Unknown Number

6.17pm

Are you there, stranger?

I’m here. Mostly. A bit misshapen.

I’ve got so much to catch you up on. When did we last talk? Almost a week ago, I think. It must have been, since it was Tuesday morning when I got partially run over by a hatchback.

We said a lot of things that night, and one of us wasn’t entirely sober. I hope you didn’t think I was ghosting you. It’s been torture, not having any way to get in touch.

Let me back up.

So. Tuesday morning I took the boy out for a run. I’d had big plans for the afternoon, to go on our first mission in search of bedding and all that stuff I’d mentioned. I think we were probably three miles in when… Well, I don’t remember the moment it happened. But basically a car shot out of a blind drive and hit us.

The boy’s fine. I want to throw up when I imagine what would’ve happened if I’d been running just a tiny bit slower, the stroller taking the hit instead of me. But he was okay. The stroller got flipped into the road, I was told, but for that price you better believe it was safe, plus the street was quiet. He had a couple scrapes on his face, but they’re already faded almost to nothing.

Me, I’m not quite so lucky.

I’ve got a shit ton of bruises and a broken collarbone and my arm isn’t so much fractured as… Crushed? I won’t get graphic, but suffice it to say it was disgusting, and it’s going to take months to heal and it might not ever work quite right again. But on the plus side, it’s my left arm and I’m right-handed.

I’m texting very slowly now, let’s say.

What else? The woman who hit me… Not even a woman. A girl. I was really, really angry at first, right up until she came to see me the day after the accident. She’s seventeen, and I swear she was more traumatized than me about almost killing some dad and his little boy. She was a fucking wreck, probably needs therapy for a year. So my anger’s fallen aside, for the most part.

One thing that’s come out of this whole nightmare that’s sort of miraculous was how the boy reacted. Like I said, I don’t remember what happened right when I got hit. I think I came out of shock a few minutes later. By then, someone had gotten the boy out of the stroller. The first thing I was aware of besides the pain was that he was on me. Like, physically on me, latched to my leg and shrieking “Da! Da! Da!” over and over. Which, as it turns out, is his first word.

So that was actually rather special, in its perverse way. Not how I’d have chosen to snap the kid out of his selective muteness, but here we are.

Since the accident, he’s also said “tar” and “mag jee,” which mean guitar and mac and cheese, respectively.

What else?

Oh! I was on the local news. They interviewed me on Wednesday in the hospital. The accident was the most interesting thing that’s happened around here in ages, apparently. If you ever wanted to know what the boy and I look like, you could probably Google your way there.

And that’s the gist. I’m not sure what became of my phone, whether it got run over or lost or picked up by somebody after I got taken off to A and E.

The boy’s grandma got me a temporary one from a corner store. But I didn’t have your number, and I’d never logged into my O2 account for any reason, just paid the paper bill and tossed the records. So I had no idea what my account info was or if I had a password, didn’t even know my own fucking phone number. And I was stuck in the hospital for days. I got home last night, and today my only mission was to get to the nearest O2 shop and convince somebody to print me out a copy of my latest statement. Which is how I have your number!

I have no idea what you may have been texting me since we last spoke. That’s all trapped on my missing SIM card, along with all of our other texts.

That’s been the worst loss, in a way. Losing our history.

We have a history, one that’s been entirely documented. The moment we met, the moment we first went to bed together in our weird way. The moments we turned ourselves inside out and bared everything, and the moment I nearly said something to you, something I now wish I had.

I have no idea if you’ve been angry or sad or scared all this time I’ve been silent, though I can safely assume you were confused. Maybe pissed. Maybe you blocked my number. If so, guess I got around that one!

I know I’m coming off kind of weird and up and cheerful. Part of that’s the pain pills, but part of it’s because I’m pretty fucking lost, and when I feel lost I tend to act like everything’s extra fine.

But things aren’t fine.

I hurt. All the time. Down an arm and a collarbone, I’m basically useless, especially when it comes to caring for a toddler. The boy’s grandma is here a lot, and I appreciate that, but I don’t enjoy it.

I can’t really bathe; I’ve got a massive cast, and I can’t even wrap it in trash bags or whatever, because that requires the use of both hands. Sponge baths—hooray.

Even texting hurts. I have to tap the screen just so, otherwise it tweaks a tendon or nerve all the way up my good arm and tugs at something painful in my busted collarbone.

I can barely get food out of packages and into either of our mouths, to say nothing of cooking. And I probably don’t need to spell out the guitar situation.

His grandma’s been staying with us while I adjust. I’m basically a stinky, ungroomed, doped-up misery, pretending to feel warm and grateful toward a woman I frankly don’t like especially.

My aunt’s offered to come and help, but she can’t get over here until early April. And even then, she can’t stay for more than a couple weeks.

It’s looking like I’m going to have to head back to the States.

7.26pm

Had to just pause and stare at those words for a few minutes.

I’ve given it a lot of thought. What’s best for the boy, and what it is I want, myself. I think it makes the most sense. If I go back, my aunt can help long-term, part-time, instead of just for a couple weeks around the clock. I mean, I couldn’t afford a visiting nurse here for long.

It’ll take some time to move. Not stuff-wise—I hardly brought anything over, and the flat came furnished, so it’d just be my clothes and the boy’s things, the car seat, and maybe the stroller.

Or maybe not the stroller. Maybe fuck the stroller.

But the boy will need a visa or passport or however that’ll work. I’ve only taken the very first steps toward proving he’s entitled to dual citizenship. I hope I can finish sorting it out by the time my aunt has to head home, if she does come, maybe pay through the pee-hole for expedited processing if I can.

That brings me to the one thing that does give me pause, that keeps the thought of moving back to New Mexico from feeling like the massive relief that it frankly ought to.

And that’s you.

I was too much of a coward to come out and say it the last time we spoke. I teased you with it. Teased us both with it.

But I love you.

Are you there, reading every one of these messages as they ping or buzz, I wonder?

I love you as much as one person who’s never actually spoken aloud to the other person can. As much as somebody can love after just a couple weeks. As much as he can, based only on what the other person’s chosen to reveal of herself.

But it’s true. I love you, Maya.

And so leaving’s going to hurt. So much worse than my body already does.

It seems like such a strange thing to hold me back. I mean, we’ve never even met. You’re wherever my phone is.

Until my phone was suddenly gone, of course.

Not that it has to change anything, my going away. The time zones will be weird, but we’ve nearly always written like we were sending letters, haven’t we? I hope you’ll want to keep writing. There’s not a lot waiting for me back home. The help of my aunt and hopefully my dad, maybe friends, maybe not. But I’ll have you, still. I hope.

I hope.

Are you there? I don’t think you are. I hope you’re curled up watching a movie or going wrinkly in a lukewarm bath, lost in a book.

Anyhow. I’ve said a lot. My shoulder’s sore from holding my good arm just so. The other one’s screaming loud enough to drown out the painkillers, but only just now—for as long as I was writing to you, it was silent. You’ve always been your own kind of magic.

I’m sorry for whatever you may have gone through when I disappeared on you. I hope you didn’t worry too much. I hope you didn’t doubt me, doubt us. I hope you weren’t too sad or too angry. I wish I could protect you from anything that feels shitty, me with my shotgun laid across my lap, but I guess I can’t.

The truth is, I’m not much use to anyone right now, and I won’t be for a few months. Not until the shards strung through my arm start to resemble a bone again.

Hope to hear from you soon. That’s about all I’m looking forward to, honestly. That and this new thing the boy does where he fetches my guitar and sets it carefully on the coffee table, then strums the strings, one at a time. That explodes my heart as well, but you … I miss you.

All the time I was stuck in the hospital, I’d think, this would be so much easier if I could just text her. The hours would’ve been so much shorter, the pain so much easier to take.

I missed you. I didn’t miss whiskey, and I’ve been without that for a week, too. I only missed you.

Okay, I better go. Dinner’s about ready. Later, stranger.

I hope.