They came running, probably thinking how lucky it was that we had crashed so close to campus, lucky that someone with skills could do something for the victims immediately. I watched them race, in all their blue glory down Morewood and onto Fifth where we were holding up traffic. I saw them slow when they recognized John’s car, and again when they recognized me. It was Sandy, Carl and Ruby, the holy trinity come to witness my sin. I felt a rush of blood to my head blot out all but one thought. I had failed. They opened the doors and pulled us out. I recognized their technique, analyzing it for mistakes. I should have been thankful that I had something to distract me. Instead, I found myself hyper conscious of my every action.

“Andi, can you hear me?” Ruby sternal rubbed me. I wanted to punch her to get her to stop but I couldn’t move my arm more than a few inches.

I nodded.

“Don’t move too much,” she said. “You know the drill, c-spine precautions.”

Of course. I knew the drill. How many times had I practiced the exact trauma exam she was performing right now?

“John?” I said, trying to catch her eye, catch an honest glimpse.

“Sandy’s got him.”

“I’m so sorry,” I began to cry as the reality of situation crashed over me, shattering my previously eerie calm. I had failed as an EMT. I was the one being taken care of again. My father would never respect someone who needed help like I did.

* * *

The doctors say that I was very lucky, that if I had been a few inches over, the car door would have collapsed on me, breaking the bones in the right side of my body. As it were, I only ended up with a concussion. Granted, the worst thing you can get as someone struggling with school is a concussion, but I guess I was thankful that I hadn’t ended up half-broken.

Revelations are not meant for the road.

They told me to relax, to spend a lot of time with the lights off, not to use my phone or computer too much. I told them I would die if I spent my time disconnected from everyone else in the dark. They thought I was addicted to technology. That wasn’t what I had been trying to tell them. When I asked how John was, they said that he was unhurt, just a little shaken up. He had been sleeping in the lobby since he had been discharged almost twelve hours earlier. And the car? I had asked.

“We’re not car doctors,” they said. “We preserve life.”

My vision swayed and blurred with colors that usually stayed in place to match the surreal doctors who didn’t save mechanical things. As I drifted back to the dark, safe unconscious, I wondered if I had become mechanical. Day in, day out doing school, then homework, EMS, homework then sleep. Turn the key to get me started and I would run on empty for miles. What was the key? I started to panic; what if they couldn’t fix me? I would never be able to find the key.

I woke up in the most ungraceful of positions. My arms were splayed like those of a clock and I felt like I had been trying to sleep on both my front and my back. John had found his way into my room and collapsed into a chair by my bed. His head was tilted back at an uncomfortable angle and I could see his eyelids flutter. I wondered what dream they were jumping about. He was the palest shade of fear. He reminded me of a baby; the soft contours of his face spoke of innocence and loyalty. I wondered if he had been watching me sleep the same way I was watching him.

He woke with a start, like he had been falling and the wooden folding chair had caught him, scooped him out of the air and rescued him, overcoming its prosaic function with one valiant act. We stared at each other, each shocked to find the other present.

He pulled me from my bed and into his arms. “I thought I had lost you.”

I allowed the melodrama and wondered whether he was referring to my confession or my life. Either way was valid but it was a different conversation depending on what he meant.

“I’m still here,” I said. Vague was what I had chosen to go with.

“Are you hurt?” he said, examining my eyes for signs of trauma. “Your pupils are sluggish.”

“Apparently, I have a concussion. Just what I need.”

“We could put you on personal leave for EMS,” he said.

Personal leave. Perfect. The place where people who want to leave EMS go. I shook my head. Sandy wasn’t going to get rid of me that easily.

“How are you?” I said.

He twirled for me. “I didn’t get hurt. The damage was on your side of the car.” He looked at the ground. “I thought it was going to be worse.”

I lay back down. I felt like I had turned into a piece of wood and someone was trying to bend me.

“May I?” he said, gesturing to the bed.

I wondered if he was going to apologize for crashing the car, for giving me a concussion.

Like he had read my mind, he said “I wish it hadn’t happened.”

Which wasn’t an apology but it did show that he felt bad. I figured it was the best I was going to get.

* * *

Everyone in EMS found out and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it from my bed, where I had decided to stay until I felt stable. Their constant texts of faux comfort were like barbs driving pain through my tenderized brain. “Andi was a call,” I imagined they said. “I would never be a call.” Sandy wrote up a special report about the incident, for documentation purposes. I knew she was building a case.

My head felt like a blender for days. I was sure that crash had chewed up all my learned knowledge and mixed it with mango chunks and peanut butter. Every time I started a homework assignment, I had to stop. The mental effort exhausted me. Each statistics problem felt like a marathon. A marathon I had eaten hamburgers for instead of training. And I slept a lot, more than my usual. I slumbered like a dragon who had forgotten to set an alarm.

My mother found out pretty quickly that I wasn’t as sharp as I was through our phone calls.

“I’m coming tomorrow,” she said. And that’s what she did.

My father had not been able to take off from work, my mother mentioned when she arrived. But he sent his regards.

“Tell him the sentiment was received,” I said. Two can play at the game of saying nothing.

She cupped her hands around my forehead, as if by manual effort she could keep the parts of my brain together. “Are you okay?”

I sat down on my bed and put my head in her lap, pouring out everything that had happened since I left home, sharing stories of Sandy, Flint, John and Ruby. I told her about my classes and missing tests. I told her about how much I missed her and Sammy. She stroked my hair, awkwardly at first because it had been years since I was young enough that releasing all my troubles on her lap was appropriate.

“How is Sammy?” I asked.

“He’s okay. Your father is really trying to control his temper around Sammy.”

“There haven’t been any incidents?” I twisted up to see her face as she answered.

“Don’t look at me like that. He’s trying. Just like you are. We can’t be perfect.”

“He shouldn’t be there anymore. He should never have been there. He should never have been able to hurt Sammy.”

My mother released my hair. Her hands hovered just above my head.

“When we went away, why didn’t we stay away?”

She was silent. She stroked my hair without thinking about it, like I wasn’t there, wasn’t part of the consideration.

“We came back because I believed that people could change. I had hope. For a better future for you and for your brother. Being raised by a single mother isn’t a TV show drama. It’s raising yourself, like I did. I didn’t want that for you. I wanted to be there.”

“But it’s not working.”

“I’m very tired, Andi. Please don’t ask me any more questions.”

I sat up.

“No,” I said. “I’m not a child. You don’t get to dismiss me like this, or play the martyr card. He hurt me too.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me the truth. Why are you still with him? Why are you letting him live near Sammy?”

“He’s what I could get, Andi. You don’t understand. He’s what I deserve.”

“He’s not what Sammy deserves,” I pushed. “He’s not what I deserved.”

“I don’t know, okay?” She yelled. “I don’t have the answers you want.”

We sat in silence. I let my broken brain sort through the shattered bits of information I had received.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

We ordered Chinese food and ate it on my bed, knowing my father would have been furious at such an indecorous departure from decency. We didn’t talk much after that. But there was warmth beneath it all. Or, more likely, a lessening of anger. When it was time to go to sleep, even though she had booked a hotel room, my mother slept in my dorm room bed. I went to sleep thinking about what my mother would do if she heard Ruby’s sleep cursing.