Three

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Prologue


Falling. Falling over your own two feet. It can be embarrassing. It can be life changing. It can lead to something else; it can lead to something lost being found. You can find your immaturity, your emotions, or even an earring fallen from an ear. Something deep can transform you or something small can sidetrack you. Emily- As she waved, she fell over her own feet. But as she was falling a man from across the road screamed her name, her husband, her boyfriend, the person she was waving at? It was the last thing she ever heard because after her head hit the pavement she never woke up again. He ran across the road to get to her and was struck by a car. His voice calling her name and the screaming squeal of brakes were the last things he ever heard. The tragedy of this ill-fated couple was witnessed by 3 people. 3 people whose lives changed for good after seeing this act of love alter this mans life and that small fumble of feet alter both their lives.

Chapter 1

Will
I thought she was gorgeous. That girl who fell, was she called Emily? That’s the name that the man screamed out. I was thinking about how embarrassed she would be when she got up again when I heard the screech of brakes and saw the man go down. He didn’t get back up. Neither did she.

Millie
I remember thinking I was jealous of the girl whose name he was calling. The way his love for her was injected into his coarse voice as he screamed her name. That’s when everything seemed to go in fast-forward. I saw her fall, I saw the car trundling down the cobbled lane, and I saw him start to run to her. I saw him crumple as he was sent to the unforgiving ground. They both lay still.

Leo
I was walking out of my door, admiring the crisp air of a fresh day when I saw it happen. I have never had an experience like it. I have never felt so inadequate, so helpless. There was nothing I could have done but I can’t help feeling guilty. I felt like I saw it happen before it did. She was already down, unmoving, as he was taken out by a taxi. The taxi that was coming to take me to the airport. My fault? I heard they are both still in comas. Laying side by side, their love for each other still shown through small kindnesses like that.


I am telling you this story. I was the fourth witness. The one that no-one seemed to notice, whose tenses seem to tangle together, whose presence seems to fade into the background more with each passing day. I always seem to be running away from the inevitable: invisibility. I saw every detail, even the leaves that fell off the trees as the disaster unfolded, weren’t left unnoticed. I saw the 3 people whose eyes opened incredulously when they accepted what had just happened, what they had just been a spectator to. A show where no-one buys tickets, where no-one gets refunds, a show with no applause, just a never-ending silence, for the unlucky ones that is. The three that got away with just having to watch it, not participate in it, they never felt the same, never saw things in a similar way to others, so they didn’t really get away unscathed at all. They now each have something that I like to think of as a scar, inside of them, where their emotions lie, where their brain short circuits every time they rerun the events that unfurled before them that fateful day. The lucky ones?

Will
I didn’t think I would be affected this way. I didn’t think I would remember every moment of it. I didn’t think I could rewind and press play repeatedly, the film never ran out. The sequence of events that ended so disastrously are imprinted in my mind. Forever. Against my will. I tried so many things to keep my mind occupied, so I wouldn’t feel sick every time I was alone and the reel started playing. Alcohol, drugs, work, running, sleeping. Nothing worked, it just made it harder to face or made it seem like more of a monstrosity controlling my tortured body. Either way, I couldn’t seem to escape it.

Millie
After it happened, time seemed to stand still, a moment of absolute tranquillity amongst all the mess. Then as if the mourning period was over, the world began to resume, as it was. Nothing had happened, nothing that would largely affect anything else. I stood there for hours apparently, that’s what emergency services told me, my mouth open, my eyes glazed and unblinking, my mind a complete blank. The horror of what I had just witnessed must have hit me so hard, that I couldn’t deal with it. My psychologist says I need to take time off to get over it, to get through this “emotional stress and trauma” that I have been through. Bullshit. I need to have something that will occupy my time and space, so I wont be able to think of that day ever again.

Leo
Consumed, grief, witness, unreliable, wreck, awkward. Those are just some of the words whispered behind my back at work, at home, on the street even. This “tragic love-story” made me famous, or should I say infamous. Behind hands, words are exchanged, words describing my flaws, my weaknesses in such varying degrees, sometimes they burn, and sometimes they don’t. I thought I would be one of those people who when put in a terrible position would be able to bounce back, be able to keep their chin up and learn from it. But instead I am left like this; torn in half, one half wanting to move on, the other half not knowing how to.


They were all left like this, all broken, unable to be fixed unless amnesia was an answer. Knowing they would never find the happiness to cure the visions that haunt their days and nights. These 3 people are distinctly different to anyone else I have ever encountered, they seem to find this event so much more traumatising then it has to be. They drag it on and on, ruining their own lives, not anyone else’s, but in their case it seems to make sense. It’s like the small moments the couple shared before the accident, their blatant love made obvious, seemed to make the situation that much worse for the people left to deal with the aftermath.