That Fateful Day

         
         “Don’t talk to me!” Jonas screamed over his shoulder at his mom as he tore open the door and stormed out.  She began to shout something back as he slammed the door behind him and stormed away from the house. 
         The door opened and Jonas turned back, expecting his mother to come rushing out, yelling at him.  He opened his mouth to yell, then closed it as he saw his six year old sister running toward him. 
         She jumped at him and hugged him, “Don’t go, Jonas!  Please!”
         At, fourteen, he found his little sister extremely annoying.  He pushed her away from him and shouted, “Leave me alone, brat!”  He turned and ran off, across the street.  She began to cry and yelled after him, but he ignored her and started walking off down the street.
         He was reasonably sure she wouldn’t follow him across the street, until he heard a horn blowing and he turned just in time to see a large truck bearing down on his little sister. 
         It was a moment he would never forget.  Everything seemed to slow down.  He saw his sister perfectly, one hand extended toward him, tears streaming down his face.  And then it hit her. 
         The truck’s wheels screeched as it turned a corner and sped off.  Jonas began to cry violently as he ran back to his sister, lying still in the middle of the street.
         He dropped to his knees beside her with a scream that echoed through the whole neighborhood, and picked her up in his arms.  He held her close to him and looked down at her, tears falling from his eyes onto her clothes and whispered her name over and over.  “I’m sorry…” he said, “I’m so sorry… please, don’t leave me... I love you, Alexia… please, don’t leave me…”
         His mother rushed out of the house, and her wail echoed through the street, chasing after his own.  She rushed toward them, screaming incoherently. 
         Jonas let his mother take Alexia’s body from his arm and stood up, backing away slowly.  He pushed his hair back from his forehead with both hands, gripping it in fists.  He turned and ran…

         Four years later, he sat on a bench across the street from the park.  He stabbed at some lettuce and a crouton with his plastic fork and ate it.  He chewed slowly, watching the children playing in the park.  There were two little girls playing with a rubber ball that interested him the most.  One of them reminded him of someone he used to know.
         A small smile crept onto his face as he watched the children’s unbridled joy.  It was nice to get away from life’s stresses and just watch kids play.  It relaxed him, he found.  Perhaps it was the carefree attitude that they had, he mused.  He certainly wished he could go back to a time like that.
         He ate another bite of his salad and chewed.  He watched as the little girls threw the ball back and forth to each other, and listened to their laughter float across the street, which was busy with traffic.  It wasn’t a very large street, but it certainly had enough cars going back and forth to be considered traffic.
         
         “Why can’t I go to school?” he yelled at his mom. 
         “Because the education system is horrible!  Your father and I want you to have a better education!  And besides, you never know what could happen to you at a school.”
         “I don’t care about that!  I just want to be normal!  No one will hang out with me!  They think I’m weird!  I bet you that if I went to school, I could make some friends!”
         She slammed the knife on the cutting board and rounded on him.  “The answer is no!  I am going to tell your father about this little conversation when he gets home!  We will see what he has to say about it.”
         “No!  If you don’t let me go to school, I will run away from home and never come back!”
         She whipped her hand around and slapped him across the face.  His head jerked to the side and tears sprung to his eyes.  His cheek stung.
         He looked at her angrily and yelled, “You’re a bad mother!  I hate you!  I never want to see you again!”  He turned on his heel and stomped toward the door.
         His little sister, who had been huddled in a corner, her tiny hands covering her ears, finally jumped up and said, “I’m going with you, Jonas!”
         “No you’re not!” he yelled at her.  He pulled open the door, and his mother yelled after him.
         “Don’t you leave this house, or you will be in big trouble!”
         “Don’t talk to me!” he yelled over his shoulder, and slammed the door behind him…
         
         Jonas watched as the girl that reminded him of his sister accidentally dropped the ball, and it went bouncing out into the street.  The little girl went after it, and the mother went after her, but she was too far away and too slow.
         It flashed in his mind.  His sister, running after him, her hand outstretched…  Then back to the little girl chasing her ball, then his sister, and then the little girl.
         A large moving truck came barreling down the street, blowing its horn.  Jonas was up in a flash. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins.  His salad dropped to the ground, spilling all over the concrete.  He watched the little girl, and suddenly it wasn’t the little girl anymore.  It was his sister, and this time he could save her. 
         He ran out into the street, his strong legs covering the distance in seconds.  He leaned down, wrapping his arms around the girl and picking her up, holding her against his chest.  The muscles in his legs tensed and he began running again, toward the park.  The truck was close now, but this time he could save her…
         He cleared the truck, but barely, as he ran.  And then, when it seemed like he had made it, the front of the truck hit his ankle as his back leg was extended.  His whole body whipped around.  His ankle and foot shattered, and he was sent into a spinning flight.  The girl was screaming and crying, clutching at him for dear life.  He folded his body around the girl, protecting her from harm as his body smashed against the ground, rolling the tumbling to a halt.
         The truck screeched down the street, not stopping.  Jonas slowly let the girl go.  She stood up and ran to her mom.  He looked out through his slowly blackening vision and saw the mother fall to her knees and scoop the girl up, hugging her and crying.
         He smiled through the racking pain.  It felt like his whole body was broken.  Tears slowly leaked out of his eyes.  He lifted his hands in front of his face and saw blood dripping from literally hundreds of gashes and scrapes along his arms.  Skin was completely missing in some places.  Bones stuck out of the side of one of his forearms.  He slowly lowered his arms back to the ground as he lost consciousness.

         He heard talking as though it came from far away.  He could only catch snippets of it, but what he did hear he couldn’t make sense of.  It sounded like there was an echo in the room.  He heard what everyone was saying twice, each word only a second later than its counterpart.
         He slowly fought his way through the darkness, finally opening his eyes.  He looked around, studying the white walls, the flashing and beeping machines, the people sitting in chairs all around him.  A man in a long, white coat was talking to a tall man and an almost equally tall woman.  No one had yet noticed he was awake.
         He tried to lift the top half of his body to get a better look around and felt a sharp pain in his side.  He let out a groan, and everyone looked at him.  They knew he was awake now.
         People jumped up and immediately surrounded his bed.  He was just starting to put names to faces.  The two people the doctor was talking to were his parents.  There were other members of his family there as well.  Only one person was there that he didn’t recognize, and judging by the way he was holding the mother of the little girl, he was obviously the father.
         He ignored all of the people jabbering at him and croaked, “How is she?  The little girl?”
         The mother burst into tears and threw herself on him, hugging him and planting kisses on his cheeks.  Finally, she recovered herself enough to realize she was putting him through excruciating pain, and stood back up, wiping her eyes.  “Her name is Alexis, and she is fine, thank to you.  Just a few bumps and bruises.”
         Jonas was taken with the closeness of the girl’s names with his sister’s.  He smiled and nodded, then the woman turned and called out the girl’s name.  She came rushing in from outside the room, and ran to her mother, hugging her leg closely.  The woman knelt down and whispered to the little girl, who smiled and then jumped up on the bed beside Jonas and gave him a big hug and a little kiss on the cheek.  “Thank you,” she whispered into his ear, then jumped back down, and went to her father.
         The man looked at Jonas.  Tears were in his eyes, and he began to speak.  He seemed to be trying to hold back the tears as he spoke, so it took him a little while, but he finally said, “You saved our little girl.  Because of you, we get to keep the joy of our lives… Thank you… we will never be able to repay you.”
         Jonas shook his head, and forced out, through gritted teeth, “Don’t thank me.”
         The doctor put a hand on his shoulder softly and Jonas looked at him.  “Jonas, I have some bad news for you.  Your foot and ankle were in pretty bad shape, and so was the rest of your body.  A few broken bones here and there, but those will heal.  Your foot and ankle however…  I’m afraid you will never be able to run again.  And you will probably have to use a cane for the rest of your life…”          
         Jonas nodded slowly and let his head fall back on the pillow.  The doctor ushered everyone out, and Jonas fell asleep.

         He lost most of the use of his foot.  But he stopped having nightmares about that fateful day when his sister died.  He was left with only the good memories, and the warm feeling that loving and being loved brings.  If you ask him whether or not it was worth the pain and therapy and surgeries, he would say he would do it all over again, and then he would smile and say, “But I should have saved the salad.  That was a good salad.”