut my eyes and sleep.

1317 words