You didn’t remember all moments in life the same. Some held extra weight, others extra clarity, and the very few, significant ones became a part of you, embedded in you like the sharp sting of a splinter. Not just a recollection or a fond memory.
These were the memories that defined you. They intersected and disrupted the trajectory of your life, an unforgiving fork in the road that propelled you another direction, one so very far from the path you were comfortably traveling down.
My direction-changing memory occurred on March 23, 2004.
People called moments like these life altering, and I guessed that was true. But it was never just your life to be altered. There were always others involved. The deepest memories always included multiple casualties.
I often wondered what her memory would be. If we sat down, how would she tell it? What parts would she punctuate with expression? What moments would she gloss over? If I asked her to tell her story, would it parallel mine?
I was beginning to think I’d never know.
This was how I remembered things.
The clocks had changed that day. I always hated having to update every damn watch in our house. It seemed impractical to shift life either one hour behind or ahead every six months. Arizona had something going with their refusal to adhere to daylight savings. Whatever. It wasn’t as though my complaining was going to change the fact that I’d lose an hour that day.
I’d lose so much more than that.
Mom and Dad were at the hospital, Hattie at volleyball practice. Back in California, I’d been on the baseball team, but I didn’t go out for any sports this spring. In years past, my hands would ache for that familiar grip of the bat. The fresh and crisp smell of the field was a homecoming to me. Hours a day would be filled with the repetitive catch and release of the ball from my glove into my dad’s in our pasture by the big red barn.
Somehow I’d missed tryouts. It wasn’t really a somehow. I knew exactly why I’d missed them. I was with Mallory, helping her struggle through her latest pre-calculus assignment. Numbers weren’t kind to her brain. They’d jumbled together and when a few letters were thrown into the mix, it was migraine worthy. Her mouth would scrunch in frustration, the thick line of discouragement creased between her eyes. Shoulders hanging in surrender. She was failing. Sure, we were only juniors, but one failed class led to another and another and she didn’t have the luxury of many more semesters to catch up.
I knew what happened to small town girls without their diplomas. At least I’d heard stories, ones I could never match with my Mallory. She had so much potential, and potential was not measured exclusively by academic success.
For whatever reason, the day it happened I was out at the ball field. Mallory and her grandmother had plans that afternoon, and when the final bell chimed at the close of the school day, I began walking through the parking lot, right by my dad’s car. They carried me all the way to the diamond at the south end of the campus. There were metal bleachers erected behind the dugout, the yellow paint on them chipped and peeling like the polish on Mallory’s fingernails. I’d always loved how haphazardly put together she was. She was a jumble of intention, but never quite successful in matching the mold of her more popular and better-dressed peers. I loved her for that, for her originality in every aspect of her life.
I’d watched the boys play for an hour and a half. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a stab of jealousy. Of course I did. That pop of the ball into the glove could be felt in my own hands as I sat on the cold bleachers, a spectator rather than a participant. I knew what plays the catcher would signal before he called them. That had been my territory—in the squat behind home plate—and I was damn good at it. I’d winced at every passed ball that slammed into the backstop, knowing I could’ve blocked it with my knees, my chest, my body. I wore my pitcher’s mistakes and made him look good, helped him get the win. That was my job.
I fixed things. I knew how to shadow and pull my glove into the strike position when something came my way a little off center, out of the zone. I’d fool the umpire, the batter, the crowd into believing it was the perfect pitch. I’d changed the outcome by altering the way I received it.
I didn’t know how to fix what ended up happening that evening. I couldn’t fake out anyone, least of all myself. I’d received the news as anyone would’ve expected me to, and in truth, it didn’t matter how I’d received it.
It wouldn’t change the outcome.
The first thing to tip me off was Mom’s voice on the other end of my cell. She was working and never called home, not even to check in. My parents were excellent at what they did and wore a professionalism that came with years of practicing bedside manners with their patients. Mom would come home from work and talk without any effect to her tone of a three-month-old flat lining or a teenager recently diagnosed with terminal cancer. It wasn’t cruel at all, just matter of fact. Because things happened in life, and that was the truth in it. The world needed people like my parents who could mask their emotions to hunker down to get the job done when the rest of humanity wanted to curl into a helpless fetal position and cry.
Mom’s tears that day did not match her hard-earned consistency.
“Heath,” her voice quaked out of her. “Heathcliff, honey, there’s been an accident.” Then she cried softly into the phone, and I knew this wasn’t any other patient. She couldn’t detach herself from this one. I knew how she’d grown to love Mallory as I had over these past months, and I instantly heard that reflected in her cry. Something in my blood and bones told me it had to be her.
The rest I remember as a blur, both her words and my actions. Something about a drunk driver. Hit and run. Broken windshield. Crumpled steel. Unresponsive Nana. Broken and crumpled Mallory.
I’d leaned over the side of the bleachers and vomited. Twice. Wretched a few more times. Wiped my mouth with the inside of my sleeve. The crack of the bat in the distance felt like it split my skull in two. The players shouting on the field sounded like a stadium filled with thousands of jeering fans, the volume megaphoned in my ears, ringing. Pounding.
Somehow I stumbled my way to the car and the key found the ignition. I remembered sitting there, the engine idling, thinking I had to go somewhere, not knowing how to get there. Not even sure if I had my license or had ever been taught to drive. Brake on the left, gas on the right. That much I knew. It was a haze of starts and stops until I switched off the car in the driveway and sat there, trying to collect myself. Trying to remember how to breathe. The small space in the car was closing in on me, the edges of my vision blackening.
He’s home by himself, I remembered thinking. They were supposed to be back before dinner. He’s got to be hungry. And worried. He’s worried. I’m worried.
The front door had been unlocked and it fell open when I rotated the handle. I’d given them grief the week before about how Nana’s “crazies” would just welcome themselves into their home and take whatever their heart’s desired, but Mallory had corrected me.
“She’s only worried about the crazies on the road.” She’d laughed over dinner, Nana not offering to deny her granddaughter’s statement. “Says no one knows how to drive these days, but have you seen her behind the wheel?” Mallory had looked at me above her glass of milk and mouthed, “S-c-a-r-y,” and then shot me a wink.
I shook the memory violently from my head. Acid seeped into my throat as I raced down the hall, my feet only slowing up when my shoulder collided with the doorjamb to his den. “Tommy? Tommy!”
Vacant eyes locked onto mine. Innocent, naïve eyes.
“We have to go, Tommy.” My feet slipped on wet paint and I skidded toward him like I was on a hockey rink. Whatever he’d been working on broke my fall, my hand punching through the canvas as I landed on my ass. “Goddammit!” Anger blasted out of me and I grabbed the frame and slammed it against the ground, over and over, mangling it beyond any sort of recognition. The sound of my brutality mimicked the bat and I’d wished more than anything I had one in my hands. I’d slam it into any surface I could find. Smash it against everything I saw. “Dammit, Tommy!”
That lopsided mouth drooped even more.
“I’m sorry,” I’d cried. Snot ran from my nose onto my upper lip. “Tommy, I’m so sorry. I’ll fix this.”
Fumbling with the piece, I smoothed out the canvas, trying to rejoin the torn sections. I was like a kid finger painting, smearing the colors into a horrible and disgusting brown. I’d ruined his work, but it was all ruined. Everything ruined.
Tommy was terrified. I was terrified. I had to get to them. To her.
“Tommy.” My mouth was dry and my tongue scraped with the words. “Tommy, we have to go.” He wasn’t suddenly going to get out of his chair and follow me. I knew he couldn’t do that, so I wasn’t sure why I stood there, waiting. I needed someone else to take control, to look at me and say it was going to be okay. Please tell me everything will be okay.
“For once it would be nice if you could actually say something!” I screamed. My chest rattled as I roared at the man sitting in the dark in front of me. Then I threw up again, all over his painting, which didn’t really matter since it looked like vomit, anyway. Everything spiraled out of control. My words. My actions. My body. My world.
“We have to go,” I said once more and his eyes answered me. Okay, they’d said. Okay. Let’s go.
I pushed the mess I’d created out of the way and stooped down to him. He wasn’t a small man, necessarily. Standing upright he probably sneaked up upon six feet, but I’d only known the frailty of him, only seen him bent over his work or folded into a chair at the dinner table. I’d misjudged so much about Tommy, including the size of his love for his family.
His eyes were webbed with red veins, cheeks smeared with wet, salty tears. I swiped my arm across my own face, feeling my tears slick on my sleeve. I gulped in air. “Come on, Buddy. We have to go to the hospital.”
I picked him up. That was the only way we were going to get to the car. His weight cradled heavily against my chest, and I didn’t know if it was his sorrow that sunk his body, making him dead weight, or if this was all he was capable of, the only support he could offer. I’d left the front door open in my rush, but that didn’t matter. They could take everything from the house and it would never come close to what was taken from me that day. They could take it all.
After I’d buckled Tommy into the passenger seat, I raced around to the driver’s side. Slammed the door behind me and shut us in, wanting to shut everything out.
I locked my seat belt across my lap and threw my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes, welcoming the black.
“Are you a praying man, Tommy?” My head lolled sideways, my gaze sliding to him as my eyelids fluttered open. “I feel like we should pray.”
His eyes told me yes, I was certain of it.
I’d never prayed before, but I hadn’t stopped praying since.
When we showed up at the hospital, Mom was waiting at the entrance. I was grateful someone was there, readied with a wheelchair to help with Tommy, because truthfully, the moment I pulled up, I’d forgotten about everything except for the fact that I needed to get to her. I needed her.
I’d left the car running. Someone shut it off. I’d left the keys in the ignition. Someone brought them to me later. I’d left the world outside those hospital doors outside because my entire world was held within them.
It was hours and hours of waiting before I was let into the room.
Family Only had been the policy, but having two parents who worked at the hospital offered something in the way of benefits. If you could call seeing your comatose girlfriend a benefit.
She’d looked so small in that cold and sterile room. When finally given permission to visit her, I’d almost backed out. I hated myself for being too scared to join in her tragedy. If I could offer my support from my maroon plastic chair in the waiting room, then I would never know the magnitude of what had happened. My mind could fabricate something else, something easier, something less frightening. Something more hopeful.
I was a coward, plain and simple.
But even cowards did brave things once in a blue moon, so I put on that counterfeit brave face and walked to her room. Room 4D. She had one of those awful blue curtains draped around her bed, and when the nurse pulled it back, it made this horrendous screeching sound as the metal rings scraped on the rod.
My shoulders shot up to my ears to soften the sound.
What I noticed first was that Mallory had no reaction.
She would’ve made some snide comment yesterday. “Nails on a chalkboard,” she would’ve said yesterday because that was her go-to with anything that made her uncomfortable. Yesterday.
Yesterday.
But it was today.
And I didn’t know that I would be able to face my tomorrow.
The nurses and doctors left us alone that night, except when performing their routine monitoring tasks. Overnight visitors of the boyfriend variety must have been off-limits, but no one questioned my presence in her room. And no one questioned me when I’d pulled back her covers and climbed into her hospital bed with her.
It wasn’t the same space as the couch, but I maneuvered enough to make myself her boat. “You’re safe now, Mallory,” I’d whispered into her hair. Her crusted, blood stained hair. I’d kissed her temple which was purpled and swollen. “You’re safe.”
Nana was in critical condition, my mother told me. Thrown through the windshield, colliding with a tree stump, her body a heap on the pavement at West Street and Magnolia. That tank of a car hadn’t been the protection she’d thought it to be. But you couldn’t protect yourself against others’ mistakes, it seemed.
Mallory was revived at the scene. Revived. The only need for revival was when someone had died, but I didn’t want to fit that piece into the story. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge just how close I’d come to losing her completely. She was here now, breathing along with the machine—or maybe because of the machine—but she was here.
And I was with her. I would stay with her forever, I’d promised. I’ll never leave you, Mallory, I’d murmured against her cold skin all night long. When I kissed her black and puffy eyes swelled shut, I told her I’d always be there. When I held her hand, crippled and scabbed, I whispered my promise again. I’ll never leave you, I spoke against her mouth as I kissed her, over and over. I’ll never leave you. I love you. I love you.
I.
Love.
You.
The thing about promises made was that sometimes you didn’t hold the power to keep them.
The thing about falling in love so young was that you weren’t always responsible for the path your life took, or the decisions that got you there.
We moved three weeks after Mallory’s accident.
Dad was transferred to Dignity Memorial back in California. Given a position as Chief of Surgery. A “once in a lifetime offer,” they’d said.
I’d had my own once in a lifetime, though.
Her name was Mallory.
I never saw her again.
