Some things I’ll never know, and I
have accepted that. I’ll never know
exactly how the accident took place- if the woman driving was truly speeding,
if she was distracted by another car, or if she was simply looking forward to
getting home, with her foot comfortably wedged to the gas pedal. I’ll never know Cory’s last thoughts or if
for some reason, she was anxious or had felt the need to hurry.
My nightmares and trouble sleeping
have persisted. Cory keeps showing up to
tell me that it did, in fact, hurt a real
lot. These words are wailed around a
mouthful of blood, her teeth broken into uneven nubs.
During the day the full color, full
sound flashbacks play hide and seek with me at work, in the car as I drive, as
I eat my meals, and try to gain comfort from a cup of coffee. Cory
laid out flat on the road, dirty and scraped, her arm a seemingly boneless loop twisted into a position that was in no
way natural. Cory’s closed eyes that
gave me such pathetic hope… didn’t people die with their eyes open? Her
dark lashes were a stark contrast to the pale, almost white cream of her
face. And finally, her lips- full and
beautiful as always- but now an ominous dark blue, tinged with purple…the color
of the sky after a summer thunderstorm, the color of a bad bruise, the color of
death…Oh, God, Oh no, please, God.
Something
about her face as I dared to look closer caused a scream to build in the lowest
part of my belly…something seemed not right…something was…flattened… slumped…irreparable. These scattered, panic stricken assessments
of her condition were reinforced by the slow, lumbering pace of the responders
on the scene, who demanded I give them space to work on her, but stood around
her, then bent at the knee, as they simply looked…listened….and spoke to each other
in low tones that I could not hear.
My
eyes darted in pure terror from one set of eyes to another, from those of
bystanders to those of rescue personnel who milled about the scene. Each pair of eyes that I tried to capture,
gave me peculiar looks that made my heart pound ever faster in my throat- looks
of pity, looks of horror, looks of uncomfortable and heavy unease.
As my gaze fell back to my
daughter’s body on the ground, with the responders bent over her, I saw that
they were beginning to cut her shirt off her from bottom to top, right there on
the road. My heart leapt inside my
chest! THE PADDLES! THE PADDLES! They’re going to do the paddles, and she’s
going to be ok! Thank God!
I watched, but the paddles never
came out. They hooked her up to a
machine; they walked around; they spoke to each other. Then a man came over, with his head
down. I was so afraid of what he would
say when he opened his mouth. And I was
right to be frightened, because he opened his mouth and reluctantly said, “I’m
sorry, ma’am. She is gone.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some
or all of that imagery plays hide and seek with me throughout the day. Tag, you’re it!
I
found out later that she was hooked up to a monitor, and had no heartbeat. She was not breathing. The E.R. doctor was called, who made the
decision to not attempt resuscitation.
Her injuries were just too severe.
Oh,
how that knowledge lies in my throat, in my stomach, in my heart, in my lungs-
a bitter cancer constantly gnawing away at whatever it can reach, and finds still
worth eating.
Somewhere,
miles and miles away, the man I made Cory with, walks around and lives his
life. He will soon be forty two years
old. This is truly amazing… since he
died years ago. On one of his two
cocaine overdoses, he was declared dead.
But he, unlike my baby girl, was fortunate enough to be brought back
with the paddles.
YEAH,
THAT SEEMS FAIR.
The
rage I feel when I think about this is almost like a living thing, an evil
demon that has taken up residence in my body in the black of night, and now
resides within me, restlessly pacing the fleshy walls of its new home. I want to scream my lungs out. I want to break things. I want to knock down walls. I want to burn, and scourge, and destroy. I
want to hunt this man down and ask him a couple questions.
Why
did you deserve the paddles?
And
where were you when she was lying there, broken in the road? What were you doing when your flesh and blood
was dying? Telling a joke? Laughing?
Drinking a Snapple?
You
son of a bitch, you left us again. You
left us when she was a baby. You left us
when she was sick. You left me to do it
all on my own. Now just look what you
missed out on this time.
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