Aftermath

Aftermath
A short story by Brighid S Schlegel

"...bleeding heavily. Looks like it's mostly from the glass. He's breathing."
"You have his ID?"
"Not yet, but he'll have his license, I hope. The girl—oh, God--"
He tried to open his eyes but found he couldn't. What was going on? Who was talking? It sounded like a television script, he thought hazily, like something from a movie. It was a movie playing on TV and he must have fallen asleep on the couch. "What time is it?" he asked, or tried to ask, but he didn't hear anything. His mouth wasn't responding. His whole body wasn't responding.
Why couldn't he move?
"She's impaled on the steering wheel. There's a pulse, but it's faint."
"What about him? The same didn't happen to him?"
"No. He might be dead if it weren't for her, but he'll live..."
He could feel hands grabbing him. "I'm awake," he shouted in his head. "I'm awake."
They didn't hear him. He was being lifted up. There was something digging into his shoulder. His seat-belt.
His seat-belt?
The car. The sleet. Headlights spinning into the darkness. The wheels sliding, finding no purchase in the slush.
Oh, no.
Oh, God, no.

                                    * * *

Lexie used to say she could tell the future. Well, sort of. She knew what was coming a second before it happened.
"Sometimes I can change things," she told him. "I know when things are going to fall before they do, and I can catch them. I can tell that someone's going to get hurt in time to stop it from happening. Sometimes."
"I don't believe you," he told her.
It was April, and he hadn't been friends with her long enough to have seen her do it yet. He was the kind of guy who preferred to trust his own eyes above anyone's word, and he thought she was completely bullshitting him.
"It's true!" she said stubbornly, folding her arms and scowling at him. "It's called premonition. Maybe you don't believe in it, but it's worked for me my whole life."
"Prove it," he said.
"Okay," she said. "I will."
It was a week before she did. They were walking to her house and she was talking to him about her stories as usual, and he was intent on what she was saying, on the sound of her voice and the sparkle in her eyes when she laughed, and he wasn't looking at the sidewalk, and he hadn't walked this way many times because his house was in the opposite direction.
There was a crack in the sidewalk which he didn't notice until he tripped on it.
He didn't fall on his face, luckily for him, but his glasses came off and he missed when he grabbed for them, because he couldn't really see them very clearly. For a second he thought they would break, but he saw Lexie move. Unable to make out her expression, he assumed she'd fallen, which was why he was confused when she gave a shout of triumph as she hit the ground.
Then he realized that she'd managed to catch his glasses.
"Here," she said, pressing them into his hand. "Oh, and by the way—I told you so."
He shoved his glasses back on to see her smug expression and mock-scowled at her, giving her a little shove. She shrieked and stumbled off the sidewalk into the grass, laughing.
Lexie always had a great laugh.

                                    * * *

He opened his eyes and didn't know where he was. That tended to happen when he was anywhere that wasn't his own room, because he didn't sleep with his glasses on and he couldn't see without them.
Everything was mostly a blur of white. He tried to find his glasses with one hand, but his arm was too heavy to move.
"What..." he managed, his speech a little slurred by sleep. Talking made his chest ache and he fell silent.
"Chester Howard?" asked a voice he didn't recognize. "Mr. Howard, can you hear me?"
"Nnh," he mumbled. He squinted in the direction of the voice and made out a white figure framed by a doorway, which led into a hallway that was slightly less white.
The woman in white came into the room and picked up something from the table beside the bed he was lying in. "Here are your glasses," she said, and put them in his left hand. Somewhat clumsily, he put them on.
The blur of white resolved into a hospital room, and the woman became, more specifically, a nurse, with brown hair tied in a ponytail.
Why was he in the hospital?
"Wait just a second while I get another dose ready," she said in a calm, serious voice.
He was too busy trying to remember what had happened to reply. What was the last thing he'd done? He remembered driving in the dark—driving to Lexie's house, with Lexie sitting in the seat beside him...
"Where's Lexie?" he asked, and winced. His chest was hurting more and more, and there was a dull throbbing in his arm and his head.
The nurse, who had a syringe in her hand, stopped. Her calm, collected face faltered, and for a moment she looked shaken.
"I'm so sorry," she said quietly, putting a hand on his arm. "She's gone."
"Gone?" he started to ask, confused, but she had injected the contents of the syringe into his arm and he faded out before he could ask where she'd gone.

                                    * * *

It was July, and he and Lexie were at the park. She was sitting on the swing and he was leaning against the supports, watching as she swung back and forth, legs pumping, pushing her higher, higher...
"Look!" she shouted to the clear summer sky. "I'm flying! Look, Ches, I'm flying!"
She laughed, her sunshine hair flying back from her face as she swung down, until she reached the peak of her swing and fell back in the other direction. He couldn't help grinning at how overjoyed she was.
She was fifteen, and he was seventeen, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her laugh, and her eyes, and her stories. He didn't believe in forever, because he wasn't a believing-in-forever kind of guy, but he believed in right here and right now, and at that moment he loved her.
Her feet dug into the ground, spraying dirt and woodchips everywhere, as she dragged herself to a stop. Still beaming, she grabbed him and pulled him towards the bench under the big oak tree. "I'm tired," she announced, looking over one shoulder at him. "Let's sit down."
Her sundress lifted up a little as she flung herself down on the bench, and he tried not to look at her legs. Even if they were dating, that wouldn't be very respectful of him.
"You have way too much energy," he said, shaking his head in bewilderment. "I don't even know how that's possible."
"I think you just have too little energy," she said, smirking as she leaned against him. Her fingers twined together with his and he squeezed her hand.
When he thought about it later, he decided that both of them moved at the same time, which was perfectly reasonable because Lexie would have known what he was about to do, maybe even before he knew it. He hadn't really known at all until he'd already done it—one second, they were sitting beside each other on the bench in the park, looking at each other, and the next they were kissing.
They broke apart a few seconds later, and something in Lexie's eyes had changed. In a few seconds she'd gone from a pretty girl to a stunning young lady.
He only found out later that it was her first kiss.

                                    * * *

It was sleeting as he drove her home in the dark at the end of December. The headlights sliced through the freezing rain, two cones of yellow light trying to make a path through the darkness.
Lexie was quiet, her face leaning against the window, staring out into the night. She was usually quiet these days, and it was that, more than anything she said to him, that made him feel guilty. Lexie wasn't a quiet girl. Not the Lexie he'd known.
The back wheels slid as they rounded the corner, and the car fishtailed, making Lexie catch her breath. She didn't shriek like she used to when he tickled her or pushed her off the sidewalk, just sucked in air through her teeth before he got the car back under control.
"This is really shitty weather to drive in," he said to break the silence.
"I bet it is," she agreed quietly.
He didn't speak again.
It was on the hill that the car started to slide. He pressed on the brakes, but they weren't helping much. There was no traction, nothing for the tires to grab onto. The road was all ice and slush and he was losing control and oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, they were in trouble.
The steering wheel slipped out of his hand for a second. He grabbed it again but it was too late. The back of the car spun out and they skidded towards the intersection, going faster and faster.
"No!" he gasped, fighting to control the car as the tires threw up slush on either side.
They were going to crash.
He knew it and Lexie knew it and he saw her move out of the corner of his eye, a blur of pale skin and blonde hair and her blue jacket. She knew something he didn't. Her seat-belt snapped back and she threw herself into his lap, her arms around him, and all he could think was no, please don't, don't do this to me. Lexie. No.
That was the last thing he remembered.

                                    * * *

They were walking to her house, and Lexie was smiling, but when she laughed it sounded a little forced and her eyes didn't have their usual sparkle. She knew something was wrong.
He knew too, and it was breaking him apart inside. Lexie was a good girl, a good person, and there was nothing in particular wrong with her, but she drove him crazy. She was sweet, and friendly, and pretty, and smart, and she definitely didn't deserve what he was going to do to her, but she didn't deserve what he was doing now, either.
What he was doing now was lying to her, because he wasn't in love with her anymore. It was October, and he'd decided that he couldn't lie to her any more.
"Lexie," he said slowly, quietly. "There's something I need to tell you."
He saw her confusion in her face, in the tilt of her head. He watched as it registered in her eyes what was going to happen and for once he wished she didn't have the gift of knowing what was coming, because in that second she couldn't do anything to change the future and it must have felt like a curse.
"I'm--" he began, and couldn't say it. A moment passed in which he wondered if he needed to. She knew what was coming—did he need to say it?
The answer was yes, of course. He knew that.
"I can't do this anymore," he said. "You—I know you love me, but I don't. Love you. Not anymore."
Her face tightened, almost imperceptibly, but she didn't speak.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said, taking both her hands in his. "It's just—that's the only thing that can happen if I keep lying to you. You'll get hurt. And I don't want that."
She still didn't say anything, but tears welled up in her eyes.
"I don't want to be together anymore," he finished, looking at his shoes. "We can still be friends, if you want, but I don't want to go out with you."
Her hands tightened around his for a second before she pulled away. "Okay," she managed, her voice shaking. "Okay. I'll...see you tomorrow, I guess."
She turned and kept walking down the street. He lifted his head to watch her go: head down, shoulders tense, hands clenched into fists.
Then he walked home, trying to convince himself that he hadn't had any other choice. He couldn't have kept lying to her. That would have made everything worse.

                                    * * *

"I'm so sorry," the nurse was saying. She was a different nurse, with short blonde hair, and she looked sincerely upset by the news she had just delivered. "It's a miracle you survived yourself, actually. You would have died if she hadn't been in front of you."
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. Lexie? Gone? Dead?
"She saved your life," the nurse said solemnly, looking up from his medical chart. "Chester, I'm so—so sorry..."
He shook his head at her, unable to speak. It wasn't a miracle that he'd survived. It wasn't a coincidence that she'd saved his life. Lexie could tell the future. She'd seen what was about to happen, and she'd changed it.
He wished she hadn't.
"Hang in there, okay, Chester?" the nurse said, touching his face. He twitched a little, sending a twinge of pain up his arm and through his chest. The nurse left without noticing.
He didn't realize he was crying until he felt the tears on his cheeks. Lexie was gone. Forever. Lexie, who could tell the future, who had laughed with him in the park. Lexie, who he'd loved once.
Lexie, who had died to save his life.
"Dammit," he whispered to himself, wiping his eyes clumsily with his left hand. "Why did you have to die?"
She'd died for him.
She'd loved him.
And now she was gone.
He slumped back against the pillow and closed his eyes, too weak and weary to fight tears.