Blake
Eighteen years ago

“LET’S GO, MOM. I’m going to be late to the game,” I called up to my mother, who was finishing getting ready.

It was the homecoming game, and I had to walk the field with Haley Maslow. She was nominated for homecoming queen and I was nominated for king. Something I couldn’t give two shits about. If I was late, I didn’t even want to think about what my punishment would be. This was a big game for me. Coach had benched me at the start of the season because of a small fight I’d got into with some asshole from another school, and then my grades started slipping. I slacked off and my GPA dropped below what the school deemed acceptable to continue in activities. Not being played gave me the jitters. It didn’t take many games for me to get my crap together and bring my grades up to at least passing.

I had a chance to get a scholarship to play at Washington University, but it wasn’t something I’d be taking advantage of. My dad was grooming me to come work for him when I graduated high school. My older brother was meant to go work for him as well, but after the summer of his senior year, Thomas dropped the bomb on Dad that he had no intentions of taking over the business. He and my dad had one of the worst fights I’d ever witnessed. I was kind of shocked it didn’t come to blows. The disappointment my dad had ran deep. Thomas went off to architecture school, and I got the pleasure of dealing with the leftover anger at home.

“Okay, I’m here, I’m here, let’s go.” My Mom rounded the corner, her long chocolate-colored hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. She had light makeup on, and she was wearing red and white, representing Port Townsend’s High School colors. She was more excited about seeing me play than even I was.

I glanced at the time on the microwave. “I’m going to be late.”

“Nah. Watch your mom bob and weave through traffic.” She winked at me.

Mom and I had a special bond. She wanted big things for me. My parents had only planned on having two kids. They were supposed to stop with me, except a trip to Cancun for their anniversary resulted in my baby sister nine months later. They adored her and had wanted a girl, but I was my mom’s little man. At least that’s what she always called me, despite my stature being almost a full foot taller than she was.

I tossed my bag in the trunk of the car and we were off. It was a short drive, but we had plenty of twists and turns through the forest to get down to the football field.

“You nervous?” Mom asked from the driver’s seat.

“Nah. If my stupid coach had played me last game, we would have won.”

She smiled. “You have your dad’s ego.”

“I don’t take that as a compliment.” I frowned.

“Well, it just means you’re a smart boy and have your whole life ahead of you. Football isn’t everything, Blake.”

“Mom.” I sighed. “I’m a senior. It’s the last year I’ll be playing any sort of sport. It is everything.”

She reached over and patted my leg. “I have no doubt you’ll do amazing things tonight. Just don’t let your head get ahead of you. Play as a team, not as if you’re the only player on the field. You all win together.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this lecture. As a running back, it was my job to get my hands on that ball and take it to the goal. It was a single-man effort. Sure, I relied on my teammates to keep their defensive away from me so I could get there, but it was me holding the ball, and it was me who was expected to score. No other player on my team scored as many touchdowns besides the quarterback than me. I was good.

I was good at everything I did.

“I know,” I said, just to pacify her.

I reached forward and flipped on Bluetooth so my phone would connect to the radio. I picked out a heavy metal song I liked listening to to pump me up before every game. I turned it up as loud as I could before I knew my mom would slap my hand away and turn it back down.

I was just starting to close my eyes to tune everything else out when something happened. It was kind of true what people say. When you almost die, it’s an outer body experience. You see things happening so slowly, as if you can somehow change the outcome or make it different. Except you can’t. I simply opened my eyes and blinked. Then it was all over.

That’s all it took.

I don’t remember the logging truck that pulled out in front of our car when we rounded a nearly one-hundred-eighty degree turn. I don’t remember my mom swerving to try and miss hitting it on my side of the car. I don’t remember the glass shattering, the airbags slamming me in my face as the dashboard came close enough for me to kiss. Nor do I recall the car rolling several times before it came to a complete stop against a thick evergreen.

What I do remember is the sound of high-pitched wailing ringing in my ears. The near blindness I had because blood was oozing from my head into my eyes. There was a person standing over me trying to speak to me, but I could hear nothing. My chest felt heavy and I was no longer inside the car. I thought I’d been moving my arms as I tried to brush off whatever was sitting on top of me, but it wouldn’t move. I remember thinking ‘could whoever was talking to me wipe my damn eyes so I could see what in the hell was happening?’

Even that moment, the one I could recall, happened in slow motion, yet was over so quickly. I lay on the ground and realized in the midst of branches jabbing into my back, the smell of earth in my nose, that something more was wrong. In a brief moment of panic I blinked through the shit in my eyes. Where was my mom? Why wasn’t my mom holding my hand and talking to me? Was she okay? Three people put me on a softer surface and raised me in the air. I noticed I was being moved toward the flashing lights.

It was getting incredibly hard to breathe. I had a sharp pain in my stomach, and that weight on my chest was heavier. I wanted to close my eyes. Before completely blacking out, I looked out in front of me. I saw the car and what a mess it was. Panic started rising in me, but then I saw her. There she was. My mom. She stood right beside the car, without a scratch on her. Her brown bun was still in place, and she was okay. She looked at me, and I looked at her. Relief washed over me.

She was okay.

The next thing I remembered was nowhere near as pleasant. There was this god-awful beeping next to my left ear, and something was in my nose. I lifted one of my arms to try and take it out. Someone grasped my forearm and pushed it back down to the bed.

“Don’t move, Son. That’s helping to give you oxygen.”

I needed help with air? What the hell for? My eyes opened barely a sliver. A light blue blanket was over my legs, two vases full of flowers were in a corner, and my dad was standing next to me. Now I was really confused.

I opened my mouth to talk, but all that came out was air. I tried clearing my throat, which sent pain across my stomach. Wincing, I tried again. “Where am I?” It barely came out a whisper.

“You’re in the hospital. You were in an accident. The doctors had to do emergency surgery on a torn spleen and a few other spots where there was bleeding, but they told me they got it all.”

A torn what? How did I not know this? I felt my brows pull together, which caused a new pain by my scalp. I lifted the arm that didn’t have tubes sticking out of it. There was a soft bandage I ran my fingers over, and I was slowly starting to realize little by little the severity of what I’d just gone through. This must’ve been why I was having trouble seeing before. I remember from my health class that if you cut your head, it bleeds worse than other places. I had blood dripping into my eyes.

“There are twenty-five stitches in your head. You have a concussion but no brain swelling. I guess when the car rolled, you hit the side window.” My dad sounded very robotic.

I put my arm down and looked at him. Like really looked at him. That’s when I saw his face. His eyes were red. There were bags under them and he looked like he’d lost weight. I didn’t know what day it was or how long I’d been out, but it couldn’t have been that long. If I had to guess, though, I’d say he hadn’t slept in the past forty-eight hours. There was something else, though. He should be happy that I was awake and trying to talk.

“What is it, Dad?”

He stood there, barely seeing me. He’d been spouting off facts from the doctors, but something else was wrong. I looked around for my mom. Maybe she could tell me what was going on. I would have expected her to be sitting on a chair beside my bed, or standing next to my dad, but she wasn’t. Where was she?

The beeping on the machine increased. I was in a car accident. I didn’t remember much, but I did know I saw her. She was fine. She was standing next to the car and there wasn’t a scratch on her. I wasn’t dreaming. I know I wasn’t dreaming. Did they have to take her to another room, so they could look over her to make sure she was okay? That must be it. I was in worse shape than she was, which was why my dad was in here with me, and she was being looked at by the doctors.

Except, something still wasn’t sitting right. And I found myself afraid to ask the words that were on the tip of my tongue.

“Dad?” I waited for him to look at me. He was staring blankly at my chest. I was about to say his name again when the same dark eyes, my eyes, looked at me. “Dad, where’s Mom?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. His jaw was working overtime and he blinked a few times as if to hold back emotion that was bubbling on the surface. My dad wasn’t an emotional man. I’d never seen him cry. I’d seen many other facets of him, but this was uncharted waters.

“She didn’t make it.”

My brain didn’t compute that statement. “What?”

He blinked some more. “She died on scene. Th-they said it was instant.” He cleared his throat.

No, that couldn’t be right. That wasn’t right.

“I saw her, Dad. She watched me get into the ambulance.”

He shook his head. “No. She was gone.”

“But I saw her. She was standing by the car. Sh-she was fine. She was standing and there was nothing wrong with her.”

As the words were pouring out of my mouth, the reality of what I was saying was seeping into my veins. She died at the scene. How was the possible? None of this was making any sense. Jesus, would someone shut this fucking beeping off? I ripped the pulse oximeter off my finger and it became silent. My eyes darted all over the room for her. My dad didn’t budge. He stared at my chest and was still as a statue. This was all a mistake.

“I saw her, Dad. She was fine.”

“You saw nothing. It was a figment of your imagination,” he replied, getting agitated.

I shook my head to argue, but it made me dizzy. I laid my head back. “No. She was standing by the car and she looked at me.”

Had she, though?

My dad’s fierce eyes pierced through me, and I knew by his anger and conviction that my life would be different from this moment forward. “Your mother is dead. Her side went under the truck, and she was found in pieces. Pieces!” he gritted out. The picture he was painting was making me feel sick to my stomach. “She’s not alive, Blake. She isn’t even whole. You fucking saw nothing.”

I gulped. The lump in my throat was too much. I felt the first warm tear trickling down my cheek. My mom wasn’t whole. Does that mean she was severed by the truck? Oh my God, I was going to throw up. There was a basin next to me and I grabbed it just before I heaved a big fat nothing inside of it. My retching made me feel like my stomach was being torn in half. Dad offered me no assistance or comfort. He didn’t move. Did he blame me? Surely, he wasn’t blaming me for a truck pulling out in front of us. It couldn’t be avoided. Could it? How did I not realize my mom was gone? My new reality was barely settling in. She was standing by the mangled car… but not by me. If she was okay, why wasn’t she right by my side, holding my hand and telling me it was going to be okay?

Oh my God.

My mother was dead. I didn’t understand what I saw, but maybe it was her spirit. Which would be really fucking weird, and I would see that face and those eyes looking at me for the rest of my life. Tears were streaking down my face in rapid succession now.

“Where’s Layla?” My sister would be with the sitter at home. I knew the answer as soon as I asked the question. “Where’s Thomas?”

“He’s at home,” Dad stated, as he reached up and rubbed his temples.

“Shouldn’t he be here waiting for me to wake up?”

My dad’s eyes traveled to mine and said everything I needed to know. Thomas was angry. He too thought this was my fault. My whole family was blaming me, and they didn’t even seem to care I was still alive. I was still breathing. They still at least had me. It was a disgusting question to ponder, but would they feel this way if it had been the other way around?

Probably not.

I cried. I was almost eighteen years old, and I’d just lost my mother. Life was never going to be the same again. I was never going to be the same. She wouldn’t be here to guide me. To take my side when my dad was being an ass about something, which was all the time. She would never make me my favorite birthday meal. Or hear her singing her favorite Christmas carols while she made cookies. And she would never say the words ‘I love you’ again.

I cried even harder.

A nurse came in. I didn’t look at her, as she politely handed me a tissue and asked if I was in any pain. I nodded. I was in so much pain I felt sick again. I didn’t want to throw up air like I’d just done. It hurt too much. My heart was in pieces and that hurt too. Could I tell the doctors and nurses my heart was shattered? Was there a medication they could give me to dull the ache? My dad told the lady he was stepping outside to get some air.

“Blake, I’m going to give you some Valium to help relax you, okay? There’s also Morphine in your IV bag, which should ease some of your discomfort and maybe help you sleep.” I felt her hand touch my arm. “You need to rest. Your body has been through a lot.”

My whole body got warm and heavy. I closed my eyes and let the blanketed weight soothe my tired muscles. But my heart was done for. There was no medicine, no surgery, and no repair. It was finished. If a human could live without it, I’d ask them to take it out right now because it was useless to me. My love ran deep for my mom. I had no idea how deep until right now, living through this nightmare.

Sleep. I just needed to sleep. Long chocolate hair in a ponytail and gentle light brown eyes watched me as I drifted off.