Crash

“Miss Oleander, would you like some water?”

“No, thanks,” I replied. The woman in front of me just shook her head as if saying ‘Nonsense’ and poured me a cup of water anyways. She turned around to give it to me and I just smiled weakly as I reached forward to grab it with my right arm and placed the cup down at a small table near me. My left arm was in a complete cast, along with my left leg. My back was in a brace and my face was almost unrecognizable due to bruising and swelling. I definitely felt fucking beautiful right now.

“Dr. Mahunely will be here any second, let me know if you need anything else,” the woman, who I guess was Dr. Mahunely’s secretary or something stated. I just nodded and she walked out of the room. I stayed where I was, mainly because I had no choice. I played with the large wheels of my wheelchair and chewed my gum softly. Silence began to fill the room and the ringing sound which was resulted from the silence rang in my ear and was getting louder and louder and was almost about to make me plug my ears before the sound of a door opening stole my attention. I looked up to see a middle-aged woman with dull brown hair but bright green eyes hidden behind circular glasses walk into the room.

“You’re Dr. Mahunely?” I asked. She smiled and nodded before sitting down to face me.

“Were you expecting someone different?” She asked. She had some sort of accent, like someone who grew up in Liverpool, and then went to Scotland and then decided to live in the United States for her remaining years. It was weird.

“Sorry, I’m just so used to… men,” I responded. Dr. Mahunely smiled warmly before reaching up and pulling her hair back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.

“Well, maybe that was the problem,” She replied. She then eyed me slowly, looking over my bruises and casts and just the overall horridness of my condition. “How do you feel?”

I sighed. “I feel okay. They won’t let me take my own pain meds so I’m just a human bruise right now. My doctors say I’ll hopefully be able to walk completely normal eventually, if I get intensive physical therapy.”

“That’s great,” Mahunely said, actually sounding genuine. “So... Peyton, do you, regret what happened?” She added hesitantly.

“Oh, you mean me totaling my father’s car and my body along with it by crashing into a giant tree, resulting in the whole left side of my body getting crushed and my face looking like it went through a meat grinder? How could I ever regret that?” I replied. Dr. Mahunely laughed softly at my response and I scrunched my eyebrows in surprise. Almost every one of my therapists usually scolded me for my sarcasm, and here she was, encouraging it? Who was this lady?

“Well, at least you’re alive, yes?” She responded calmly.

“Yeah…” I replied slowly. “At least I’m alive.”

I stood outside of the large, business style skyscraper building that Dr. Mahunely’s office was inside of and waited. I eyed the people walking by and just stared at their legs, missing when I could walk. I looked down at my casted left leg and then my right one which lay limply by it. Damnit.

Suddenly, a bright yellow car pulled up, and the driver’s side door opened and slammed. Kingston walked around the front of the car, quickly opened the passenger side door and approached me.

“Your new car is disgusting,” I stated while eyeing the bright yellow catastrophe that Kingston called the ‘Bumblebee’.

“You’re just jealous,” Kingston replied and then reached his arms out. I grabbed onto his arms and he lifted me up slowly and then moved me into the passenger seat of his car. He closed the door and I looked out of the window to see him fold up my wheelchair and then place it in the trunk. He walked back to his car door and got back in the car.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I said quietly. Kingston just nodded and we drove down the busy streets of downtown and into the more residential area.

“Your teachers mailed you the rest of your homework today, so pretty soon you’ll finally be finished with your junior year. Congrats on finding an awesome excuse to not go to school,” Kingston stated with a small laugh. I just rolled my eyes and twiddled my fingers against the door handle as we drove.

“Yeah, you know me, school was exactly what I was thinking about when I got myself into this predicament,” I remarked and then rested my head against the window.

Eventually, we pulled in front of the driveway of my all too familiar house and Kingston got out of the car and grabbed my chair from the trunk. I looked over to see my dad closing the front door and doing some nerdy slow jog over the car. He smiled at me and then opened the passenger side door to help me out himself.

“Jeez, I feel like a freaking cripple,” I muttered angrily as he grabbed my arms to lift me up. It was truly frustrating not being able to do anything by myself. Having to be literally carried when I didn’t have enough energy to try to have someone help me walk was embarrassing.

“Don’t even worry about it, honey,” My dad replied. I flinched at the signature parental nick name he gave me at the end of his statement but tried to register in my head that that was a name parents usual called their children. I was never used to it.

As we went inside, I told my dad I could take it from there and then leaned myself against the walls of my hallway and walked slowly, and painfully to my room. Once I reached it, I collapsed on my bed, almost seething from the pain. I hated that I wasn’t allowed to take my own pain medication. My doctor would give just enough to my father, who would then hide the medication, and then give it to me in correct doses. When they realized I hadn’t only overdosed but also purposely crashed myself into a tree, they decided that letting myself deal with my own medication wasn’t such a dandy idea.

I sat up and rested my back against a pile of pillows on my bed and then looked straight forward to eye myself in the mirror. My hair was laying straight and somewhat limp past my shoulders and down my back. Only one of my blue eyes could really be seen, because the other one still had some discoloring of the skin around it. My lips were finally back to normal, because during the crash I had bitten through the bottom one. I could chew gum now, which I did fervently in place of cigarettes. My cheek was still somewhat swollen, and altogether I just looked like a gigantic mess.

Being in the hospital for three weeks after the crash, laying there and hearing my doctors tell my parents each day about my condition was enough to drive a girl mad. Kingston would come visit almost every day, and tell me how everyone at my high school was talking about the accident. He thought it was absolutely hilarious how the stories about my crash went from “Some drug dealer was chasing her and she looked behind her to see if they were still there and then BOOM, she crashed.” to “So apparently she was trying to get out of town to go work as an escort.” to “Micah Burroughs broke up with her and the crazy bitch freaked out and tried to kill herself.”

The last one hurt.

I heard Micah had visited the night of the crash. He heard about it and rushed over when one of his friends called him after seeing the local news about how a local girl crashed into a Giant Sequoia in the mountains, and how a local hiker saw the crash and called the police, who had to get her out with the “jaws of life”.

I was in a coma for the first two days, but when I had awoken, he wasn’t there. There were flowers around my room that were sent every day from him, but he never showed up. Soon enough I stopped watching the door and just accepted the fact that he didn’t care enough about me to come by.

I heard a knock come from my door and saw the door slowly open. Kingston walked in and sat down on my bed.

“You, know, you’re supposed to wait until someone says ‘Come in’,” I stated. Kingston just shrugged and popped a grape into his mouth from a bowl he was holding.

“I think Mom is coming over for dinner tonight,” Kingston said quietly, avoiding eye contact with me. My body stiffened and my jaw clenched, but I kept my composure.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, ever since she moved out and into those apartments, she’s been alone and Dad agreed to let her come. Peyton, you know she’s sorry. You know it,” Kingston replied. He reached forward to grab my hand but I moved it before he could.

“I almost died because of that woman,” I stated icely. “Because she couldn’t tell the truth. Because she felt the need to lie and pin her daughter as crazy, and now look where I am. I’m basically in a full body cast, and what does she get? A slap on the wrist and a deposit on a nice apartment paid by dear ol’ Dad.”

“You know she’s gotten better,” Kingston replied.

“It’s only been a month and a week, that’s not enough time to get better,” I retorted.

“Yes it is,” Kingston stated. “You have.”

I just looked up at my brother and he shot me a lopsided grin which reminded me so much of Micah and his smile, which then reminded me to scold myself. Micah wasn’t here. He didn’t visit for a reason. He.didn’t.love.me. I needed to get over it. I needed to get his beautiful face out of my mind. I needed to let him go. Far away.

“Just talk to her,” Kingston replied and then got up to leave my room. I stared at my door for a few seconds before leaning back on my bed and looking up at the ceiling. I rubbed my temples with my hand and took a deep breath.

Just talk to her.