Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
-John F Kennedy, 35th U.S. President
I sat comfortably in the black leather seat of my dad’s car, the quiet hum of the engine numbing me to everything outside. I drummed against the steering wheel as punk-rock blasted over the stereo. Even if I was stuck on I-75, any peaceful, solitary moment like this was welcome. Warm sunlight streamed in through the tinted windows, caressing my pale skin. The drive home from my school was a long, uneventful one, but a welcomed break between classes and wasting my time gaming.
Unbeknownst to me, however, my peaceful rides home were about to come to an abrupt end. Right as the chorus of the song was about to end, I felt a strong impact from behind. ‘Oh dammit, the insurance company is somehow going to find me at fault for this.’ I lamented. Even a cut-and-dry case like getting rear ended was a pain, especially for a 17-year-old high school student.
These thoughts rushed through my mind propelled by frustration that quickly found itself replaced by confusion. I didn’t feel the signature jerk back that the seat belt would always give me as the car came to a rapid stop. I heard a quiet clicking sound, and felt the world drop out from under me. My soft car seat relinquished me to the skies as my body rushed forward, my skull crashing through the thick glass of the windshield. I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my scalp as the impact darkened my vision. As the world faded around me, the last thing I saw was a musclebound man slamming the door of his SUV next to my immobilized car, running towards my door. His fingers frantically tapped against the screen of his phone as he attempted to make a call, presumably for an ambulance. The world slowed down around me, and the sound of shattering glass only jolted my consciousness back for moments before the world faded around my limp body.
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My lungs took in a burning gulp of air as I jolted upward, shaking as I looked around me. The walls were… white. The ceiling was white. The lights were colorless. The room was desperately sterile, filled with strange machinery and nothing else. ‘Ugh, my head…’ Trying to remember what brought me to this place only yielded an intolerable headache.
A man in an equally sickeningly monotonous white coat pushed the sliding door to the side, casually walking into the room with his clipboard. “Good morning, Mr. Grant. If you are in any condition to answer them, I’d like to ask you a few questions.” He greeted inoffensively at best, though he seemed apathetic. ‘Wait… morning? Last I remembe- gh!’ As I tried to recall, I once again was greeted by the pressure mounting in my head, beating against my consciousness and tearing apart my attempts to recollect.
“By all means.” I responded quietly. ‘At least my vocal cords work, it seems.’ I sighed in relief - not all of me had gone totally defunct.
“Mr. Grant, you were brought here in an ambulance from what should have been a minor car accident. The man who was next to you in the left lane at the time of the incident tells us that you were rear-ended, but flew forward into your windshield.” The doctor droned on, taking a short break between sentences to adjust his round glasses. “We found and extracted over three hundred fragments of glass embedded in your head. How much of this is news to you?”
As he detailed the event, forcing me back to the second it occurred, I felt that same pressure upon my head again, accompanied by a terrible stabbing feeling forcing its way from my neck up through the back of my head. Beads of sweat formed upon my head and I gripped the blanket over me as if it were going to run away. The constant beeping of the heart monitor I was hooked up to began to accelerate. “I… don’t recall. I can’t remember anything.” I gave up, furious with my own weakness.
“Thank you, Mr. Grant. I only have one more question for you, if you are still in any condition to answer it.”
“Yes, I… I’m fine.” I responded with gritted teeth, fully aware that I wasn’t.
“If you say so,” the doctor began, “what is 13 times 27?”
I completely stopped in surprise. Out of anything he could have asked, there is little that could have surprised me more than this. “Sure, it’s… uh…” Simple mental math. I was already in statistics class, there was no way I couldn’t answer this two-digit multiplication. However, as I tried to solve it, my vision began to replace itself with a pale grey blind spot. I felt… blocked. As I thought harder, my head rebounded with greater pain. As I attempted yet again, I felt noticeably more as if I had taken a knife straight through my skull and into my brain.
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I shook as I gave the least taxing response I could give. “I… can’t.” It felt as if I was admitting defeat. The words dried my throat as they left, carrying with them the last bit of hope I had.
“I can’t.” I mumbled with a choked sob. I was reduced to nothing.
‘I can’t.’ I retreated into my head, staring down upon my dehydrated, deathly pale hands. I couldn’t even speak.
‘I can’t.’ I couldn’t what? It had already escaped from my mind, and yet it continued.
‘I can’t.’ If I couldn’t do that which I was made to do, what was I worth? I had been left with nothing, a broken mind trapped in a worthless body.
‘I can’t.’ The dreaded words echoed through my head, haunting me and filling me with dreadful frustration.
‘I can’t.’ The world blurred, receded, and disappeared into a foreboding black void around me.
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I sat in a chair across from the man who had spoken to me earlier. He seemed different, somehow. He had shifted, not only in his expression, but in his entire imposing demeanor, from disconnected apathy to pity and concern. “Hello, Mr. Grant. We’re here to send you into the MRI machine. This is a Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine, and we’re going to try to use it to figure out how to get your brain back to normal. Is that alright with you?”
“Yeah.” I muttered passively. Even if it was my last chance at ever deserving the spot I had earned at MIT, my hopes weren’t high. The unabated disaster my life was quickly becoming seemed to have no easy escape.
They laid me down on the white cushions of the table that extended out of the machine. It felt cramped, even before they pushed me into the dark cave of magnetic doom with my entire body restrained. As I slid in, I closed my eyes, awaiting the deafening noise of the rotating coil.
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The months passed as if a blur. I sat in the same hospital bed as the refreshing green of spring gave way to the sweltering, arid summer. “I want to see my parents…” I mumbled to myself. I knew that I couldn’t - the doctors insisted that I was in an ‘unstable condition’ and that talking to them would ‘endanger my mental stability.’ I didn’t particularly listen, I just found it funny that they thought I had any stability left at all.
The days disappeared from my life, and yet I did not heal. The further through time I was so haphazardly tossed by its unfeeling progression, the further I fell into the depths of terrifying loss and despair. If ever a man could be said to have become lost, it would be me. Unable to predict the future, my knowledge consigned to an inaccessible past with a present as meaningless as it was agonizing.
As time passed, it lost all meaning. I had been reduced to no more than a captive audience to the withering remains of my own life.
Perhaps I had not expected my patience to run out so quickly. Perhaps it was gone, and I had run only on the lies I told myself. Hope was gone. My run on this Earth had ended many months ago, when the only driving force in my life lost its function. When I was left bereft of all of the comforts of my life, of all of my hope for the future, and even of my own family. I shut and barricaded the door to my room before rummaging through the desk, quickly finding what I desired.
The cold metal felt especially icy against the tips of my fingers as I held it up to examine. Just a small, sharp shard of metal was enough to provide me salvation, freedom from this everlasting despair. I desired nothing more, I held nothing I did not wish to shed from my mind or body.
The icy lightning pain of finality was so incomprehensibly different from the chronic burning of loss. Deprived of all my other senses, I could feel the knife’s touch as it severed and tore through strands of muscles. I trembled as I broke through my radial artery and hit the bone, finally spelling the rapid end of my own life. My vision dyed itself as red as the blood which poured in incredible quantities from my haphazardly opened wrist.
I looked up, taking my concentration away from my quickly draining body. I heard a faint, yet frantic banging on the door to my room. Outside of the small window flailed a woman with long, curled brown hair and a dreadfully familiar face stained with the blood of fear, longing, and despair. Frigid tendrils of regret found their way through my draining veins and constricted my wretched heart. My red-stained hand picked itself up pathetically, yet with great determination as it reached for the door, splayed open and unable to grasp at the figure that so desperately cried for me to return to her.
Her cheeks, wrinkled and pale with stress, were assaulted by her tears as she shouted mundanely through the thick pane of glass. Her once beautiful hazel eyes were swollen from her crying. She fought as if for her own life and not for the life of her worthless son.
I smiled a tired, defeated smile as the cold feeling of death embraced my arms and legs, freeing them of their mortal burden.
As blackness consumed my vision, I mouthed three words to her. It would never be enough to atone for this horrible crime I have committed, for this terrible pain so many times worse than my own that I have inflicted, but it was the only thought, the only feeling, the only thing left in my mind that I knew was truly and completely my own.
‘I love you.’