Split Second

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Amber


I was searching through an old, antique trunk that I had used as a memory box when I was about seventeen or eighteen years old. I was a senior in highschool, almost ready to graduate and go off to college to major in psycology, the one thing I had wanted to do since I was twelve years old, and I was dating the guy of my dreams. His name was Derek Miller. He was a writer and exceptionally good artist. He was sweet and caring and everything I had ever searched for in the man I wanted to marry.

Yes, I said marry. He was four years older than I and he had asked me to spend the rest of my life with him when I started my senior year. I had known him my entire life, he lived two houses down from me and we had grown up together.

I had everything planned out. Graduate, get married, we would rent an apartment close to the university so we wouldn't have to travel too far to school. To some, it was sickenly sweet, going to the same school and choosing similar majors. He wanted to major in psychiatry instead of psychology, like I was.

Anyway as I said, I was searching through my old trunk and I found an old newspaper article. It was about, who else, my only love, Derek Miller. The article wasn't filled with happy memories of plans of our marriage and majors in school. The article was filled with one of the most horrible memories I posses.

It is a memory of pain and despair. Of endless nights of tears that never seemed to stop, that only resulted in headaches that not even the strongest pain killers could make disapear. Of a feeling of emptiness, of total incompleteness.

However, it is a memory that I have learned to use to my advantage, to teach other people that what happened to me doesn't need to happen anymore. My memories still haunt me often and even as I speak to you now, I can see so clearly the horrible night five years ago. I can hear the telephone ringing and the voice that changed my entire life in a split second...



I lay stretched out upon my bed, staring at my ceiling and thinking absolutley nothing. I honestly do not think that my lips could form a single word even if I so desprately wanted to.

My tears had smeared my mascara and left long jagged stains down my pale cheeks. My eyes were glazed with unshed tears, and my throat ached with the want to cry until my lungs simply gave out.

I hadn't even the slightest clue how long I had been laying alone in my dark room. I rolled on my side and looked at the clock. It said it was 3:47 a.m. That meant that I had been laying there for more than two and a half hours.

It was odd, becuase I had no sense of time as I was laying there staring at the cieling.The only thing I could even try to force through my head was the fact that he was gone.

They had called me at about one o'clock in the morning. I had been asleep for three hours and had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep. The phone ringing jolted me awake and I had to blink several times before I finally woke and became reaquainted with reality.

I cleared my throat and picked up the phone. It was Derek's mother. She was hysterical. She told me that Derek had been in a car crash and the police had called her about an hour and a half ago.

Her shrill voice instantly jolted me awake. The first thing I did was ask if he was alright. She paused for a minute and swallowed hard. Then she told me how he had been on his way home from visiting his aunt up north. He was going through an intersection and was hit on the drivers side by a drunk driver running the stop light.

She went on to say that the other driver had died on the way to the hospital due to massive head injuries and internal bleeding. The impact had smashed his head through the windsheild, smashing his face and nearly breaking his neck in half. The impact from the collision of his chest with the steering wheel broke off four of his ribs, three of which peirced vital organs, and another missed them completley. How ironic.

Derek was luckier though, the side impact jerked his body to the side so fast that it immediatly snapped his neck. He died instantly. The only thing I could think of was why didn't the seatbelts prevent him from jerking forward. Wasn't that what seatbelts were supposed to prevent?

She told me that they would have worked for the other man if the driver would have been wearing one. And since it was a crash on the drivers side of Dereks car, it threw him to the right. The seatbelt went across his left shoulder, not his right, so it didnt catch him as he jerked sideways.

By that time she was sobbing so hard I could barely understand her. Then I heard her husband take the phone from her and tell me that he was so sorry. She shouldn't have called and woken me with that kind of news at that hour. I had so many questions for him, and I thanked God that he was a patient man.

I gently placed the reciever on my night stand. The tears were streaming uncontrolably down my face. I had forgotten to take my make up off before I went to bed. I felt my eyes start to burn, but that feeling was welcome, since the pain was the only thing I felt. Other than that I was numb. Inside and out.

My tears had smeared my mascara and left long jagged stains down my pale cheeks. My eyes were glazed with unshed tears, and my throat ached with the want to cry until my lungs simply gave out.

I hadn't even the slightest clue how long I had been laying alone in my dark room. I rolled on my side and looked at the clock. It said it was 5:57 a.m. That meant that I had been laying there for almost two and a half hours.

I couldn't believe that in a couple days I would be attending my only true loves funeral.

I snapped out of my memories and leaned back from hovering over the trunk. I felt something on my cheek and found that tears were rolling down my face. I wiped them away. I stood and picked up the trunk. I was going to carry it downstairs so I could go through everything properly.

It has been almost five years since Derek left me. Since he has been gone I have loved no other man nor do I ever plan to, even though he would want me to find someone else. But I can't love another if my heart already belongs to him.

I have found a way to express myself though. I have started writing poetry. I wrote one just for him and it is now posted on my web site against drunk driving:



Words cannot express
the pain I feel inside.
All the pain from losing
the only one that I call mine.
Life is oh so fragile
suddenly shattering like glass
But hold tight to the love you have
the hard times soon will pass

But my life was taken away
by the passing of another

I'm still here to walk this earth
Yet I'll always be alone
My heart still belongs to one
and no other has it ever known
I have a message for everyone
To send it each day I strive
So many lives could be saved
If you never drink and drive