How do I get away from this feeling?
About six months ago life was going great and I felt more content than I ever had. My fiance had just gotten a pay raise and was getting transferred to a new state. We both agreed to this big move and I even had a new job lined up for myself down there. It was the fresh start both of us had been looking for.
That was until Thanksgiving of 2020. My dad wasn’t feeling well and with the pandemic, he didn’t feel safe going out to my aunts house for the day. So, the day before my sister and I had decided that we were going to bring him all of his favorite dishes to cheer him up. We even went out and bought him his own cherry pie (it’s his favorite)! So, we packed up his dinner and were getting ready to head to his house when I noticed my car was low on gas. I headed out over to the Indian reservation that was only 10 minutes from my aunts house. Well, that was the mistake that started it all. I mean why not go for the cheaper gas.
On the way there everything was going smoothly, my sister was playing our favorite songs, even if we were barely listening to them, and we were talking and enjoying how the day has been. We turned on one road and we noticed the car ahead of us, going the opposite direction, was starting to do some weird stuff. So I slowed way down and started to watch this guy more carefully. Just when we got closer, he started swerving all over the place. I barely had any time to react when he directed to car towards us. The guy who hit us turned out to be drunk, and it was a head-on collision. It completely totaled my car. I don’t know how long my sister and I were unconscious, but when we came to I noticed that my car was smoking and everything was jammed. I couldn’t even turn the car off! I tried getting out of the car, a bad idea I know, but after I saw the smoke I just wanted to get my sister out and away from it. Yet, I could not do that either my door had been completely jammed shut. It terrified me, but luckily my sister was able to calm me down by the time a car pulled over and started helping us.
Fortunately, the person driving the car that stopped was actually a firefighter from California and knew what to do in this situation. He already had someone calling emergency services. He told one of his friends to stay with my sister and me just to make sure we weren’t moving around too much. Meanwhile, he and another one of his friends went to go check on the guy in the other car. I’m assuming he told his friend to start CPR on that guy while he went to check back on us. When he got over to us, my sister asked him how the other person was doing. It wasn’t a pleasant answer. The firefighter told us that the guy wasn’t responsive and wasn’t breathing, but he told us not to worry about it because his friend was already doing CPR. After we were told that one of the man's friends had found my sister's phone.
Immediately after she had handed us the phone, we called our aunt and told her what had happened and that an ambulance was on the way, and that we’re sure they were going to take us to a specific hospital. After we got off the phone with our aunt, I called my fiance and tried to tell him what happened between a series of ugly sobs and hiccups. I never thought when I made that call I would feel so bad. We had only had that car for about a year, and he was the one that helped me get the car. To make it even worse, he was already in a different state with his new transfer. I felt so guilty to tell him that the car was no longer in a state to be driven. He didn’t care about how the car was and just told me he was going to get back to me as fast as could, despite being six hours away.
Around the time the call ended with my fiance the emergency services finally arrived. The EMTs quickly checked both my sister and me out and told someone to get a blanket because my sister was going into shock. They got her out of the car as soon as she had a blanket wrapped around her and took her to the hospital. My door was jammed shut so tightly that they had to break out the jaws of life and still needed help from the people that had stopped to pry my door open. I had no clue what was going on because I couldn’t look around because of someone holding my head in place. Luckily, the guy that was in the back had found my phone and ran it up to me as the EMTs were loading me into the ambulance.
The ride to the hospital felt like it was going on forever. I’m not sure if it was because of the state I was in or if I was just over getting pain medication pumped into me. My aunt had already beaten us to the hospital and was waiting for us to get there. When I was waiting for the series of x-rays to start, I told my nurse that my foot felt cold. She looked and immediately grabbed a bunch of gauze and started wrapping my foot up in it. After I finally calmed down, I asked my aunt if she was told how the other guy was. It felt like my heart dropped into my stomach when she had told me that the guy who had hit us died on impact. All I could think was, “Am I going to get arrested and charged with murder for this guy? I’m not responsible for this car accident. What’s going to happen to me now?” She saw the panic in my eyes and reassured me I would not be going to jail and that the guy who had hit my sister and me was actually drunk and he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. After that, all I could think about that night was that a man had died, and I had a part in that. After a long series of x-rays and scans, they finally cleared me to be released after they glued my foot back together and put my left arm in a splint.
My sister didn’t have the luxury of being discharged. Instead, she was looking towards two different surgeries. In the accident, she broke her leg and dislocated and shattered the same wrist. I’m extremely grateful for the nurse I had she was nice enough to go through my hair and pick out all the food that was in my hair and put my hair back up into a bun and did it without me asking her about it.
About the same time, they discharged me my fiance had finally made it to the hospital and was there to pick me up. On the way back to the house, he asked me when the last time was I had eaten and he stopped and got me food and my favorite ice cream. There’s not much more to tell about that night.
It’s about 6 months after that car accident and both my sister and I are still in recovery. Sometimes I still feel like it’s my fault that guy had died. The accident was ruled to be his fault since he was drunk and he crossed the double yellow line getting into my lane. It’s been a hard thing to overcome and learning to financially depend on my fiance has been one of the hardest things to handle. I feel like I’ve been such a burden on him and wonder sometimes if things would be easier on him if I wasn’t living with him anymore, but I know I wouldn’t be able to handle the look on his face if I moved out. I mean, just move out of the house, not end things with him. I don’t know how to ease this feeling within me, and I’m getting tired of feeling down and not knowing how to help him. Or that matter how he could help me get rid of this feeling. Everything he’s done for me has been to make me happy or make being home alone all the time easier on me.
I wish I could say that this was a misfortunate story for a fictional character, but it’s been my reality and I’m just lost or confused on how to silence this feeling inside of me.