Car Crash

She left him outside so he sat on the low wall under the tree sagging gently over him. The early spring sun was bright and cold and he shivered off a good ten minutes waiting out there while she talked inside. The intricacies and blood pressure dependent factors with possible side effects needed to be discussed so she sat and waited with the feeling of every second passing noticeably, slow growth of time. She has her hair tied back and glasses on and who would expect such a lioness to be so timid but she looked it a little at times and she wilts a little under the good lady doctor’s interrogation. The lady doctor has a stretched smile the whole time she’s in there with her and it gives her face a thin plastic sheen. Polished and pressed neatly into her suit, hair clipped to perfection.

He rolls and lights and looks up at the window quietly, smoking with the wind unheard outside. The bus will come and he’ll catch it if she’s out in time, he doesn’t want to leave without saying something. But back inside the doctor lady is called away for an important telephone appearance and, left alone for a few moments her mind trips and she’s thinking of the night before, how it started, ended. In the thirty seconds the doctor is away she lives hours before again and pictures of shadows on the couch flash and go and she hasn’t slept much and doesn’t know quite how to feel. Briskly returning and resuming her chair the good lady informs her that it won’t be a problem, there’s no need for any prescription or fuss and it’ll be taken care of by the morning. She was on the production line now, her telephone call was more important than she let on. A retired estate agent, an absolute Rolls Royce of a man and not one you refused so, making a mental note to call into the dispensary before leaving she patted the young girl out the door all the while gorging on the thought of the evening.

She felt a little bewildered but took the box in her hand and placed it in her pocket robotically and now outside again without saying goodbye. He flicks the cigarette while walking over to her, is she ok? She smiles in the cold and her clean steam breath mixes with his last lungful of smoke when he hugs her. They stand stuck together for a bit with cracked branches scuttling about them and leaves kissing their shoes. He cant stay though, the bus is starting to wobble exhaust fumes out the back and he really has to go. He pulls away and turns and doesn’t look and all in one fluid move he twists into a sprint and into the path of an oncoming car. He was killed on impact, the bumper caught his legs and flipped him onto his neck, cracked spine shutting down all brain activity and with the dull crunch comes everyone around. The sirens could be heard over the numb shock of the area while his face was already turning blue, it was just reaching midday and in that light it was most certainly blue. The good lady doctor pulled a blanket over the young man’s head as the paramedics loaded him into the ambulance and locked the doors. She stood right in front of this young girl about an inch away and held her face, staring into it looking for signs of a crack for a long thirty seconds. Then she gave her a hug and handed her over to the paramedics. An old man at his window watched the young girl sit there for forty minutes with her hand in her pocket staring at the ground. She sat there and in a way that made him mournful for all her suffering she would look at the spiky pool of glass and blood and then look away, slowly stare at empty ground for a while and then look again, aghast. She was picking pieces of cardboard from the box in her pocket and flicking them down at the ground until there was a little snowdrift and she was crying.