It's a little chilly on this September night, especially with the drizzle. God, it's already 3 in the morning! But I am too tired to really care. I flip the collar of my jacket up to give my neck some comforting illusion that it warms it up a bit. I look around and see no cab. It's not a long walk home, really. Only 20 minutes, and if I really hurry, I can make it back in 15.
I walk down the few steps and when I reach the sidewalk I feel finally I am no longer in the dominion of the police station. It's such an ugly building. It doesn't look imposing as a center of the city's authority might look, nor does it look friendly, despite the department's motto of "To Serve Our Community". The only other time I've been inside this fortress was when my friend's car got stolen and we had to report it. That time I thought it would be like in the movies, with detectives busy running around trying to solve crimes and officers in uniforms hauling bad people in. But all I saw then was the front window of the reception where we filled out a form and left. Whatever drama was happening happened behind a door that required buzzing to be opened from the outside. This time I went in a different door. I thought I would be in one of those interrogation rooms where a good cop and a bad cop would be standing around me, one with suspenders on, balding, and the other some young, hot tempered guy in an unbuttoned suit. But I was in someone's office, with the usual stacks of paper, computers, framed certificates and honors. The only thing missing that would have made it an executive or lawyer's office were books that augment the sense of knowledge. I was brought in to repeat what happened so they could write it down, then I signed it and left. However, I did get to spend two hours outside the office, in a corridor where no drama happened, not even a janitor running to retrieve a missing broom.
The detective, or was he just some secretary, just asked me to fill out a form with all the information of my car and my driver's license. I thought the officer at the scene got all that information. I guess not. After that there was more waiting. The officer, or detective, in front of me was wearing a plain suit. I wasn't sure if he was wearing suspenders. He seemed tired too. What was he doing so late, at 2 in the morning? I wondered if he didn't have a family to go to, or perhaps he had a family to run away from. By then I was much calmer. I was no longer frantic. My heart went back up only as they led me to that drama-less corridor, and once more when the door opened and his big nose stuck out to invite me in. He offered me coffee, in that way that wasn't really sincere, just letting me know that such politeness, shallow as it might be, meant all this was routine. Then my heartbeat went back to normal. I didn't drink coffee, and he hardly acknowledged my response.
He seemed like a good guy. I can't imagine he had to raise a gun at anyone, but if he really was a detective, I guess he must have at some point, solved a lot of crimes, perhaps. His coffee was cheap; I am no coffee drinker, but I can smell a cheap one when one walks by my nostrils. In some ways I felt sorry for him. He seemed tired but refused to leave. His chaos in the room made me wonder how little else he has control over his life. But I was probably reading too much into things. I was in a sentimental mood.
Can you blame me?
That was the point. Blame. I just heard the crashing sound. My impulse was slamming the brakes. At the moment all I saw was a flash of everything, mixed together. I mostly, however, saw myself, my reaction, my body being shaken by the collision and the slamming of the brakes. But later, somehow, all the delayed images reappeared. I saw the hair. The long strands of hair, beautiful hair, hazel with blond highlights. I saw the sound. Yes, I saw the sound, not just hear it. I saw the sound of bones crushing onto metal. A metal drum. The loud sound, imagine the force on the bones, on the frail skeleton inside the flesh. Imagine the flesh being squeezed and ripped. I didn't see a face at that moment. But I remembered a face. I saw the face as I was driving down. The light was green and I drove down at probably a little bit above the speed limit, but I didn't say how much to the officers. I didn't know. It was no faster than other cars that were also speeding down towards the ramp onto the highway. I was lucky. I wasn't doing anything else wrong. I wasn't on the cell phone, I wasn't drunk, I wasn't even playing with the radio. All I did was drive down the street, just a little bit faster than legally allowed. I saw the face. From afar. She was a young woman, with long hair whose color I found out only a second or two later. She was wearing a summery skirt, talking on the cell phone, wearing a messenger bag, while waiting for the lights to change, or something. She was the only one waiting at that particular corner. I thought she was kind of cute. But I didn't much attention as I was about to change lanes to inch closer to the highway ramp.
Then the sound that pierced my heart. The sound of flesh in skeleton crashing onto my car. The feeling of an object trying to slow down my car with its small mass. No, not that sound. It was the sound of a human being screaming that preceded and ended with the sound of this human object crashing against the right headlight of my car.
I think there was a moment somewhere where I wondered if my car was all right. Selfish to the most base level, but still, I wondered.
But mostly, I wondered about the face I saw from afar. I was disoriented, completely. It was amazing that the car behind me didn't strike me from the back. Then I would be the one in the hospital with a whiplash. She's in the hospital, but I doubt she would make it. It doesn't take much to kill a person, really. And somehow, for her sake, I hope she doesn't make it, because otherwise, it would be some dreadful paralysis that you find out about in some tearjerker movie.
Life is full of ironies. The images slowly reappear in the hours the passed. It had been many hours, really. That was around 6PM. How did the time pass so fast? But during all this time, shock, as if it were a thick lymph fluid, slowly seeped out, and in the space it leaves behind, images flowed in. With the background of the dreadful scream, the sound of crushing bones, and honking from the surrounding, and the squealing of the tires on the harsh pavement, I saw not only the beautiful hair, but the gushing of blood. When did I see it. After the first moment, of course. There wasn't much at first. But I stood up, looked out, and saw some blood on the right tip of the hood. I went out to find a growing number of spectators, all shocked, of course, but none as shocked as me. Then I saw a pool of blood emerging before I saw the source.
But that's not the irony. This is all very normal from an accident. Except that it wasn't an accident. Images came back like a logical chain of events. Before I saw any blood I saw a man in a white coat. A researcher or a doctor. I wasn't sure. I saw a man in a white coat running. The first image was him running away, frantically, with the emerging spectators looking at him in added disbelief. Then that image took in an earlier image. I saw the cute girl talking on the phone. I saw, or imagined, what a wonderful yet complex life she must be preparing for as a medical student. I assumed she was since we were at the medical area. That's part of the irony. The hospital is only across the street, in particular, the emergency room ramp. But the true irony was that I saw her talking on the phone, and before I blinked my eyes, now that the images were flowing back in the space left behind by shock, I saw a man, no doubt the same man, in white coat, a doctor, I'd like to believe, pushing her. And when my eyes were done blinking its fraction of second blink, I heard the scream, the thud. He ran in the direction of traffic, though on the sidewalk. Where did he want to go. I didn't see a face, but that didn't bother the detective in front of me, since other witnesses were there to help him figure out the murderer.
What's the motive? I imagine a disgruntled doctor in love with a medical student who refused to reciprocate and therefore trampled his ego, a surgeon, probably.
But my imagination was overwhelmed with the reality that was returning in fragments of images. The eyes, all the eyes I saw as I walked out of the car, they were rapidly moving from me, the car, the pool of blood, and other eyes. I felt my body sore, as if I got hit even though my body didn't get hit. It was just so tense, the whole body just constricted, squeezed by the brakes that applied to the tires. My heart was racing like I could not remember this speed. I saw the hair again, splayed out near my tire. I could not walk closer to see what I'd done. The blood was enough to tell me a lot. I wondered if she was still breathing. Maybe breathing her last breath, wondering what happened. I wondered what the person on the other side of the phone must be going through now, or maybe the phone dropped and disconnected the call. I wasn't thinking about all these things then. These came while I was waiting and recovering.
They were looking at me, not hatefully, but undoubtedly very shocked. I wondered what I looked like. Face lost all blood, perhaps. All pallid. I just stood there. Unaware of the traffic jam that was building around me. Unaware of the growing number of eyes surrounding us. I simply froze. I thought a lot and felt a lot for myself; I stopped thinking about the dark blood on the black asphalt over there. I don't know how long I had stood there before the police came, whose presence I didn't notice until an officer tapped me firmly and started asking me questions. I was surprisingly very clear minded suddenly, very clear in my report. I was sure the witnesses corroborated my story. I was sure no one even mentioned that everyone sped here. But I didn't think about these things. I suddenly felt I was outside my body and managed to take the images that had accumulated up to that point and regurgitated to the officer.
Then there was the wait. Long hours of waiting.
Now I am alone, walking home. A free man. I was free of suspicion and guilt from the beginning. But only by the standards of logic and the law. Tears started flowing down, mixing with the mist of the ungodly hour. The mind is too tired to object. The heart now is bursting at its seams with images, duplicating themselves in strength, and released into my blood vessels in the form of tears. I had helped someone do something evil. I had helped someone extinguish a dream, a life, and cause unimaginable pain to many others. My body is still sore, especially my shoulders, neck, and back. The street is dreadfully dark here. I have to cross it at some point. I cross at the darkest point, from one unlit sidewalk to the other. Perhaps some equally unaware driver of fate would cut my life short here.
