Work Text:
May 21, 2021 7:50AM
Oh, shit—
It was the last thought I had before the chain was yanked. Hard. I closed my eyes, heard the brakes squeal, and felt my body become a hood ornament. I was doing under the speed limit, saw the car come around the bend. I didn’t see his blinker flashing, he just whipped it straight into a left turn without stopping; effectively clipping my front tire and causing the Ruckus to skid sideways.
I rolled a few times, somehow, I didn’t hit my head thank the Gods. And then it stops there for me. Suddenly I was Inside, buried beneath screaming Littles, panicking Adults, and drowning in adrenaline. But she—she woke up.
The sky was so blue. Not as blue as that day we took a bike ride, but close. For a fleeting moment I heard the ocean, smelled the salt air, remembered feeling alive for once. I was seventeen again.
“Dems? Dems can you hear me?” A woman’s voice insisted above me. Reality folded in on itself as I shuddered.
What happened? That is what I wanted to say, but all I could manage was rapid breathing.
“Listen, there’s going to be a lot of people coming to you real quick—they’re going to ask name, age, and the day. Tell them [Legal Name], 24 years, and it’s Friday, May of 2021. Okay?”
Jane stood over top of the body, and I knew then something big had happened. Big things meant an out-of-body moment. I wanted to reach up and touch her, brush my fingers along that sharp jawline. Gods, how I missed her.
Wait, did she say twenty-four?
Slowly, painfully slow, I twitched a pinky, then wiggled my toes in the steel-toed boots. There wasn’t any immediate searing pain. Miraculously nothing was broken. Or the adrenaline was masking it if there was.
I was lost.
I watched Jane disappear into thin air, knowing she was needed more internally. A kid was screaming Inside. Even in such a disoriented state I wanted to scream at her not to leave me. Not again.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to take the helmet off, I’m sorry FortNine, but I had to. The back of it was craning my neck at an unnatural angle that was so damn uncomfortable. I looked to my right and realized it was because I was sprawled out on my back on a slope. Fucking mountains. I slipped my head out and very carefully turned my head towards the left. No pain. Good.
Then there were footsteps. Lots of them. The kid driving got out of his car, eyes wide with fear and sputtered, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you man!”
I could feel all of us panicking. And my hand just… shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to sit up.
“Don’t move!” Another lady instructed us, running to us across the parking lot as if her life depended on it. She was beside us before I had time to even process anything. “Are you hurt anywhere? I’m the school nurse.”
“N-not that I can tell,” I managed to spit out, suddenly all too aware I was now a spectacle. I couldn’t just switch then, no, the System was forcing me to stay out Front.
For the first time in six years I was awake. Really awake.
“Good,” the nurse was saying. “The ambulance is on the way.”
Fear overrode everything. I shook my head, hating the way tears immediately pricked in the corner of my eyes.
“No,” I begged, a sob catching in my throat. “Please don’t make me. I hate hospitals.”
The words weren’t my own. They came from some bone-deep fear of the medical system.
“It’s okay,” the nurse soothed. “I won’t force you. No one will force you to go.”
The next moments blurred together. Someone asked if there’s anyone we needed to contact. We said our spouse. Firefighters asked the very questions Jane had said they would. I could sit up, finally.
I turned my head and stared at my moped lying on its side, the left mirror sheered off, the tire still under the car. The brand-new handlebars bent out of alignment.
There were many emotions flooding us. Devastation at the sight of our only transportation lying in a wreck. Fear of the financial repercussions. Anger at the kid for not yielding. Disbelief at how quickly we were back to square one.
“My bike,” one of us croaked. “Not my bike.”
We didn’t care that the tears wouldn’t stop. One of us shakily pulled out our phone and took a picture of it.
Insurance, they murmured inside. There was already one planning for the fall out. For the slog of dealing with HR, doctors, insurance companies, and subject to repeating the event.
Somehow, we stumbled over to the curb and sat down. The nurse sat beside us, her presence quietly appreciated.
“Didn’t you used to go here?” she asked softly, gesturing towards the school.
We nodded. “Many years ago. For seventh grade.”
“I thought so,” she replied with a soft smile. “I knew you looked familiar.”
All we could do was nod weakly, and with shaky fingers dial for our spouse.
“Honey don’t panic,” we told them. “We were hit by a car. Nothing is broken I think, but…” our voice cracked painfully. “Can you please come home?”
We were terrified.
At that point, the familiar haze wormed its way through us, numbing everything. The cacophony of noise inside suddenly dampened, the adrenaline ebbing into a dull persistent ache. Again, we switched. Again, we floundered.
We called our (former) best friend, just to have him sit with us until our spouse arrived. Then, one of us messaged a co-worker and told her to tell our manager we wouldn’t be in due to a car accident. And finally, a text to the therapist asking for an emergency session.
By 3pm we had gone to Med Express as we’d promised the EMTs we would do, a tow fee that cost half our paycheck to literally move the bike less than two blocks, and a brief nap before we found ourselves sitting in the therapist’s office.
All we remember from it, is how a Little spoke for us all. How they told the therapist Dex couldn’t be reached. How it felt like there were far more of us now. How there was chaos and anxiety around having another near-death experience.
And from then on, everything changed.
Over the next month that followed it took three chiropractor visits to put everything back in alignment. Our wrists, elbows, and shoulders were out. The right side of our ribcage was jutted up and out. Our right femur was rotated and pushed up into the socket. It was discomforting but not painful. Until we realized we had been chronically dissociating from it.
There was grief surrounding the loss of transportation, of independence. The bitter helplessness at not being able to walk downstairs to do a load of laundry. The nightmares that followed. The flinching at cars making left hand turns, half-expecting them to barrel into us—even as we sat safely as passenger in our spouse’s car. And the rapid constant identity confusion as we struggled to restabilize.
Memory, time, power, and roles were redistributed. How we functioned as a whole was turned upside down and dismantled.
It was weeks before we could even begin to talk about it without bursting into tears.
Four months before we bought a new Ruckus, and re-gained independence.
Six months before we stopped flinching when we drove past that bend.
A whole year before we really understood the magnitude.
How close we came to brushing death.
How lucky we are to still live.
The only surviving photo of that day.
