My Year of Casual Acquaintances (South Bay #1)

22.

Impact occurs a split second later. The mammoth vehicle pushes my car across the intersection in what feels like slow motion. The faces of all the new people who’ve come and gone this year flash by in rapid sequence, their expressions solemn and detached. Whitney. Judith. Sunny. Nic. Connor. Cheryl. Audrey. Jax. Charlie.

Charlie. Charlie. Charlie.

The Prius doesn’t stop spinning until I reach the other side of the intersection. My knees are knocking against each other with violent force – from the intensity of the collision or from pure terror? My back seizes in a painful spasm. Again, injury or fear – I can’t tell.

A slender Asian woman with a round face and smoothly styled, chin-length hair appears at my car window, her dark eyes wide with concern. Her stricken expression alarms me nearly as much as the accident. “Are you all right?”

“I—I don’t know. I think so.” There’s a distinct tremble in my voice. My hands on the steering wheel are shaking, too, and my knees still wobble, though at least they’ve stopped slamming together.

“I can’t believe you’re all right,” she says, looking me up and down. “I watched the whole thing. The girl in that SUV ran the light.”

“Thank you for—for stopping.”

“My name is Grace, and I’m going to stay with you as long as you need me to,” she says in a calm, reassuring voice. “I’ve already called 911. Do you think you can get out of the car?”

I groan and survey the damage around me. The windshield has shattered into a thousand tiny green pebbles that occupy my lap, the front seat, the floor, the pavement. Why didn’t the airbag deploy? You count on something (or someone) to protect you, but then when you most need it, it’s not there. Still, it seems I’ve escaped serious injury. I examine my arms and legs, which are speckled with a hundred tiny cuts and scratches, then realize I got those from hiking in the thorn-laden brush, not from the accident. I pause a moment to appreciate the engineering genius behind safety glass.

Sirens wail in the distance like screaming birds. When I’m reassured that I’m not merely alive but conscious, capable of speech, and able to move about, a surge of energy propels me out of the car. I’m good. In fact, I’m great. I must be invincible to sail through a crash like this unscathed, and in a modest little Prius, no less. I am . . . empowered. I jump out of the car. Okay, jump might be an exaggeration, but I’m moving more nimbly now than I have for the past couple of hours.

“What’s your name?” Grace asks.

“Mar. Mar Meyer.”

“Okay, Mar, if you’d like to hand me your phone, I can contact whoever you like.”

“Whoever I like? On my phone?” I say, bewildered.

“Better that way. If I call your family from a cellphone they don’t recognize, they’re not likely to pick up. So, who can I call for you?”

Who can I call for you? Now there’s a loaded question. Not Michael, who has flown out of state with his family to an undisclosed vacation spot. Not my mother, who lives thousands of miles away. Not any of the people who paraded through my consciousness at the moment of impact. And certainly not my ex-husband.

“No one. But thanks for asking,” I say.

Grace encircles my wrist with one hand and lifts it in a gentle motion. At first, I think it’s a gesture of friendship, or perhaps pity because I haven’t been able to name a single loved one to summon. But no, she’s taking my pulse. She glances into my eyes, then asks me if I can follow the movement of her finger from left to right and back again. I can.

“Are you a doctor or a nurse?” I ask.

“No, but I’m a home health care aide, so I’ve had some basic medical training.”

“Ah. Lucky for me.”

Within five minutes, the intersection is swarming with activity. The police have arrived, along with the paramedics and firemen in impressive red trucks that Benny would love. I’m also accosted by a man around my age who has arrived on the scene – his teenage daughter, he explains, is the one who hit me, and they are admitting fault. The girl stands on the curb several feet away, arms wrapped tightly around her torso as if to shield herself from a cold wind. She has waist-long hair the color of straw and a sharp, pointed chin that gives an edgy look to an otherwise pleasant countenance.

“While the paramedics check you out, is there anything I can get for you?” Grace asks.

“I could use some cold water.”

“I’ll be right back,” she says.

A young EMT puts me through the paces. He begins by checking my vital signs and my responsiveness much the way Grace did a few minutes ago, although his exam is lengthier and more thorough. Every so often he nods or mumbles, “Good.” I can tell from his reactions that I’m passing all my tests with flying colors, and I’m growing a little complacent.

“I’m fine,” I keep saying. “Considering my car resembles a twisted hunk of battered metal, I can’t believe how good I am.”

The EMT is having none of it. “Adrenaline,” he says.

“Huh?”

“You’re in shock from the accident, and your body is producing adrenaline, which gives you a kind of high.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Well, it’s—it’s what happens after a trauma. Your heart is speeding like a racehorse. But your blood pressure isn’t bad, considering.”

“I told you I’m fine.”

He ignores this. “As soon as you’re finished talking to the police, we’ll strap you into that nice comfy stretcher for a joyride down to the ER.”

“The ER? But that’s completely unnecessary.”

By this time Grace is back and is frowning at my response. I accept the water bottle from her and gulp down the full liter in a matter of seconds. “Wow,” she says, watching me slake my thirst. “You know, Mar, the paramedics are right. You should go to emergency for a complete workup. They can do x-rays and other more comprehensive tests to make sure there’s nothing funny going on.”

“Oh, I can assure you there’s nothing funny going on,” I say, but she doesn’t get the joke. “They can’t make me go to the hospital, can they?”

“No, but I highly recommend it.”

“I understand why you’d say that, but I’m fine, honestly,” I say for the tenth time.

Grace lets out a big sigh, and I conclude she’s given up the fight. But she stays by my side, guiding me through every step of the process. I realize I couldn’t get through this without her. Because even though I think I’m alert and sharp, I have difficulty responding to simple commands, such as, “Show me your driver’s license and registration.” Grace helps me find things, she helps me communicate with the police, she helps me fill out the accident report and exchange information with the teenage girl’s father, who holds the insurance in his name and will be the responsible party.

When the tow truck arrives, I ask if they are taking my car to the junkyard. “Oh no,” says the policeman. “The insurance adjuster has to inspect it first to review the damage and determine whether it’s a total wreck.”

“Are you kidding me? Look up ‘total wreck’ in the dictionary and that’s the car in the picture. My three-year-old grandson could tell you this vehicle is not fixable.”

“Those are the rules, Ms. Meyer. That’s how they do it.”

He offers me a ride home, but Grace steps in and says she’ll be glad to take me. The woman is a saint. I’m relieved and grateful to return to the apartment with her rather than in a police cruiser. As I’m hauling myself into the front seat of Grace’s silver Honda, the young driver of the black SUV approaches me.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she says in a squeaky little voice that’s scarcely above a whisper. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

A paragon of serenity and forgiveness, I say, “That’s why they call it an accident.”

She nods – grateful, I expect, that I’ve let her off so easy. I buckle myself into Grace’s passenger seat and provide garbled directions to my place, causing her to make two wrong turns along the way. She wants to escort me upstairs to the apartment, but I decline the offer, thanking her and pronouncing myself “fine” for the eleventh time.

At home, I down another quart of water and turn up the A/C. Exhausted, I sink onto the soft couch. It then dawns on me that cocktail hour is almost over and I need to play catch-up. Is alcohol a good idea after I’ve been in a serious accident? Yes, it is, I conclude after deliberating for about six seconds. After all, I never lost consciousness and didn’t suffer a head injury, though my neck is tightening up as if someone has stuck it in a metal vise. I pull a rosé out of the fridge, selecting a cork-free bottle. I doubt I could manipulate a corkscrew in my unhinged state. Maybe I’m not so fine after all. Food is of no interest, but wine will help me to de-stress. I remind myself to match every glass of wine with a tumbler of water to keep hydrated.

Around nine o’clock, my cellphone rings, and I literally jump out of my seat. That’s how unusual it is for me to get a phone call these days.

“Hello, Mar? This is Grace. From the accident.” She says it the same way a caller might identify herself as “so-and-so from the dentist’s office,” and somehow it tickles my funny-bone. I guess the three glasses of rosé have loosened me up.

“Grace, hi,” I say with a giggle. “How did you get my number?”

“We exchanged contact information before I dropped you off, remember?”

“Oh, right.” It all comes back to me. Grace was actually the one who entered the contact info into both cellphones. My quivering fingers and addled brain couldn’t have executed such a demanding task.

“Are you doing all right?” she asks.

“I’m fine.” I decide I should create a continuous loop recording of my voice saying, “I’m fine,” and play it for anyone who inquires. I giggle again.

“I wanted to check on you and make sure.”

“That’s thoughtful of you. Listen, I can’t thank you enough for helping me today. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without you.”

“Don’t be silly. Anybody would have done the same.”

“No,” I say, “they wouldn’t have.”

“Are you in much pain?”

“A little.”

“You should get to the doctor tomorrow.”

“Oh, I will.” But maybe not. It seems pointless to waste time on an unnecessary trip to the physician’s office.

As I finish my final glass of wine, I alternate between elation over surviving the hiking-heatstroke-car-wreck fiasco nearly unscathed and post-traumatic shock over the frightening recognition that I faced multiple threats of injury or even death from many sources – solar, vehicular, and reptilian – in a single afternoon. Crawling into bed, I lie on my back, then roll to either side, but I can’t get comfortable. Hours pass before I fall into a troubled sleep.