I fumbled with the note as we drove down the backcountry highway in silence. I wasn't even thinking about its contents; I was just thinking about me, Brian, and the silence that filled the conversation.
What's going on anymore anyways? What's keeping us together? I don't even know. When I look at Brian now, I see someone that I've been dating for my whole freshmen and sophomore year. I see a relationship that's been consistently stagnant. I see a big situation that's been drug on for a little two long. But now I look into Brian's eyes, the big brown eyes that got me in the first place, and I still see a love for me that's more permanent, stable, and everlasting than the love I feel for him. I just can't keep lying to him.
"Brian," he glances at the road and then looks at me and searches my soul. He knows he's going in for the slaughter; pain paints lines of blood on his face. "I don't know if I can do this anymore and still be fair to you. To us."
He didn't say a word. He just looked away from me and back to the road where rain poured on the cement and puddles formed in the dips of the road. An oncoming car passed. And in the glare of their headlights I saw a single tear slide down Brian's cheek. It dripped onto his gray cotton shirt and made a black mar where the flannel was dampened. I saw another set of headlights was approaching. Brian looked down at the splattered tear on his shirt, taking one hand and holding the scar up as if surprised he had actually cried and ruined his shirt. Shamed he looked at me in the eye and then back up to the road. At that moment, the lights shining into our car swerved and crossed the center line and hit head on. I heard cars crash. I heard metal scrape. I saw glass shatter and disperse into the interior like shrapnel. The entire front end of the car accordion-folded up to when we were sitting and I saw Brian, my Brian, bash his head into the steering wheel.
And then it was over.
The next thing I remembered was the paramedics. I was being lifted into an ambulance on a stretcher and I hear the doors close behind me.
I felt around and tried to see if I still could move my fingers. Nothing hurt. I could move my toes and fingers. There were 2 meds sitting beside me. I sat up on the stretcher and pulled the hospital blanket up over my lap.
"You'd better sit back down, honey. You hit your head pretty hard." A black nurse said whose nametag read Denise. She helped me lay back down, but when I laid back down, a note slid out of my sweatshirt pocket.
Where's Brian
"Honey, Brian's…"
I said that out loud?
"What? What do you mean? Where is Brian? Why isn't he here?"
"Marlee. Brian hit hard. He's not here anymore."
I shut up. That was enough. When Brian lost me, he lost just one tear; when I lost him, let go of one tear for every time I had thought about him since I met him in 4th grade. I just stayed lying down and cried for a long time.
"Honey, it's time to go into the hospital." Denise helped me up and onto a wheel chair. She rolled me out of the ambulance and into the hospital where bystanders looked and sympathized with me and whatever had happened. She rolled me through double doors and into a room with 2 beds in it. One was occupied. I didn't even care who it was. I just looked down at the bed and let Denise help me lay back down again.
I took out the note.
I unfolded the notebook paper.
I flattened it out against the bedrail and held it up, unaware that my roommate was watching me.
I read his fast writing scribbled on the top two lines on the ruling.
"Without your love, I would die. Save me from death. You mean everything to me.
Love Forever even after I no longer have you, Brian"
I just kept re-reading the note, again and again. This time, one single tear rolled down my cheek. My roommate saw this, and I saw worry written over her black and blue face. She went out on a limb and attempted fate by asking me my story.
"What happened?"
Didn't I have a story to tell her.
