At the Pokémon Go Stop

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It’s November 19, 2016. I’m seventeen. I’m dressed in a fuzzy pink sweater with cutouts in the shoulders, skinny jeans, and zebra print ankle booties. I’m staring at myself in the big white mirror in my room.

            “Don’t be on your phone.” My mom leans against my bed frame. She’s sweaty from an exercise class, and her curly hair sticks to her forehead.

            “Mom, I know.”

            “I’m serious.”

            “Mom, I know.”

            “Don’t drive too fast.”

            “Mom, literally stop.” I’m running the flat iron through my hair one more time. The soft white smoke billows out from the hot plates as I crush them too hard through my delicate strands.

            “You’re such a bad driver.” My mom is always saying I’m a bad driver.

            “Literally stop. I’m leaving. I know what I’m doing.”

            “You don’t. You’re seventeen. Please, please drive carefully. Text me when you get there.” My mom follows me downstairs with her constant nags.

            “I’ll probably forget.” I leave my mother with one last jab as I run out the door.

            I drive a little black Lexus IS 250 my parents passed down to me. I’m blasting Side to Side by Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj.

            The blue sky is so bright that I search in my cupholders for my sunglasses. Only a couple wispy clouds dot the sky with their long tendrils. The sun warms the mid-November day just a bit. A chilly fifty degrees or so. The wind whips, and I can hear the whooshing against my car as I drive.

            I turn onto Old Roswell Lakes Parkway just off exit seven. I live off exit thirteen. I’ve probably been driving about thirty-five minutes or so.

            I know the road as Old Roswell Lakes Parkway now. I didn’t on November 19, 2016. Back then, it was just the road where my brother’s elementary school sat.

             The backroad highway is small. Only two lanes. Fluffy evergreen trees line the shoulder to my left. Small houses with long driveways line my right. Plain black mailboxes are stuck in the ground beside each cement driveway.

            I’m barely seven minutes away from ACT tutoring. I need to raise my score up, especially after my most recent college rejection. I’m inches from one of the mailboxes.

            The beat-up maroon SUV pulls out from one of the long driveways.

            I don’t have time to hit the brakes. Or maybe I do. I’m not sure. I yank my steering wheel as far right as I can manage, but, of course, it’s too late. I don’t really have any options anyway. Traffic is barreling toward me from the opposite lane, and I’m barreling toward the maroon SUV here in this lane.

            I don’t believe in a god, but I also can’t explain the little voice that tells me to push my head back into my headrest. The voice is not my own, and it seems like it’s coming from somewhere other than my brain. Regardless, I listen and force my head backwards. The airbag springs from the horn in my steering wheel. The big white puffy balloon crushes my wrists like they’re potato chips before banging into my chest and ripping the air from my lungs.

            Through my windshield, I see a small child rolling out from an open backseat window of the SUV. Rolling out from the backseat that I have just slammed into.

            My car spins and spins. It doesn’t feel like it’ll ever stop. The evergreen trees are a big green blur.

            People always say that your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, but I don’t have that experience at all. My brain is a black empty space full of nothingness. No memories. No thoughts. No words. Just blank.

            Eventually, the car stops spinning. I’m perpendicular to the road. A car slams on its brakes beside me.  

            My brain fills back up with the realities of my situation. Frantically, I search for my phone. It has fallen into the floorboards of the passenger seat. I reach for it before bursting from the driver’s side door.

            The thought of sitting in the driver’s seat for any longer is physically revolting. I need to be as far away from that little Lexus as I can. Vomit rises from my stomach.

            Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.
           People stare at me from inside their car windows as they weave through scraps of glass and metal.

            A woman appears beside me. She’s dressed in a striped—or maybe it was polka-dotted—sweater. She looks at me. “You need to call you parents, okay? I’m going to call 911.”

            I wonder why this woman has chosen to stop. I wonder why she wants to help me.

            I click through my recent calls until I see, “Mom.”

            The ringing seems to last an eternity. I finally hear the click. My mother tells me she’s sorry she couldn’t pick up earlier. She was in the shower.

            “Mom, I’ve been in an accident,” I pause when I hear her suck in her breath, “Mom, it’s really bad.”

            “I’m coming to get you.” That’s all she says before I hear feet pounding across hardwood floor.

            My mother is yelling at my brother that he needs to get up. That I’ve been in an accident.

            “It’s really bad, Mom.” I whisper as if, by talking quietly, I can keep the accident a secret.

            “Are you hurt?”

            A shooting pain slices through my left arm. I hadn’t felt it before. I look down to find my wrist twice its normal size. Something protrudes from inside my skin.

            “My wrist is broken,” I wail.

            I balance my phone on my forearm, so I can hold both my phone and my puffy left wrist at the same time. When I attempt to let go, that same sharp pain races through my arm. I wander through the wreckage, holding my wrist out in front of me as if it’s on display.

            “Are you the driver of the car?” A man walks toward me, stopping before he gets too close.

            “My wrist is broken.”

            “Hannah? Hannah? Where are you?” My mother crackles from the speaker phone.

            “Have you talked to the other driver?” The man glances over at the maroon SUV lodged between the curb and the evergreen trees.

            I shake my head. “My wrist is broken.”

            The man ignores my little chant. “Good. Don’t. Just stay over here.”

            For the first time, I look at the other car. The driver side’s backseat is smashed in. Whatever remains of the glass window is cracked and chipped. I recount what happened. The windows were halfway down when I crashed into the car. The little girl had fallen from that opened window out onto the cement. I remember seeing her fall, but I don’t remember anything after that. I didn’t even see her actually hit the asphalt.

            The little girl is crying in the grass beside the SUV. Blood is dripping from the crown of her head. She has brown hair. A second little girl sits beside her. She looks like the first little girl. A woman—the driver—sits in the driver’s seat in tears. A man standing on the grass just outside the driver’s seat appears to be calming her down.

            I look around. The hood of my own car is crumpled up to the windshield. The right tire has spun out at an awkward angle, and the right headlight is shattered all over the cement.

            Burning rubber is such an odd smell. Almost chemically and plasticky. It smells hot. And it doesn’t actually smell like rubber at all.

            The man who asked me if I had spoken to the other driver tells me I should sit down. He motions in the direction of my car. He says I can sit in the backseat.

            I don’t respond to him. I don’t see him again.

            People are talking. Voices are all around me, but nobody is speaking directly to me.

            “Hannah, where are you?” My mother’s voice startles me over the speaker phone.

            “I’m—There’s a church. I’m near Hunter’s school.” More and more people stop their cars to stare at my smashed Lexus. Some sort of fluid pours from the undercarriage out onto the asphalt. The smell of hot oil permeates the sooty air.

            “The church? The Pokémon Go stop?” My brother loves playing Pokémon Go. He found this stop on his way to school.

            “My wrist is broken.” I amble over to one of the long driveways.

            “Hannah, listen to me. The Pokémon Go stop?” Anxiety fills her voice.

            People are gathering outside their front doors. Families with small children. Older people. Single people. Big groups. Small groups.

            They stare at me. When I walk toward them, they step backwards. I’m like a zoo animal—fun to watch but only from far way.

            A young girl—no more than ten years old—brings a grocery bag full of ice out to me. She is the only person from the group of people ogling by their houses to step out onto the road.

            “I don’t want that.” I feel the vomit at the back of my throat again.

            I notice a man in a bright orange—maybe it was yellow—vest directing traffic like an elementary school crossing guard. The man is not a policeman. Just a person. He doesn’t speak to me.

            “You asked for it. Remember?” The young girl’s words are gentle. She places the bag of ice at the end of her driveway.

            When did I ask for the ice?

            I tell my mother I’m near my brother’s school one more time. I tell her I’m near a church. I tell her I’m near a church, but I’m not in front of a church. It’s just a little further away. I’m frustrated that my mother doesn’t understand me.

            She asks me once more if the church near me is the Pokémon Go stop.

            My thoughts click into place. “Yes.”  

            “I know where you are. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

            A police car pulls up to the scene. The officer speaks to the woman in the striped or polka-dotted sweater. She points to me.

            I wonder what the policeman will think. I know what the accident looks like. I hit a family. I hit little kids. I’m just a stupid teenager.

            The woman walks up to me. She has soft eyes and a worried face.

            Just as she approaches me, all the adrenaline pours from my body. Exhaustion rolls through me. My feet are like weights, dragging me to the cement. My brain empties. It isn’t the same blank feeling from earlier. My head just feels fuzzy, like clouds are floating in and out of my ears. I ask the woman if I can sit in her car. I refuse to sit in mine.

             She leads me over to her backseat. She faces me away from the scene of the accident. In my seated position, I stare at some bushes.

            I’m not sitting straight ahead in the car seat. I’m sitting sideways, so my legs hang out from the woman in the striped or polka-dotted sweater’s backseat. My phone speaker crackles in my lap. I hold onto my left wrist, but my grip grows weaker and weaker. The sounds of sirens and yelling and walkie-talkies falls away.

            “I’m really tired. I just want to go to sleep. Can I hang up?”

            “No. You have to stay awake.” My mother is kind but firm.

            A police officer is asking me if I’m the driver of the car. I say that I am. He asks me what happened. I try to explain, but my words jumble together.

            “My wrist is broken.” I say instead. I don’t understand why nobody will listen to me.

            The policeman tells me someone will come look at my wrist. He tells me the medics are preoccupied with the children for now. I wonder if the little girl who fell out of the car window will be okay. I hear the officer speak into his walkie-talkie, but I’m not sure what he says. I catch him saying the road is closed until the accident clears away.

            “My parents are coming soon. You have to let them through.”

            The policeman assures me my parents will be let through, but I don’t trust him.

            My eyes start to close when I finally hear, “That’s my daughter. That’s my daughter. That’s my daughter.” The words are filled with terror, but the sound of her voice brings me comfort.

            My mother is dressed in blue jeans and a black button-down. Her curly hair is wild and a bit damp and a ring of sunlight encases her figure. As soon as I see her, my eyes begin to blur. My head hangs limply against the woman in the striped or polka-dotted sweater’s car seat.

            “Help me.” The words come out in a whisper. I can’t speak any louder.

            My mother just nods her head. “I’m going to help you. I’m here.”

 

            In the hospital, my mother peels my jeans from my hips. The small metal divots on the insides of my pants smushed into my skin from the force of the seatbelt during impact. Large bruises bloom from underneath the dried blood and indents.

            I tell the ER doctor my wrist is probably a comminuted fracture because comminuted fractures happen when your bones are crushed on impact.

            “I’m taking anatomy.” I grin with both satisfaction and delusion.

            The x-ray says otherwise. My left wrist snapped clean in half with another smaller break further up the arm. “Lucky girl.” The doctor says.

            I struggle to stay awake in the hospital bed. The doctor lists off my other injuries. A bruised pelvis. A cracked sternum. Some broken toes. Some broken ribs.

            I’m hearing the doctor tell me to take it easy. That I’ll be sore. But his voice is floating somewhere above me.

            He wraps my arm in thick gauze. I wince in pain as he wraps and wraps.

            “Take it easy,” my mother snaps at the doctor.

            When he finally leaves, the police officer returns to tell me that the other driver is fine. Mild concussion. The two little girls are fine. Don’t even need any stitches. He tells me that I’m the one that’s “worse for wear.” He asks me to recount the accident one more time.

            When he leaves, I turn to my mother. “Can we go home now?”