“I don’t want you to.” I wished I’d told her last night and I could have spent hours just holding her close.
“I’ll see you tonight. Maybe try to leave early and we can have dinner.”
I turned to the driver. “I’m just going to say goodbye. Hang on.” I wanted to wrap my arms around her before she left for the day, even it was just for a second. Grace opened the cab door as I set foot on the street.
There was a squeal of brakes, a yell from our driver and then I got thrown back into my seat.
What the hell? The cab stilled and I turned my head.
“Grace?” Her passenger door was closed and deformed, and the shattered windshield of another car faced me. Broken glass covered everything.
We’d been hit.
“Fuck,” I said, scrambling out of the cab. “Grace!” I shouted, but didn’t see her. As I rounded the trunk, I expected to find her arms outstretched toward me. But she’d disappeared. “Grace,” I screamed when I found her, lying on the asphalt, her hair sprayed out against the road. It felt like it took hours to get to her. I sank to my knees. Her eyes were shut and her legs twisted awkwardly.
My heart pounded. Panicked, I stroked her cheek. “Grace,” I said, looking up to find someone standing over me, staring. “Call 9-1-1,” I bellowed then turned back to put my hand on Grace’s chest. An inch of me relaxed as my hand rose and fell with her ribcage.
What was I supposed to do? I wanted to scoop her up and run to the nearest hospital, but something stopped me from moving her. I shrugged off my coat, pulled my phone from the pocket then draped the coat over her. I called 9-1-1 myself, unsure if the bystander had done as I’d asked. Grace needed help as fast as possible.
I kept my hand on her cheek as I spoke to the operator, telling her the address over and over again. Why did she keep asking me the same questions? I hung up at the same time the sirens started to wail. It was going to be okay. It had to be. I couldn’t lose her.
I lifted Grace’s hand just slightly off the road and slid mine underneath it. That’s when the scent of metal hit me. It wasn’t the engine. It was more subtle than that. I kept seeing images of my old family car.
Blood coated my fingers. Jesus. Where was she bleeding? How could I stop it? I scanned down her body, unable to see an obvious cause.
I closed my eyes, willing time to rewind, wanting to see how in an alternate universe, I had forced her to get out of my side of the cab.
“Sir, you have to move out of the way.” The words were so slow I didn’t understand until I’d been moved.
“Grace,” I said when someone asked her name.
They spoke to her, telling her what they were doing as they wrapped her neck in a support and three of them put her on a stretcher. But all their voices overlapped. I tried to separate them, wanting to hear what each one of them said, desperate to know if she’d be okay. Because that’s what I had to hear.
But I knew what faces looked like when the news was bad.
I didn’t love people. I couldn’t love people.
Bile steamed up from my stomach and I vomited over the car parked next to the cab. Acid continued to rise, coating my throat and my mouth. It felt selfish, getting sick while the best person I knew was dying on a stretcher.
I wretched again, until finally nothing came out. I wiped my mouth and straightened, trying to see what was happening with Grace. A man in a uniform led me over to the ambulance. I couldn’t hear what he said. I saw his lips move, but I couldn’t focus. I just kept looking back and forth between him and the ambulance.
I stumbled toward the back and took a seat next to Grace.
I wanted to do something, anything to save her. I should have taken a first aid course or something. I looked around, but no one was doing anything.
I should call someone. I didn’t have her parents’ number but I did have Harper’s. She’d know what to do. I dialed.
“Harper. There’s been an accident. Get Grace’s parents.”
“What? Is she okay?”
I couldn’t answer that question. “Call her parents. Tell them to come to the hospital.”
“Where are you?”
I glanced out of the window. “In an ambulance.”
“Fuck, Sam, which hospital?”
I had no idea. “Which hospital are we going to?” I asked the woman next to me.
“Mount Sinai West,” she replied.
“I heard. I’m on my way,” Harper said.
“Grace . . .” I wanted to hold her so badly. I’d swap places with her in an instant if God would let me. An oxygen mask obscured her face, and her arms lay straight at her sides. I slid my fingers over the smooth skin of her arm. Where was her coat? I glanced down her body. Her legs. They’d been twisted and covered in blood when I’d seen them.
“Where is she bleeding?” I asked, but didn’t catch the response through the fog in my head.
I fixed my stare on Grace, willing her to wake up, willing her to be okay, willing my life force into her.
The ambulance stopped and the doors swung open. I followed the paramedics, who slid Grace’s stretcher out onto the street. As my foot hit the asphalt, my legs weakened and I fell to one knee. Someone lifted me under my arms and I found my footing, chasing after Grace’s gurney.
As I got through the doors, someone’s hand pushed at my chest, trying to stop me. “Sir, you can’t go through there. They need to perform an exam. Take a seat and someone will come to check you over.” She handed me a clipboard.
“I’m fine,” I said as I strained to see where they were taking Grace.
I dared not blink in case I missed news of her.
Finally, I sat, ignoring the clipboard. I waited. And waited.
“Sam.”
I looked up to find Harper standing over me.
“Is she okay?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Sam,” she yelled, pushing at my shoulders. “Where is she?”
Thankfully, one of the nurses came over and answered Harper’s questions.
Helplessness, a feeling I’d spent so long trying to avoid, consumed me. I didn’t want to listen to Harper—I wanted to see Grace. I slumped forward, my head in my hands, my elbows resting on my knees. Why had I insisted we take a cab? If we’d taken the subway, we wouldn’t have been on the road. Or if I’d hired a driver, or just been sitting on the other side of the taxi . . .
“Sir, can you follow me? I need to do an exam,” said a nurse in pink scrubs as Harper took the seat next to me. I didn’t want to; I wanted to sit here and wait for Grace. I needed her to be okay. Even if I were fighting impossible odds, if I sat here, maybe there was a chance.
When my parents died, no one had told me anything. I never saw them in the hospital, never saw them stretchered off into the ambulance. I remember being at the hospital, on a bed behind a curtain, and then being taken overnight to a stranger’s home. I wouldn’t let that happen this time, this time I’d get to say goodbye.
“No. I’m staying here,” I said.
“We’ll have to perform the exam here. You’ve been sick and you’re likely in shock. I have to insist—”
“Okay, fine. But I’m not going anywhere.”