When I awoke, I was in the back of an ambulance. The scent of sterilization chemicals and agents was all around me, and there was a sharp pinch on my hand. I glanced down to see that there was an IV poking out of my skin, and my eyes followed the clear tube to a bag of saline solution. Above me, two paramedics were talking back and forth about my condition,
trying to figure out what to do with me from there.

“Where am I?” I asked, staring out the window in the back. One of them looked down and said, slowly, “Hi there, you’re in an ambulance. Do you know your name?”

“Yeah,” I responded, “My name is Amor Elise Johns. Where am I going?”

“We’re taking you to the hospital, Amor. Do you remember what happened at all?” the same one asked. This was a man with short blonde hair and brown eyes. The other was a woman with brown hair and slightly darker eyes.

“There was an accident, and I pulled the man from the car,” I said slowly, feeling light-headed as the weight of my body hit me. “Is he okay?”

“Do you know what day it is?”

“I don’t know. Wednesday?” I answered. “I know it was my second day back at school. Is he okay, though?” I asked, trying to focus my eyes on his face.

“Do you know how old you are? What time it is or what year it is?”

“Seventeen, and I don’t know. It was five or something when I last checked the time. It’s 2018. Is he okay?” I repeated.

“Do you know who the president is?”

“Trump,” I said, trying to keep my agitation in check. “Is he okay?”

His face remained the same as he said, “We did everything we could for him here. He’s being rushed to a better equipped hospital as we speak.”

“You said it was your second day back to school? Are you at this high school?” the woman chimed in.

“Yeah, I’m a senior at Rosedale.”

“Oh, that must be exciting,” the woman said as the man asked me to squeeze his fingers and went on checking the rest of my body.

“I guess,” I mumbled as he asked me to try to turn over. With some difficulty, I turned on my side, and he gently probed my back

“Do you remember what happened when you had pulled the man from the truck?” the man asked.

“Kind of. I just remember standing really still for a minute,” I lied. Something in me told me not to mention the vision I’d had of that burning person. I winced as his hands grazed over the left half of my back

“Does that hurt?” he asked.

“Yeah, a little,” I grimaced. I stiffened beneath his touch as he probed around a little more.

“Well, Amor, from what we got from the other witnesses, the truck had exploded not long after you got the people out of the truck, and one of the tires actually struck you on the back. It doesn’t look like there’s any lacerations, but we don’t know how far the damage goes.”

“What about the girl?” I asked quickly, her tiny body and broken face in my mind. They both were quiet for a moment, and I closed my eyes, my assumptions and fears confirmed.

He was silent for a moment as he continued to probe around my back. Moving my body carefully, he finally said in a forcibly complacent voice, “You did very good to pull her out, as well.” Biting my lip hard, I felt tears welling beneath my closed lids, and I asked in a stiff voice,

“Do you know if she felt any pain at all?”

“We don’t know now, but we are guessing that no, she did not feel any pain,” the woman said gently.

“The horses?”

“Most of them were severely injured. They’re all headed to the nearest equestrian doctor around. They’ve already been airlifted out.”

“And the dog?”

“An officer brought it to a local vet. It suffered some fractured bones and lacerations, but it looked to be that it would survive,” she answered.

“Good, that’s good,” I said quietly, this information doing little to soothe the pain in my chest. “At least the dog’s okay.”

“Is the triangle a birthmark?” the woman asked after a few moments of silence. I opened my eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling as I felt sensation drain from my body.

“Yes,” I murmured. “A funny little birthmark.”

 

At the hospital, I was blind. I had to take out my contacts since they’d almost completely dried out, and the lack of clarity only added to my dysphoria with the world. I was numb and quiet, a large part of myself having resigned to silence in the wake of the accident. An emptiness had occupied the parts of me that had chosen to sit down, and it seemed to permeate outward and destroy all other sounds around me. There was a doctor speaking to me, inspecting my body gently. Despite my not hearing anything, the words still came through as if they were obtrusive thoughts. She was saying how they would keep me overnight to make sure there wasn’t anything serious they’d missed, but it seemed that I just suffered some serious bruising along my back, maybe a possible head injury since I was so out of it.

Or maybe it was because I dragged a dead little girl from a truck. Just maybe.

“You’ve got some interesting scarring along your back,” an officer said, snapping me back to reality. Waiting at the hospital were a few cops to question me about the incident since I had been the first person there. I’d answered as much as I could, telling them I didn’t think, I just reacted, that I was just chatting with a coworker when we both heard the crash, that the bushes had hidden the entire crash from view and that I don’t know how it all happened really, just that by the time I got there, the tragedy had already occurred.

“Huh?” I asked mildly.

“Your back, you know you’ve got a mark there, right? It’s pretty big, too,” he said suggestively.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess,” I mumbled, my eyes drifting to the window. It was night time now.

The world outside didn’t seem real. I was on the fourth floor of the hospital, and the lights from the room drowned out any lights I might have seen outside. Everything just looked like an inky blackness beyond the window; an endless void of nothingness that could swallow up any and everything that might have gotten too close, turned it to nothing as well and rendered all sorts of existence barely a vague memory.

“Where’d you get it from, if you don’t mind my asking?” he asked.

“There was a fire when I was a kid,” I mumbled, my eyes growing hazy as I fell into a memory that wasn’t mine. “At my friend’s house,” I added, knowing I couldn’t say the fire was at mine.

“A fire,” he said slowly. “How did it start?”

“Her brother left a heat lamp on for too long,” I answered, remembering a particularly vivid dream. It was Donovan Cole; that’s whose life I was living in that dream, except it wasn’t his little sister and her friend who had gotten harmed in the fire. It was me, it was Donovan who had burned. He had been the only fatality in that fire, but he’d at least saved his sister and her
friend.

“I guess it ignited his papers while he was sleeping, because he was studying really hard that night. But I don’t really know. It was such a long time ago,” I lied, my eyes drifting over to him.

“How old were you?”

“Six,” I answered, remembering Donovan’s little sister’s face. She looked a lot like the little girl from the crash, and I felt my face fall as one emotion shot through me, echoed within and intensified with each revolution: guilt.

“I think that’s enough questioning for one day,” the doctor interjected, taking a deep breath and plunging her hands in her pockets. “Miss Johns has certainly been through a lot today, so I think its best if you let her rest for the rest of the night.”

“Absolutely,” the officer agreed. He took a similar breath and wedged his hands beneath his vest, said, “If you remember anything else about the crash, just give us a call.”

“Why would I know anything? Wasn’t that just a car crash?” The officer glanced at the doctor with an unreadable expression, said, “That’s what we’re trying to figure out right now, Miss Johns.”

“Ah,” I responded, looking back to the window and its nothingness. “Is the dog okay?”

“Yes, the dog is okay. He’s a little mangled, but he’ll live,” he answered.

“That’s good,” I responded listlessly, not knowing how to digest the information. Where was that bit of clarity supposed to fit into the rest of the chaotic horror? “That’s good.”

“I’m going to let your parents in now, okay, Miss Johns?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s fine,” I answered, almost forgetting that I actually lived a life before this event, that I had a family of my own, and friends, and school, and work. The officer took his leave then. “How long am I going to be here for?”

“Like I said, we’re going to keep you overnight just to make sure everything is okay. It just looks like you suffered severe bruising from the impact, but aside from that, you should be ready to go after tomorrow. I’ll prescribe you some painkillers to help with the soreness. You should stay home for a few days, though, okay? That means no school, no work, no heavy lifting, no over exertion,” she said in a very matter-of-fact tone.

“Wow. That is literally everything I do,” I said, shaking my head. “So I get to just stay home and sleep and eat and watch anime then?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just take the next few days to relax. I’m sure this must have been a very stressful event for you.”

“Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty, uh, pretty up there.” The doctor nodded, said, “It’s over now.

The only thing you should focus on is recovering, okay?” and with that, she went to the door and gestured to my family. My mother rushed in moments later, frazzled and worried and anxious.

“Oh, my baby!” she cried.

“Oh, man, Mom,” I groaned as she wrapped her arms around me in a tight, suffocating hug. “Do you have my glasses?”

“Are you okay? How are you feeling? What were you doing there? Why did you go up to that crash?” she asked as she pulled my glasses from her purse, firing each question like a bullet.

“Mom, I’m fine,” I whined, my eyes adjusting after putting on my glasses. I was glad to see clearly. Clarity would add some sort of reality back to my life, or so I wanted to think.

“Mrs. Johns,” the doctor asked with a small smirk, “I must ask that you take it easy with your daughter. She didn’t suffer any serious damage, but she still does have some severe bruising along her back. As I told her earlier, she should stay home for the next couple of days from work and school, no heavy lifting.”

My father lumbered in right as she said “no heavy lifting”, and he scoffed and said,

“What? No heavy lifting? She’s a bodybuilder. Heavy lifting is all she does.”

The doctor chuckled and said, “Well, for the time being, she’ll have to not be a bodybuilder and relax for a bit.”

I was surprised to feel a small smile pull at my lips, and the doctor smiled warmly in return. I looked at her a little closer, trying to fit her face to some part of my recognition. She had bright green eyes and chestnut hair. Her cheekbones were high and her mouth was full. She was a beautiful woman. There was something vaguely familiar about her, but I was having a
hard time placing it.

“Remember, Miss Johns. R&R for the next few days,” the doctor said kindly as she left the room. Before she turned to leave, she stopped at the doorway and said something to someone. She nodded her head, and Bond and Jo came in shortly after. Some part of me melted in relief at the sight of the two of them.

“Hey guys,” I smiled wanly. “What are you doing here?”

“What kind of question is that?” Jo snapped softly.

“I don’t know. A question question?”

“It’s a dumb question is what the hell that is.”

“Oh, shut up,” I smirked. “How did you guys know I was here?”

“The accident was all over the internet, then your mom called us and told us that you were in the hospital, and that we should come see you,” Bond answered. I looked over to my mother, fatigued with a warm smile. Of course she would do that. Whenever I was gone for more than few hours without her knowledge, she would always call them at least ten times to ask if I was okay. This made sense.

“Great. Cool,” I said to no one in particular. “Did they say anything about the crash yet?”

“There were two confirmed deaths,” Jo answered. “The guy in the hummer and a little girl.”

“The horses?” I asked, hoping if I glossed over the word, fast enough, I would avoid the inevitable descent of my heart.

“They were all pretty badly hurt,” Bond said. “I think one of them died.”

“How many were there?” I asked, alarmed.

“Seven.”

“And the man?”

“Which one?”

“The one that survived.”

“He was in critical condition when they got to him,” Jo replied.

“You know you’re like, a hero now, right?” Bond said.

“What?” I asked, confused, “How?”

“He was going to die if you didn’t get him out of there,” he answered. “That truck exploded, like ten minutes after the crash. It was pretty bad.”

“Ah man, I’m not trying to be your friendly neighborhood Spiderman,” I grumbled.

“Congratulations, you are,” Jo beamed.

“No! Take it back! I don’t want it!” I cried with another surprise of laughter. A light knock sounded on the door, and to surprise me most of all, Vance walked in, a small vase of azaleas in his hand. I felt my face heat as my eyes went wide.

Gawking, I said, “Hi, what are you doing here?”

He smiled at me with a funny expression, a face that said, “What kind of question is that?”

“Your mom told me you were in the hospital, so I came straight here,” he answered, placing the flowers beside me. Jo and Bond started to talk with my parents while Vance set the flowers down on a tray beside the bed.

“I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” I said awkwardly, not quite knowing how to feel knowing I was down to my pretty bra and underwear beneath the hospital gown. I could feel the rigid sheets against my bare butt and back.

“Why are you apologizing?” he laughed. “You’re in a hospital for saving dude’s life. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

I shrugged, said, “I don’t know. I never thought I’d be in a hospital for something like this. It’s weird, I guess.”

He mirrored my shrug, said warmly, “Yeah, I guess it’s a little weird, but no one asks for stuff like this. It’s a little scary, actually.”

“Scary?”

“Yeah, scary,” he said, his face falling into seriousness. “Your mom didn’t tell me why you were here. She just said that you were in the hospital and that I should come see you.” I glanced at my mother, shook my head with slight a simper, and said, “Yeah. Sounds like her.”

“I got worried, to be honest. I didn’t know what happened, so I kind of thought the worst. I thought it was you in that accident, and my heart just kind of . . . dropped, I guess,” he said sheepishly. I looked at him a moment, feeling my heart swell, and I smiled. He glanced up at me, his eyes wide and darting quickly away.

Without thinking, I reached for his hand, and I said, “I’m alright now. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“No, you’re not alright, or you wouldn’t be here, you dumbass romantic,” Bond chimed in.

“Shut up, Justine. I don’t need to hear anything from your crotchety, peanut gallery ass,” I shot back.

“Ama, language,” my mother snapped, and I couldn’t help but laugh.