Goodbye

((This was an assignment for my english class, which I ended up liking enough to put up.))


There was so much time to think as the car went off the road. A million fragments of thought were in my brain, in those few seconds there was time to consider everything. Time enough to think that my mom didn't know where I was, that my best friend didn't have her seatbelt on, and to wonder what would happen. I recall, as the car went off the road, the flying up and down down the ditch, the long dead grass I could see out the window, the form of my friend flying between the two seats, before the final jolt as we smashed into the side of the ditch. The seatbelt burn was stinging on my neck, my arm felt as though it'd been stretched to a point beyond oblivion. And still the most distinct recollection, the amount of terror I could feel as I tried to muster the courage to look up at the others.

An hour earlier, a car accident would have seemed ridiculous. We were just four kids, taking a spur of the moment trip to a town not so far away. A quick visit to the sports store in the mall to get some griptape for the drivers skateboard. Nothing huge. We'd be back before anyone would have even known we left. When the driver and our other friend pulled up asking if we wanted to come, my friend and I could see no harm in doing so.

Now we were piling out of the car as fast as we could, laughing with shock. When a quick look up had revealed no horrific body-through-the-windsheild scene, and everyone was moving, it had all seemed okay. As soon as we were out of the Ford, the acrid stench of burnt rubber and smoke assaulted my nostrils. There was talking, a billion 'Are you guys okay?'s to one another and the drivers steady stream of obsenities. My best friend and I sat down as the guys went to go find a phone. Everything looked like it would be okay. Then I thought it might never be.

No sooner were the boys up the steep side of the ditch and out of sight, that my friend began crying. She laid down, all she could tell me was 'It hurts, oh god, it hurts!' She didn't seem to be able to move and the next words out of her mouth made me cold with fear.
"I can't feel my leg. My neck hurts so bad. I can't feel my leg. I can't feel my leg!" In that moment, I was terrified. Every movie containing an accident that results in paraplegia was running scenes in my head. People were beginning to stop. There were still tears streaming down her face.

One of the first people there happened to be a volunteer paramedic. He began talking to her about what hurt and where, kneeling next to her on the opposite side as me. Two more people stood next to me, asking how I'd run off the road. I was in shock and it took me a moment to comprehend that they thought I'd been driving. I was fifteen! Then I realized how else would it look, with just the two of us there in the grass next to a smoking automobile.

I was saved a reply by the rearrival of the other two, and the distant wail of sirens. An ambulance showed up. Then another, and another. A firetruck. The state trooper wasn't far behind. It gave me the surreal sense of watching ER, to see the stretchers and the paramedics running down the hill.

I was told roughly to move back and they began to work on my friend. As she screamed when they attempted to move her wrist, I winced and took a step back. It was an incredibly quick ordeal that seemed to last forever. I was relieved to hear some womans voice, as my friend said she couldn't move her leg, that she was not paralyzed, simply hurt her ankle. with the effort of a few people, they picked her up and slid the stretcher beneath her. Rapidly, she was up the hill and in the ambulance. My protests at not being able to see her and my expressiveness at wanting to go with her werre ignored. Then they turned to us.

Those of us remaining sat atop the hill leading to the ditch, not talking. Our driver rapidly inhaled his cigarette and lit another. I remember watching his fingers shake-- and realizing mine were doing the same. The first people to talk to us were of course the paramedics, but after assessing that we were for all intents and purposes okay, they were still at work on my friend. The first people to question us about what happened, were the police.

It was strange, because when they asked the question, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know. I remember there was an Evanesence song on the radio, we were turning and then... then we were flying downward, bumps and grass and fear. The driver said he'd been stopping when the breaks simply failed, and he'd been unable to control the car after that point. I couldn't tell them anymore then that we'd been turning and had gone off road.

They began to put the rest of us on stretchers, from our standing postion we had to 'fall back' on them. It's strange how the little unimportant details are the ones you remember. I know I was wearing these earrings a friend had loaned me, the kind with the special backs so you can just yank them out. I recall only because the paramedic who was putting on the neck brace couldn't get them off and I kept saying to her 'just tug them out' and she refused, thinking I meant rip them out of my ears.

In the ambulance, the interrogation was simple. 'What hurts? Does it hurt when I do this? How about this? What's your name? How old are you? Where do you live? What's your phone number?' They thought me or the other passenger might have some sort of brain damage, since he kept calling me Amanda and I was adamant that was not my name. They asked us where we'd been going, where we were coming from. If our parents knew where we are. Oh, do I remember the guilt I felt at that one.

We got to the hospital ten minutes later, x-rays galore for us all. There was a mirror and with my sleeve pulled off the shoulder, I could see the bruise running from my neck halfway down my chest. My best friends voice came from a nearby room, and as I was unattended I went to talk to her. They'd assessed she was okay, she'd hurt her neck, sprained her ankle and wrist. That was the worst it got for any of us, my total injuries added up to a big bruise and a torn rotator cuff.

Calling my mom was one of the hardest things to do. Not because I wasn't where I said I would be, not because I was with two people I barely knew, not because I had taken a stupid risk. It was because in my mind, I was imagining another scenario, where it wasn't me telephoning to say I was okay, it was a hospital official asking her to come identify the body in the morgue.

It was an extreme difference. It had been a bad accident, but not a bad accident. But at the same time, it made me realize, I didn't even have any ID on me. I'd been half an hour away from home when I was supposed to be going for a walk. In a situation where other people in the car couldn't have spoken, she wouldn't have known for hours. Thinking that the last thing I might have ever said to her could have been a careless 'Whatever' to a 'Don't be back late' was startling. Since that point, I've realized that making your goodbyes what you want to say is just as important, if not more so, then any hello greeting.