Counting Raindrops

I did something horrible. Or at least, that is how it has been described to me. Horrible. Awful. Terrible. 

I don’t remember doing it. I don’t remember anything about it, to be honest. I have seen photos and videos from the incident many times, before the trial and many times during it. In the videos it appears to be me. The scenes are disturbing. I mean, who wouldn’t be disturbed after watching it? During some of the viewings I’d get these weird flashes, like a bright light pulsing ever so quickly it’s gone before I even knew it was there, a jolt down my arms, legs, spine. Like my brain was trying to tell me something but couldn’t get through. 

I still don’t remember. Was it really me? Wouldn’t I remember doing something like that? I try not to think about it too much.

Remembering anything from my past is hard for me these days. My therapist has told my family members that maybe someday I’ll be ready to face my “personal demon”, this thing I have done. She tells them these things in front of me. Maybe she hopes doing that will help me to remember. It doesn’t. 

I use the word ‘family’ but I’ve mostly become an outsider. My brothers come to visit my parents, help them around the house, sometimes take them to doctor appointments or out for dinner, but neither of them speak to me anymore. I can see they want to, but when they look in my direction, their expressions become ones of discomfort, and they will quickly find something else that requires their attention. We have become strangers. 

My parents were charged to take care of me. Just what they wanted, to raise me a second time when they should be enjoying their golden years. Our conversations are limited to current events, checking if I have showered, telling me it’s time to eat, asking me to get ready to be driven to my therapist’s office. We don’t discuss much at the dinner table, or sometimes the two of them will have a conversation like I am not sitting across from them. I don’t blame them, I think they are still trying to come to terms with what I did. Most of the time they leave me to my own devices, which consists of lots of sleep and sitting in my favorite recliner where I let my mind drift. 

My sister is the only one who makes an effort to talk to me. She comes to see our parents weekly, driving in from the city to the countryside home my parents retired to and where I spend my days. After she has visited with them, she always makes a point of spending a few minutes with me. Mainly she will talk about her life - concerts she has seen, who she is dating, vacations she is planning - but occasionally she will talk about what happened, what I did, how I feel now. I know my answers frustrate her, even if they are true. 

I don’t remember. 

That didn’t happen.

I don’t feel anything.

She always leaves with a sad smile and a squeeze of my hand, and a promise that someday things will be better. I don’t believe her.

About the only thing I look forward to these days is bad weather. I feel a twinge of something I can’t really describe when I see a storm system rolling in. Perhaps it is excitement? When the wind picks up and the rain starts to fall I will walk into the sunroom in my parents’ house. They have a special recliner chair for me, where I can lean so far back that I stare straight up at the curved glass panels overhead. There I can watch the raindrops’ final stop, falling from miles overhead to land violently against the glass right above my head. I will sit for hours, listening to the drumming sound it makes. I’ve made it a habit to try to count the drops and listen for patterns in their falling, waiting for it to repeat. Sometimes it does, I think I can hear the same rhythm that started hours ago. Others the storm is over too quick or I nod off to sleep before the pattern restarts. 

During one of these storms my sister visited. I wasn’t aware she was sitting close by, observing me. I was entranced with the soothing patter of the drops, watching them collect into larger and larger droplets that magnified the gray skies overhead until their weight was too much to defy gravity and they streaked away down the curved glass to fall into the garden below. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, startling me out of my trance. 

“I didn’t notice you there,” I replied, slowly. 

“I’ve been sitting here for almost half an hour. I don’t think you’ve blinked once. You looked ... intent. I haven’t seen you that focused on anything since...” her voice trailed off, but we both knew what she meant.

“I’m just ... counting raindrops,” I murmured, thinking about how curious that must sound.

“You’re actually counting them?” There was concern in her voice. 

“Yeah, I kinda count them and listen for patterns in the way they fall.”

She doesn’t respond. Her nose and forehead wrinkled as she tried to process this statement. 

“Rainstorms have patterns. If you listen long enough, the pattern will start again. I listen for the patterns.”

“That’s ...” her voice trails off.

“Crazy?” I asked quietly.

“What I was going to say is a poor use of your time, but I didn’t want to harp on you,” she said in a curt tone. “You do this often?”

“Every storm has its own music.”

She remained silent for a while, the rain the only sound. 

“What - what did I do?” I asked suddenly. Her mouth opened slightly and her eyes widened.

“What?” She sounded shocked. I couldn’t blame her, I never asked about the incident, never wanted to speak of the event I couldn’t remember.

“You know what happened,” she said, softly. 

“I .... I know what people have told me,” I said, my voice shaking. “I want you to tell me.”

She sat back down heavily, running her hands through her hair. I could feel her gaze on me, intense and serious, before she sighed.

“There was an accident,” she started. Sadness crept into her voice. She cleared her throat.

I remained silent, watching the drops splattering overhead. I was no longer counting.

“You were a driver for a transport company. You made regular deliveries to a distribution center a few hundred miles away. It was a run where you would drive in, stay the night, pick up and drive back. You had been doing it for years, you loved the freedom of driving your own big rig and being on the road. Do you remember any of this?”

“Not really,” I replied. Everything I’m told about my life felt like it was someone else’s.

She paused, looking at the floor. The next part was sure to be hard for her.

“Well, there was a need for additional deliveries, and when you completed your first delivery, you agreed to do another run. It was too much. You called Mom and Dad and they asked you to turn it down, but you laughed it off, said you would make sure to drink plenty of Starbucks Nitro cold brews.

“You made the run to the distribution center okay, but on the way back you started having issues. Your company had mandatory in-cab video cameras as well as a dash cam. The video shows you started nodding off, closing your eyes for seconds at a time. You were falling asleep while driving.”

I don’t know why this wasn’t triggering any memories or feelings. It was like listening to someone tell a story about someone else.

“So, you made it almost all the way back and were driving down County Road 40. You were approaching the Commerce Road intersection by the outlets, doing just above 65 miles per hour. The in-cab video shows that you completely nodded off at this point and drove straight through a red light into an intersection and completely destroyed an SUV that was crossing.”

She turned towards me. Although her voice never wavered, her eyes were wet, the corners pinched tight. She ran the palm of her hand across her face and breathed in deeply.

“Go on,” I urged. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, I knew I had experienced all of this.

“There were three people in that SUV. A woman, Leslie, and her two daughters, Sonya and Lindsey. The girls were six and four years old.”

I paused for a moment. The words felt so heavy, suffocating. How had I done this?

“Your truck crushed their SUV and bent it nearly in half, instantly killing Leslie and Sonya. Inside the cab, your head smashed against the door frame and cracked your skull. The doctors didn’t determine this until much later, but it explained what you did next,” she continued. She was wringing her hands as if she was rubbing lotion on them, first massaging the left, then the right, over and over. “This ... this is a really hard story to tell.”

“I know this is hard for you, but please continue, I need to hear it.”

“The various cameras caught everything. The in-cab camera, the dash cam, and the traffic camera at the intersection captured most of the video. A few bystanders used their smartphones too. You never saw the SUV, your eyes were closed shut until impact, and immediately afterwards your head hit the metal frame. When the truck had stopped moving you opened your eyes, but to say you were dazed was an understatement.

“The SUV was wrapped around the front of your truck, and under it as well. From the dash cam video your voice can be heard saying ‘no no no’ over and over, and then you opened the driver’s side door and climbed out. You had to step on part of the SUV wreckage just to get down to street level.

“People ran to the accident from both sides of the street, or called 911 to explain what had just happened. You stumbled around the wreckage looking for a door, still saying ‘no no no’ over and over. You were so out of it, I don’t think you knew what you were doing.”

“So, what happened to the youngest girl, Lindsey?” I don’t know why I asked, I didn’t want to know, and almost told my sister to stop, but she continued.

“A few people had miraculously managed to get the rear side door open. Lindsey was still breathing, but unconscious, and her neck was twisted unnaturally. They didn’t want to touch her for fear of paralyzing her and were waiting for emergency services. People were going crazy. Some had seen the mother and daughter who had died and were freaking out. Others were on the phone with 911, or asking onlookers if there were any paramedics, some were clearing glass from the street ... the point is, no one saw you stumble up to the little girl and try to pull her from the back seat.”

My sister stopped talking, and leveled her eyes with mine. I could feel the heavy whump whump of my heart slamming inside my chest. 

“You put your hands under her neck and legs and tried to lift her, and ...” 

“I killed her? I killed the little girl?” 

“Lindsey ... passed away before paramedics arrived.”

Neither of us spoke for a long time. The rain continued to fall, playing its sad music, as I reflected on what I had just been told. A horrific act that ended three people, including two little girls who hadn’t even begun their lives, and I couldn’t remember any of it. I looked to my sister. Her shoulders were shaking, and her hands were now buried in her hair.

“I won’t go into all of the details, you don’t need to know them. The aftermath was really hard. The husband and father was a local politician. He fell apart and left his position after the funeral and hasn’t really been seen much, not even during the trial, which was a media circus. The reporters were relentless. Dad had to retire early. Mom wouldn’t go outside. You ended up getting off on a technicality, but your employer was made liable for making you drive that second route without considering driver fatigue. The courts ordered you to live here under their custody due to your memory loss and the impairments you have today.”

“I killed them all,” I said, my voice barely audible. 

“It was a terrible accident,” she replied, wiping her eyes again.

For a long moment, neither of us said a word. The rain continued to fall. 

“I want to see him,” I say at last. “The father. I’d like to meet him.”

My sister nodded slowly. 

“Your therapist said it would be good for you.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t want to do it for me. I don’t even remember it, what good would it do me? No, I want to do it for him, for the husband. I don’t know if it will help, but I would like to try.”

*

A week later I found myself in a conference room at my therapist’s office. It was lit with warm yellow lighting. The seats were comfortable. I sat at a table, waiting for the man whose family I killed to come in. The anxiousness I’d been experiencing for days had been replaced with a resolute determination. The door cracked open and my therapist led him in. 

He walked slowly, eyes on the ground, and slid into the chair on the opposite side of the table from me. His jeans and sweatshirt were rumpled and wrinkled, as if they had been left in the dryer after the cycle was over. His brown hair was shaggy and unkept, and his face had a sunken look. His eyes were red-rimmed.

“So, you finally wanted to meet me,” he said in a low voice. 

“Yes.”

“Why? Why now? Is this so you can have closure? Beg for my forgiveness?” his voice raised slightly. His hands trembled. He glanced up at me and quickly pulled them under the table.

“I... no, this isn’t for me. I wanted to meet you because I thought that maybe ... it could, I don’t know... help you,” I stammer. My heart was pounding.

He lifted his head and looked into my eyes. 

“For me? So ... you’re doing me a favor?”

“No, not like that,” I blurted out. “I thought it may help you ... move on, maybe? I honestly still don’t remember what happened that day, but ... I still can’t believe it was me. It’s so surreal to me, to have done such a horrible thing and not remember any part of it.

“I know I took your family from you, and I will spend the rest of my days being haunted by that thought, of the pain and grief I have caused you. I wouldn’t expect forgiveness from you, but I would hope this could provide you some small measure of closure.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks and dripped from my chin onto the table, pooling up in tiny puddles. My breathing felt raspy and labored, and my head was pounding. 

He stared at me and I could see, darkness boiling in his eyes. He raised a clenched in a fist and shook it at me.

“You come before me, the man who took everything from me, and talk about forgiveness? About moving on?” his voice rose in volume. His left eyelid twitched. A tear rolled out of it and trailed down his face. “You have the balls to admit that you don’t even remember what you did?”

He stood up, his arms trembling. A slight sheen of sweat covered his forehead and he loomed over me, glowering. 

“Well, my friend,” he continued, his voice a raspy whisper, “I don’t need your help, but I am going to help you. I’m going to help you remember what you fucking did!”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out printed photos of his family. He slammed the first one on the table loudly.

“Well, maybe now you’ll remember my wife, Leslie!”

Another photo printout slammed onto the table.

“Or my daughter Sonya!”

The final printout is slammed so hard I thought the table would break.

“Or my little girl Lindsey, who you couldn’t leave alone for the paramedics! Who you murdered. Call it an accident or whatever you want, you murdered my family, you piece of shit, and no, you cannot now and will not ever receive my forgiveness! You rot in hell!”

He strode out of the room, displacing enough air that the photos spun in lazy circles. Lindsey’s face slowed to a stop where she looked at me, accusingly. Outside in the hallway my sister sobbed while my therapist tried to calm her down. I remained at the table for another 30 minutes without moving until she came in to collect me and drive me home. 

*

The ride back to my parents’ house is a quiet one. My sister doesn’t speak. I appreciate the silence, not wanting to talk either. When we reach the house I shuffle inside. She walks into the kitchen and begins speaking with our parents. Her voice is low enough that I cannot hear. I’m bone tired, I just want to sleep. 

I slowly walked into the sunroom. The weather man had said there was another wet system moving in and he was right. I sank into my chair and closed my eyes as the first drops pattered against the glass above me, and began counting.