Flatlined. Dead. The screaming and crying dies as the light begins to fade. Not my screaming of course, I still couldn't even speak, but that of my mother. The monitor’s breedle calls out for me. The soft mechanical whir countered with the harsh call of death coupled me as I felt myself falling out of body and space. They say your life flashes before your eyes, but it’s not life that flashes, it’s death. As my eyes fell to darkness, I lost the world around me... But then my hand began to feel something... From the black nothingness I found I was standing, and then a kitchen cabinet fell into place, my hand firmly placed upon it, followed by a hallway, and a Hershey’s colored hardwood floor. And my mother, the last view I remember seeing of her. The last view I may ever see of her.

    Details when recounting trauma seem to always get lost or muddled, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t speak. There are no memories of what words were said, only that they were. My mother was standing at the sink, washing dishes, an impatient look in her eyes and the corners of her mouth neither bent up nor down, but those eyes said it all. I felt my body begin to move forward with great stride. I wasn’t in control. It remember now that I had been angry. I was speaking, but I couldn’t speak. I was more like an observer of my own life. I heard muffled and incoherent sarcasm turn into yelling. Finally one of us, I’m not sure which, raised our voice to a new level. I couldn’t take it, so I turned around, grabbed the keys, and marched out the door... 

    I suppose what happened between me opening the door and me being out in the middle of highway I-35 didn’t matter to the case, because as soon as I opened the door I found myself sitting in my car on the biggest stretch of road I’d ever seen... I was going 90 in a 70, or was I going 70 in 90? The street signs seemed to morph and change indicating an unsureness even in death’s recounting. It’s just me and the road, not another car in sight, yet I came to an abrupt stop. I rolled three times, gritting my teeth and holding my eyes closed as shards of glass impaled into my chest, and the car’s crushed frame dug into my skull. I opened my eyes and I could now see the carnage around me. My head was jammed between the crushed car. In recounting, I felt nothing however. My vision was impaired on one side, maybe it was a long cone of glass, maybe it was just tears and blood. I looked Tto my right Iand saw my arm, cut and broken. Out of place in every way. And then, the hospital.

And then, my mother's screaming.

And then, the call of death.

I couldn’t speak nor open my eyes, yet I saw them all around me. 

I couldn’t remember them now, the details finally forgotten.

Who are these people?

And then, the man yelled clear. 

   Two metal plates crashed down onto me, and I awoke, this time not in the fluorescently lit hospital room, but a dark one. A warm one. I panicked. Who was I? Where was I? I felt my arm and found no cuts or bruises, and not a single break. I could see, and my chest was free of any foreign object... Then my mother came in, and I remembered, and for the first time I was able to understand what she was saying. “Goodmorning, time for school!” I was at home... I waited several minutes to see if this was just a memory, but I found that I was in control. I got up and went into the kitchen, and there was my mom, washing dishes. The corners of her mouth pointing neither up or down. She asked me if I would be around to run errands with her, and instead of proclaiming “no” and “that I’m too old to hang out with my mom.” I simply said “Yes ma’am” and hugged the woman, a smile grew across her face. Then I got in my car, and instead of trying to run away in anger, I drove myself to school.