Stars
A stillness surrounded him, not silence, low, rushing pulse: a heartbeat; a sound the unborn hear within their mother’s wombs.
The sound of sanctuary.
He couldn’t recall how he’d found his way into a surreal and tranquil setting, and at that moment, he did not care, but
he believed he’d lost consciousness -- sure in fact -- and was now just coming to, lost somewhere between awareness and circumstance.
The ground was icy cold, though he was far too numb to recognize it.
As reality seeped back in, the stars above him began to lose their magic, and suddenly they were nothing more than the cold, distant bodies he would easily ignore on any other night.
The real world filled his bleary eyes. He focused them into the shadows. He did not like what he saw. A gaping fissure of twisted metal: torn and fractured.
Behind this, he saw red and blue lights. Coming closer the radiance of those colored lights intensified, so too did that awful noise. The wailing of sirens jarring his senses into focus.
Orientation was returning. His eyes darted wildly about, anxiously scanning his surroundings. The ground was powdered with a fresh dusting of snow, and he soon realized he was upside down in a ditch.
Stricken, he was unable to obey his brain’s demand to rise and scramble from his would-be grave. The mangled catastrophe around him was a highway guardrail.
Faculties gathering but still awash with fear, he began to make out the droning engines of heavy equipment, voices and shouts, and the intermittent squawking of police radios. The lights behind the grotesquely deformed guardrail were intense now, casting long, menacing shadows into his new and frightening world.
On the highway above him, and beyond his view, emergency personnel had begun arriving upon the horrific display of carnage: nineteen vehicles he heard a voice yelling.
“Help me! Please!” he cried from the ditch. “Can anybody hear me?” But they could not. How could they? He could barely hear himself.
He attempted to move, but his body felt frozen to the frigid earth. Cautiously, he peeled his body from the icy ground and pushed upward. Crawling from the ditch felt clumsy and odd, and to his amazement, he felt no pain. Assessing his body, he appeared, to himself at least, to be uninjured.
So, this is what shock feels like, he thought, actually welcoming the numbness, all the while fearing that at any moment his faculties would return, racking his body and mind with intolerable pain presently overridden by the graciousness of fight or flight.
He began an ungainly, careful ascension of the steep gradient, working steadily towards the noise of metal cutters and people yelling and crying.
He was sure that he’d been driving and singing out loud to the radio, yes, he was sure of that. Singing really loud, the way you do when you’re all alone in the car.
Was I alone?
He paused. Something was missing. Someone was missing.
For the first time since this absurd situation had begun, he turned to look in the one direction he hadn’t: behind him. Turning would be like looking into the past, into something he feared deeply.
Making the 180-degree turn, looking down at the embankment. Resting at the bottom, hidden under a mangle of twisted metal, the wreckage of a four-door sedan -- his four-door sedan. Barely recognizable, it lay on its side: passenger side up, propped against a splintered tree. The windows were little more than a tangled spider web of busted glass; every visible inch of metal was either dented, punctured or ripped clean from the automobile’s broken bones.
His mouth agape with shock, he marveled at the grace of God that had spared him from such a catastrophe. Surely no one could have walked away from such a disaster, but here he was, living proof.
Once more, he inspected his body. Inexplicably, he seemed completely uninjured.
He had been driving, and it was cold. It had snowed lightly most of the day, but the setting sun had cooled things considerably, glazing the roadways with a frosty varnish. The steady drizzle had turned to pale flurries that blew lazily from his windshield, his wipers no longer necessary to keep his line of vision clear. He drove cautiously; the radio had warned of black ice.
As he scrambled, his mind relived what he had recalled: he was driving because he had to drop something off, but before his mind cleared, he saw the first fireball. Ablaze with fury, it illuminated the twilight sky in a massive orange sphere. A truck ahead of him was swamped with brilliant color, and he was dazzled by the glow. A second fireball followed before the first was even extinguished, this one smaller, although just as intense and enraged.
He instinctively slammed the brake pedal, but his tires refused to grip the icy road. In the dying glow of the second explosion -- just as his brain was beginning to understand what was actually happening -- he witnessed before him a violent chain reaction of cars and trucks smashing into one another like some fairground amusement gone disastrously awry.
With the final flicker of the second fireball, all went black. Blinded, his scorched eyes unable to assess quickly enough, he felt his vehicle persisting forward regardless of how fiercely he pumped the failing brakes. Seeing no other options, he turned the steering wheel hard to the right, choosing to take his chances towards the shoulder rather than follow the terrifying path his car, still full of vicious momentum, was currently taking.
His vision began to clear, and the last thing he recalled seeing before all would grow dark once again was the metal guardrail closing in on him in his headlights, then the quiet blackness as his car smashed through at 60 miles per hour and was tossed into the air.
He heard nothing except the cheerful song still playing on the radio.
It suddenly occurred to him, in an amusing sort of way, that he had never stopped singing.
Oh God, this was going to be bad, he remembered thinking. But why would he keep singing? He stopped to catch his breath. Who was the only person in the world brave enough to listen to him singing?
Lucy.
Oh God…oh God… he remembered in a moment of sudden horror. The realization was as disturbing as it was painful. Where is Lucy?
The man slipped and fell back down the embankment, in a frenzied descent, and began searching frantically for the little girl whose name he could never forget, the little girl he’d named himself: his daughter.
He fumbled ineptly through the wreckage, feeling weak and ineffective, unable to move even the smallest piece of his car’s scattered remains. Within the debris, the only thing he found was more agonizing pieces of his tattered memory.
His wife had reminded him to be careful as they left, and he assured her he would. The ground was already slick under their feet as he and Lucy walked vigilantly down their freezing driveway. Lucy was anxious to get to her Grandma’s; it was Friday evening, and she was spending the weekend there because her parents were leaving early Saturday morning for an out-of-town wedding.
“Sing a song, Daddy,” the excited five-year-old pleaded over the traffic report as they headed southbound towards his mother, twelve miles down the highway. “Please...”
How could he refuse her? She was his only child, the light of his life, the one person with whom he truly understood love. He tuned to a music station and began singing aloud to the first song he came to: Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rose.”
Lucy giggled and cracked up from her child seat, old enough to sit in a booster like a “big girl” but small enough to still use the larger, more protective seat, for safety’s sake. He performed joyfully for his admiring audience of one while keeping a watchful eye on the freezing highway.
The fuel truck passed him on the left less than a minute before it all started, and he noted, between verses of “Cracklin’ Rose,” just how inappropriately fast it had been traveling for such icy conditions.
“Lucy!” he screamed, finally finding the small girl secured in her safety harness, still strapped into the back seat of his ruined car. She did not respond. Through the broken glass, it was impossible to tell if she was even breathing. He pulled at the handle, but the door would not budge. He pounded his fists on the shattered glass; it barely buckled. His body felt so incredibly weak.
“Lucy, its daddy!” he shouted through tears and sobs. “Open your eyes Lucy...please!” But she did not.
He turned towards the embankment and up to the break in the guardrail. Lights of every sort now beamed and flashed from behind the gap: emergency strobes, floodlights, the amber shimmer of open flame.
“Somebody,” he shouted with all the strength he could. “Please help me!”
Nothing.
He turned back to the vehicle. Like the crazed man he was, he clawed at the door madly, beat the glass with all he had, and kicked at the demolished quarter panel all to no avail. He cursed and screamed and wailed, and when he could finally give no more, he collapsed to the ground. With one final and breathless plea, he cried, “Oh God, somebody! Please help me!”
Then all went silent.
She appeared at the top of the embankment as if from nowhere at all: a woman, young and fair. Though her face was shrouded by shadow, he could see her clearly as if illuminated by a light of her own making. She navigated the rocky slope with ease and grace and stood before him as quickly as she had appeared.
Her gentle face was timeless, like those immortalized by the greatest of the Renaissance artists.
“Will you help me?” he appealed in a whispered plea that only she could hear.
She nodded gracefully.
He watched in amazement as she labored effortlessly, doing what he had found to be impossible. She reached into the vehicle and gently removed the child. Lucy’s frail body was carried from the wreckage, in an affectionate embrace, and placed in a small grassy area untouched by snow.
“Oh my God,” he whispered at the sight of his daughter’s fragile body. “She’s not breathing.” He could see how pale his only child was. “Oh God...” he repeated.
The woman knelt beside her. She kissed the child.
Her father watched in bewilderment as the color of life, a wonderful fleshy pink, returned to his little girl’s body. Lucy coughed weakly, but her eyes remained closed. The man fell to his knees, wanting to take his young daughter into his trembling arms and feel her soft body in his paternal embrace, but the woman turned and, with an outstretched arm, prevented him.
“What?” he protested as the woman, without effort, moved him towards the edge of the embankment. For the first time, she spoke, directing her words along the path of her gaze.
“Help her.”
At first, it was one, then, finally, two: silhouettes of men in uniform, appearing within the break in the guardrail, carving the night with powerful flashlights, their beams scanning the area in a ballet of light before finally focusing on the small girl, alone in the grassy clearing. They called for a third and began scaling the embankment to rescue the little victim. Their descent was treacherous. Loose stone and soil gave way in large chunks, hampering their efforts to navigate the decline safely. Upon reaching the girl, they immediately began tending to her.
Once more, the man looked to move closer to his daughter, but again she restrained him with a gentle yet unyielding grasp.
“Let them help her.”
The child coughed once more, a bit stronger this time, as the emergency workers tended to her. One rescuer barked requests for further aid with a two-way radio; the other two listened with stethoscopes and examined her with penlights.
“Daddy!” the little girl cried in a distressed and unsteady voice.
“Where’s my daddy?”
“Oh, Lucy,” reaching out to her, “daddy’s right...” But the woman tightened her grip.
“Let them help her,” she restated gently.
One of the emergency workers ran to the car and began examining the interior with his flashlight.
“There’s no one in the vehicle, Sarge!” he shouted from the twisted wreck.
“Check the perimeter!” another hollered back. “There had to be a driver!”
Unable to restrain himself any longer, the man tried to yell out, but he could no longer speak. His lips moved without sound. His ears were inundated by white noise while all other sounds evaporated around him. All he wanted was to hold Lucy, but the world became a reverie of slow motion and smog as he struggled in vain to break free from the woman’s ever-increasing embrace.
His hearing entirely dulled, he heard nothing as the rescuer, a medic, yelled to his partner before jumping into the shallow trench. He felt himself drawn to the dreamlike scenario, wanting to know what the medic had found, needing to see what he’d left behind in the snowy ditch that was causing such a fuss. The woman permitted him to look without protest.
Together they approached the lonesome trench and watched unnoticed as the medic worked hopelessly on a blue and broken body. When his partner finally arrived, the medic told him not to bother.
“This one is gone,” were his exact words.
The medics rejoined the third rescuer, a firefighter, who was still attending to the child. Neither had noticed the man and woman who had kept a solemn vigil over their efforts. Beside the ditch, in order to mark the area, they had left a glowing flare.
Through more light snow, the man recognized the cold, lifeless eyes of the body lying in the base of the ditch. Cloudy and frozen, they reflected the glow of crimson flare while bearing no sparkle of their own.
Losing concern for the matter in the trench, the man returned his attention to the little girl, now wrapped in blankets, an oxygen mask snug to her tiny face. From her pale lips, the sight of her breathing brought him great comfort.
The man stood over his daughter, over the only person in the world he had ever truly loved. With whatever voice he had left, he spoke quietly and deliberately.
“I love you, Lucy.”
Though her lips barely moved, he could hear her as clearly as he had ever heard any words in his entire short life.
“I love you too, Daddy.”
The indigo sky welcomed him, and as the threshold was crossed, all he could see, as far as his eyes could wander and wide as his mind would roam, was nothing but stars.