walk

His eyes fly open. The first thing he registers is the warmth against his arm; it takes a minute for him to realize that it’s actually hot, scorching, roasting. Instincts kick in and he immediately yanks his left shoulder back, but then his vision is white and his breathing is way too fast and holy shit that hurt so much. His vision slowly fades from white to black and it takes him another moment to realize that his eyes are closed again. He tries to blink them back open, but the attempt alone exhausts him and he can only slump down further.

Someone is screaming. 

He manages a weak swat forward with what he hopes is his uninjured right hand; he smacks something hard and round. My steering wheel? He tries to piece the memories back together in his head. He remembers getting a call; his cup holder buzzes in response. His hand is painted in blue light, his palm smudged a deep violet as he fumbles around for his phone. The screen is cracked and he winces when he feels the small shards of glass bite into his fingers. He doesn’t even bother to check the caller ID; he jams down on the power button and the phone stills. Good riddance. No more of that godforsaken noise. He slumps in exhaustion, only to belatedly realize that he should have called for help. His head is throbbing and his thoughts are cloudy; wait, why does he need help again…?

Oh, right. The screaming. The phone is off, but someone is still screaming.

Won’t they just shut up already, his mind tiredly wonders. It’s too early—late? when did he start driving?—and he’s too confused for this kind of chaos. The screaming gets louder and louder until it’s so close it feels deafening. Static dances across his eyelids as he feels the car shake, feels the driver’s side door wrench open, feels the cool evening air settle against his burnt skin. A bright light washes over his face, but he’s already so far gone at this point that he hardly flinches. He just wants to sleep. Something pressing against his neck, someone calling out his name; he should open his eyes, he should answer them, he should—

He feels himself mutter something like “five more minutes” before he passes out.

Soft hands card through his hair as he floats out in the abyss. Has his alarm gone off already? Is it a school day? The last things he remembers are phone calls and chaos and screaming, but now he feels all warm and fuzzy and it doesn’t really make sense.

“Shh. Just sleep, Julian.”

His heart skips at the voice, but his mind obeys the command without protest.

His legs are broken, Julian discovers. He’s first aware of this when he manages to peel open and stare at the bright white casts swamping his lower body. His thoughts feel syrupy slow, but Julian can eventually make out the layout of a hospital room. He sees the mountain of “get well soon!” gifts on his bedside table. He smells the familiar perfume that wafts from the blob of warmth settled against his shoulder. The blob shifts and Julian moves to investigate, but that small action alone sends a ripple of pain through the haze and he bites back a groan.

“Hey, babe, don’t move. I’ll call the doctor.”

Julian just takes a moment to stare at the woman beside him. It’s not that he doesn’t recognize her—he could spot his own girlfriend from a mile away—but there’s something unsettling about Ria’s expression. In their four years of dating, she’s never looked this concerned before. She definitely never calls him “babe”—well, not recently, anyway. His confusion must be palpable because Ria props herself up on her elbows and reaches over to smooth over his hair.

“Do you remember what happened?”

He remembers her yelling at him. He remembers storming out of the house with his car keys digging into his palm hard enough to bruise. He remembers… the crash. He remembers the way his phone wouldn’t stop buzzing; he remembers the way that something outside wouldn’t stop screaming. He turns to face Ria with a look of mute uncertainty.

The screaming… wasn’t it just the sirens?

“Julian,” Ria says slowly as her hand stops moving, “you crashed into someone else’s car.”

The first time Julian visits the couple at the hospital after being released, the husband shows him baby photos. They’re both sitting in the waiting room, sitting quietly while the nurses tend to the shrill beeping inside the room beside them. The flowers and card he brought are crushed into the seat of his wheelchair, suddenly feeling useless and almost insulting. He blanches as the sounds inside crescendos again, but the older man to his side just places a firm hand on Julian’s shoulder and gives it a squeeze. Reassuring; the gesture’s supposed to be reassuring and Julian didn’t realize how much he needed it until tears prick up in the corner of his eyes. The man shifts to his side suddenly and Julian startles as something thuds into his lap.

A scrapbook. There are tiny blue feet painted on the front cover; a dark scribble in the center suspiciously resembles a young boy’s name. The man stares fondly at the cover for a moment and Julian feels like he’s intruding. He doesn’t get much of a say in the matter, though: the man’s already opened to the first page and explaining the contents of the first few images. It feels rude to decline at this point so Julian lets the stories wash over him. An hour passes; by then, he’s taken control of the page flipping and is actually remotely intrigued by the childhood stories of the man’s awfully boisterous little boy. The beeping behind the closed doors slowly steadies and quiets.

Absentmindedly, Julian flips to a bright pink page halfway in the center of the book; there’s a girl’s name written across the middle with a small picture of a sonogram taped underneath. The book is closed and out of Julian’s hands before he can even process what he’s seen. He feels the man’s eyes boring into his side; whether the discovery is a ploy to guilt-trip him or a simple mistake, it leaves them both agitated. He peels at the bandages on his hands to avoid thinking about the incoming panic attack that threatens to wash over him.

Julian sits in the lobby until the nurses come out of the room and the man quietly leaves to rejoin his wife. A doctor immediately beelines to the front desk and mutters something about “miscarriage” and “trauma”; Julian hurriedly rolls himself to the hospital entrance to meet Ria at the car. She gives him a confused look but doesn’t question him otherwise. It’s for the better: the blood rushing in his ears is almost loud enough to distract him from the distinct memory of a woman screaming in not pain, but grief.

His graduation gown doesn’t fit. In the chaotic weeks since the accident, they’d never gotten the opportunity to get it altered. Julian still tries to pull himself into it; his reward is a popped zipper and a very unceremonious fall to the ground. It doesn’t help that Ria isn’t answering his calls; it’s probably payback, he thinks bitterly as he glares at his useless legs. The right one is slightly healing faster, the once bulky cast replaced with a simple knee brace, but that does little to increase his general mobility. His legs still tremble when he stands and his joints ache if he so much as looks in their direction. It’s a constant reminder of how weak and helpless he feels.

Every time he blinks, he sees the shape of an infant tottering around an empty nursery.

“Haven’t I already suffered enough?” Julian growls at the wall, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes before gross, fat tears can escape. He feels the warmth slide through the gaps in his fingers and he leans forward as it slides all the way down to his elbows. The sleeves of the robe are soon drenched; the tassel of his cap flops lamely into his face. Julian knows he’s being selfish—imagine how that couple feels right now, you asshole—but he can’t help it. He’s tired and he feels like shit and he just wishes he could go back in time and stop himself from reaching for that damn phone—

His bedroom door slowly creaks open, soft footsteps echoing in. Julian doesn’t bother hiding the shameful red glow on his face, doesn’t bother muffling the sobs that seem to choke their way out of him, doesn’t flinch when hands that loop under his armpits and lift him onto his mattress. The bed dips under a new weight; Julian feels warm arms wrap around him and he relents to the embrace. Ria’s perfume wafts into his nose as she shushes him and holds his head flush against her shoulder. He wants to murmur about how the action makes him feel like a baby, but the thought alone just makes him cry harder. 

Julian ends up going to graduation; he didn’t suffer through sixteen years of school just for a stupid accident to keep him from walking across the stage. Ria wraps her arm around his lower back as he slowly pushes himself up from the wheelchair. The stadium is practically shaking from the excited cheering; screams, all he can hear are screams; Julian’s already trembling from the exertion of standing on his own two feet. The slow shuffle to the podium proves to be almost too strenuous, even with Ria supporting most of his weight, but the dean waits until they’re within reach and then secures Julian’s arm in a firm grip that keeps him upright.

The crowd roars as Julian accepts his diploma. Ria rolls him off the stage just before then he loses the feeble grip on his emotions. None of his fellow graduates question him on it; for all they know, Julian is crying tears of joy.

Ria’s not wearing her perfume tonight. Julian finally notices as much as he leans in the threshold between the kitchen and the front door. There’s a familiar raw feeling in his throat from yelling this much; he would’ve already stormed out by now, but Ria hid his keys to keep him from doing something stupid. Something stupider.

The evening air burns against almost feverish skin and Julian presses his head against the cool metal of the doorframe to try and organize just one coherent thought.

“... Was that the only reason why you’ve been treating me nicely?”

Do you feel guilty, too?

A long pause.

“You didn’t even pick up the call, Julian.”

The front door slams shut.

It’s admittedly hard to walk when your leg is still broken, but Julian manages. His left leg drags against the ground and his right one screams as he practically hops down the sidewalk, but Julian is too furious to care and too confused to stop. He doesn’t know where he’s going; he has nowhere to go, besides back to the apartment. A part of him wonders if Ria will come after him, but he’s honestly too tired to deal with her facade right now. A part of him realizes that her reasoning isn’t that different from his. At the end of the day, they’re both just trying to make up for problems that don’t really have solutions.

At least Ria has the satisfaction of seeing him physically heal. There’s no way for Julian to bring back a body.

A wave of vertigo drags him to the ground and Julian barely has time to brace himself before his throat is working and he’s vomiting in the grass. He digs his fingers into the dirt as his stomach spasms, reflexive tears budding to his eyes. His body feels too warm—almost scorching, like the hot metal of his car door pressed against his arm—and his head is spinning as he rolls over onto his back. The night sky is starless, an inky black abyss that swamps Julian’s vision from eye to eye. He wonders if he’ll sink into it if he concentrates for long enough.

Ria’s face eventually swims into view, her features crumpled in a concerned frown. Julian just closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to witness her lies again.

It takes a week for his body to fight off the phantom illness. Ria worries that it’s caused by complications from the crash, but the doctor merely diagnoses with overexertion, and Julian is marked with an otherwise clean bill of health. He spends a week in bed, drenched in a feverish sweat and incoherently mumbling through fitful bouts of sleep. He wonders if the sickness is the lady’s baby haunting him until he seeks penance; the idea worms its way through his delirium and Julian lets it. In his mind, he’s driving down an endless road with an empty booster seat in his rearview mirror and a phone that won’t stop buzzing in his cup holders.

There’s no screaming there, but he quickly realizes that there doesn’t have to be.

Julian’s fever breaks the day before he gets his right leg brace off. Two weeks later, when the left one comes off, Ria breaks up with him. It’s mutual—just about the only thing that has been in the past few months—and she hugs him tight in the apartment complex’s parking lot as she loads her stuff into the car. 

Julian walks to the couple’s house. It takes a full hour to get there; they live in a little country-style home ten minutes outside of town by car; and he also stops to grab ice cream along the way. His arrival at the front door is pretty anticlimactic. He rings the doorbell with his elbow and waits anxiously in the doorway. The dessert in his hands burns like fire. There’s shuffling on the other side of the door and then the woman appears at the threshold. Her face is tired—probably at least partially because of the way there’s a little boy clinging to the fabric of her sweatpants—and she eyes the dessert in Julian’s hands before looking back up in confusion. He’s suddenly too awkward to offer an explanation; he just holds out the ice cream towards her and her son and hopes for the best.

Frozen desserts don't even begin to cover the debt Julian owes, but something about the simple way the woman smiles at him feels like enough for now.