It’d been a pleasant afternoon. She’d come out from the city for the day, and that night, we went to our favorite spot for sushi and sake. It was snowing. Afterwards, we drove back to my place to gather her things (taking forever, as always), then rushed out the door to catch her late train home to the tiny ball of a kitten snuggled in her Upper East Side apartment. 

It was snowing harder when we got back on the roads. Each feeble pass of the windshield wipers was undone by another blanket of flurries – but I wanted to make her train, so she wouldn’t have to wait an hour in the cold for the next one. I suppose she could have stayed the night, just not at my temporary dorm room at the VA. Monday’s considerations had seemed much too important; it was never discussed. The roads were bad but we were making good time.

Somewhere between Miller Place and Hicksville… 10:30 or so, her train at 11:00… I think we were talking about what a great day it’d been, when the 50 mph hunk of metal I was driving across the highway lanes (and the sleet, and the slush, and the snow) began to drift and skid and spiral out of my control. 

It was not fear that seized me, but the simple awareness: this could be the moment we die. I reached down and grabbed the back of her head in an insane impulse to brace or shelter her as the front of the car collapsed into inertia. The airbags exploded into our faces as we were thrown towards the windshield, my glasses shattering across whatever ridiculous look I was wearing, and strangled into place by the seat belts that locked into action, this wonderful, miraculous piece of metal that crumbles so easily somehow protecting in our little, human frames. 

A soulless automated voice came from what was left of the dashboard and said airbag deployment had been detected; the car, programmed to call for help, phoned an operator who asked if we wanted the police to come. I tore a piece of the bumper hanging from the front of the vehicle and got back on the road.

On the scale of what happened to what might have happened, there could have been no greater outcome. I wonder, if we’d had another drink, or she’d been hurt, or… What makes me feel worseabout killing the car is even with the accident, we still dusted ourselves off, got to the station, and made her train. Now, the car is at the shop, most likely its final resting place, lost to a combination of bad weather, maybe bad judgment, I don’t know. All that matters is that we are safe – it’s just a piece of metal, albeit a very expensive one – but how to not feel shaken, impossible.

It’s 47 hours later, and that moment I cannot shake from my head. Prior to then, the consideration of how to best collide with a guardrail when your car is hurdling toward it had never been more than a movie stunt. At night, I close my eyes and search for sleep; in the instant before I slip into its warm embrace, I see that guardrail pummeling towards us, am thrown violently from the depths of relaxation to the edge of my bed, my legs rigid, my hands clenched and sweaty.

This memory will fade, I hope, releasing me from its vise-grip, from the flash of crumbling metal bursting from the dark corners of my mind every time I close my eyes. Something has changed. Something else has to. What a ridiculous look must have been on our faces. I don’t want to die like that. But I might. Or I might have. 

Now, the question is: how do I want to live?

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