Estimated reading time — 10 minutes

Whoever ran me over on Harrison Drive, better luck next time.

I mean that with more sincerity than you’ll probably believe. You didn’t fail because you were careless. You failed because you stopped a few feet too early, hesitated a second too long, or maybe just got unlucky with the angle. I’m not upset with you. If anything, I’ve spent the last five days hoping you’d come back and do it properly.

I don’t remember the sound of the impact. The first thing that I actually remember is the light. They were headlights- high beam, closer and brighter than they should’ve gotten before anyone touches the brakes. The next thing I remember is the ground. And then came the pain. At least I think it was pain, because honestly- it felt… different. It was more like my body reporting damage to me, from somewhere very far away, like a phone call with bad reception.

I was on my back. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could barely keep my eyes open more than a slit. But I could hear everything, and I mean everything, with a clarity that still unsettles me more than the accident itself. And somewhere underneath the hearing, in a part of my head that I didn’t know existed, I could feel you. Both of you.

Please don’t panic. I didn’t see you, so I don’t have the faintest idea what you look like. But I could feel you, vividly, the way you’d feel two different heat sources in a dark room. I could sense your presence as two separate rivers of blood, moving at two different speeds, across two distinct network of vessels.

The car door opened first. I heard some quick, panicked footsteps. It belonged to a girl, light and uneven.

“Oh my god ! Oh my god, is he breathing? We need to call an ambulance, we need to call someone right now…”

Her blood ran fast and thin. It was jittery, the way a struck bell is jittery, still ringing a while after the strike. There was something in it, some kind of haze perhaps. But it moved clean under the haze, like water that still moves clean under a little bit of mud.

The second door took longer. Heavier footsteps, dragging slightly, unhurried. And that’s when I heard your voice, a man’s voice-

“Come on, get back in the car !”

“Honey, we just hit someone ! We can’t just…”

“Baby, baby, just look at him !”

I heard a wet laugh, one that comes from far back in the throat.

“You think anybody’s gonna miss this guy? Look at where we are. This is basically nowhere ! No cameras out here, no houses, no nothing. Ain’t nobody gonna know we were ever on this road. Just chill out, will ya?”

Your blood was nothing like hers. It surged and dragged in the same breath, thick in some places and racing in others. It felt polluted, dense with something chemical, and underneath that, there was something sharper that I’d later learn to recognize.

“Please, can we just call for help and go, I don’t want him to…”

“He’s fine. Trust me, guys like this get hit all the time and walk it off. Probably passed out drunk in the middle of the road anyway. Homeless piece of shit ! This ain’t even our problem to fix…”

I don’t know why you said that, but you were wrong. I’m not homeless. Yes, I do live in the shoddiest location on the outskirts of the city, close to the highway, in one of those shacks with the lowest rent and highest noise. It’s not much, but it still qualifies as a home. And I also want you to know that I’m not an alcoholic. But I understand why I may look like one, since I hardly take care of myself, thanks to the multiple odd jobs that I juggle to make a living.

I wanted to say these to your face, but I couldn’t. And I couldn’t stop you from laughing and letting out a short ugly bark.

“You know how many times we’ve driven this road? Hundred times, easy. First time anything’s happened. That’s not bad luck, baby, that’s just tonight being tonight. Now calm down and get in the car…”

“But-but what if he…”

“Just get in the car, bitch !” Your voice dropped, flat and mean underneath the slur. “Or I swear to god I’ll leave ya standing here with him !”

I wanted to tell you that I hadn’t been standing anywhere to begin with. I don’t remember walking onto Harrison Drive. I never have, for the past six nights.

Her footsteps hesitated. She moved towards me, then away from me, and pulled back like something on a leash. The car doors closed. The engine caught and revved once, showing off for no one. Then there was a sound, which eventually thinned into the distance. There was nothing left but the two currents fading with it. Hers steady and shaken, yours loud and reckless, both of them gone.

I lay there a long time after that. Long enough that the cold of the asphalt stopped registering as cold. Long enough that I stopped being afraid, because the dark night was suddenly feeling like a warm embrace. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, because trust me- it didn’t make sense to me either.

Still doesn’t…

I don’t know how long I stayed like that on Harrison Drive before I heard the van. It slowed down first, then stopped a good distance away. I heard a door open, cautious footsteps this time, nothing like yours or hers. I heard a man’s voice, much older than the both of you-

“Oh my god ! Hey, can you hear me?”

His touch felt… compassionate. More importantly, his blood felt different from both of yours. I remember thinking, in whatever was left of my head at that point, that it felt clean. I didn’t have a word yet for why that mattered to me.

I do now, and I wish I didn’t…

He called for an ambulance. I remember being lifted. I remember lights, sirens, and someone counting numbers that I understood, but couldn’t respond to. I remember opening my eyes to see a hospital ceiling, white and bright. And I remember the quiet, steady beeping of a machine, a sound that I’ve now come to know all too well.

The first thing I noticed, once I could think clearly again, was how much better I felt, being surrounded by people whose blood didn’t feel wrong. Nurses moving in and out of the room, doctors checking charts, a cleaner mopping the hallway outside my door- none of it screamed at me the way yours did. Most of it barely registered at all, which was its own kind of relief.

The doctors were confused almost immediately. I heard two of them talking outside my door on the second day, using words like-

‘unusually rapid’
‘inconsistent with the imaging’
‘remarkable prognosis’

Thinking about it now, I understand why they used those words. Fractures that should’ve taken six to eight weeks were already knitting by day three. Internal bruising that should have deepened was fading instead. One of them asked me, half-joking, if I’d always healed this fast. I told him I didn’t know. And trust me, that was almost the truth.

Almost.

The police came on day three. A tired-looking officer, and a younger one who did most of the actual writing. They asked what I remembered. I told them about the headlights, the impact, and the ambulance. Nothing about the voices. Nothing about a girl’s shaking hands on a steering wheel. Nothing about a man calling me a homeless piece of shit, before telling her to get back in the car.

I don’t fully know why I lied. Some of it, I think, was for her. She sounded young, and scared, and like someone who might still turn out fine if nothing else ever happened to her. But if I’m being honest with myself, most of it was for you.

I need you free. I need you driving. I need you to still have access to that car, and to Harrison Drive, and to whatever’s left of the nerve it took to leave a man broken on the road and not look back.

They told me today that I’ll be discharged in two days. I should feel relieved, but I don’t. I’ve started noticing things about myself in this hospital bed. Things that I didn’t notice on the road. Things that I shouldn’t say out loud.

As I’m typing this on my phone, I can’t stop thinking about the nurse who’s been assigned to me. Believe me, I don’t mean that in the way it probably sounds. I think about how kind and professional she is in her approach. I think about her voice, that is deliberately soft, in the specific way people use when they think you might still be fragile.

And I also think about her blood, more than I’d like to admit.

Again, I’m not imagining anything violent. You know how a smell from your childhood kitchen can stop you mid-thought, for reasons you can’t explain? I sense her blood in a similar way. Her blood moves warm and unhurried, the way yours never did, and the way your girl’s only halfway did.

And when I keep waking up at two in the morning, when the ward is quiet except for the sound of the machine- I find myself wondering, in a very calm way, what it would taste like.

I want to be clear that I don’t want to hurt her. I want you to understand that distinction, because I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it much longer.

There’s a duty doctor who does rounds around one in the morning- a man who smells faintly of cigarettes, even through the antiseptic, even through the gloves. I can feel the nicotine in him, the way you notice a stain on a shirt that someone’s tried to wash out. I’ve caught myself wondering whether that would make him taste better or worse. Sharper, maybe. Bitter, in an interesting way. I hate that my mind goes there. I hate more that it goes there without my permission, and the fact that it’s getting harder to make it stop.

A resident drew blood from me yesterday morning, a routine panel before discharge. I watched the vial as it filled. And I caught myself doing the same thing I do with everyone else, except this time it was mine. I don’t have the words for what I felt looking at it. It was not clean, not polluted either. Something else entirely. Something I didn’t recognize as human, and didn’t recognize as anything else either.

I’ve been suspecting that something’s seriously wrong with me, ever since I did that trial. Three sessions, two injections each time. A stipend that covered two months of rent, in exchange for filling out questionnaires, and letting them draw blood before and after. I remember signing sheets of paperwork, in a form of English that was way too complex for someone like me. It had words like ‘Desmodus rotundus’- the only one that I can recall right now. I didn’t ask for an explanation. I needed the money, more than I needed the answers. I signed it anyway. Everyone in that waiting room signed it anyway.

The sleepwalking started four nights after the last session. I found myself on Harrison Drive every time, a little further from home with each night that passed. I never connected it to the trial, to be honest. At least, not until I was lying in this bed, watching a vial of my own blood look like nothing I’d ever seen before.

During the day, I’m tired in a way that feels almost drugged. But somewhere around midnight, without fail, something in me switches on. My mind sharpens. My hearing stretches further down the hallway than it should. And even with my eyes closed, I can sense the presence of every single person on the floor- the patients sleeping peacefully, the nurses changing shifts, the cleaners mopping the floor silently.

I haven’t told anyone about of this. Not the doctors who check up on me twice a day. Not the police, who came back once more, to confirm a few details for their report. I mean, what would I even say? That I can taste distance in blood? That I’ve started flinching at the blinds in the morning? That some part of me, a part that gets louder every night, is starting to feel less like a passenger in my own body, and more like it’s waiting to escape?

What I can say is- I don’t know what I am anymore. I know what I’m becoming feels less like an illness, and more like an inheritance, something that I agreed to the moment I signed up for that trial. You know, the one that paid better than all of my jobs combined. The one where I didn’t ask enough questions, because the money mattered more than the fine print.

I also know one more thing, and it’s the only thing that matters right now-

I NEED YOU TO COME BACK, BEFORE I FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T.

I’m writing this tonight, hoping that this message will find you, in one way or another. I’m doing this because I don’t know how else to reach you. And because, out of everyone I’ve encountered on that road, you’re the only one who can actually help me now.

You should know that you’re not the first. But you know what makes you different from the others who hit me, or nearly hit me? They chose to brake. Every time, without fail, some instinct took over before they even decided to. A few have honked their horns and kept driving, annoyed more than alarmed. Some have stopped, gotten out, and asked if I was alright. One woman even offered to drive me home if I was in some kind of danger. Every single one of them, in their own way, chose to be decent.

But you? You didn’t brake. You didn’t slow down afterward. You called me a homeless piece of shit, and I know that you meant it. You told her to get back in the car, and then you drove off like nothing happened. You know- some part of me has been grateful for that, ever since I woke up in this bed. You are, as far as I can tell, the only person cruel enough to actually finish something. That makes you the right person for this.

Trust me- I don’t say that as an insult. I say it because I need it to be true.

I remember the front of your car, or what little of it I caught, before the light swallowed everything. It was low and sleek- the kind of shape that costs more than I make in two years combined. I remember you bragging to her that you’d driven Harrison Drive ‘a hundred times’ without incident, which tells me that you’ll drive it again. Probably soon, and probably at the same hour, because people like you don’t change their habits over one bad night.

They’re discharging me in two days, which equals to seven days, almost to the hour, since you ran me over. I intend to go back to Harrison Drive myself, deliberately, at the same hour it happened. This time, I’ll be wide awake. And this time- I don’t plan on calling it an accident.

I need you to hit me harder this time. I need you to not brake at all, not even out of instinct, not even for a second. If you can, and I mean this sincerely, get the car looked at before you come back. Reinforce the front bumper, if you can afford it, which I suspect you can. Whatever it takes to make sure that this time, there’s nothing left of me to recover in a hospital bed. I don’t say that out of despair, though I understand if it reads that way. I say it because- I’ve learned some things about myself this week, things that I can never un-learn. So I want this to be over, once and for all, before I find out what I do next.

I want you to do it, just like the last time you did it. Do it twice, if the first hit isn’t enough. Three times, if you have to. I won’t move to protect myself. I won’t call for help. I won’t remember to be afraid, not anymore, not in the way I used to be.

There’s only one thing I need from you in return, and it matters more than anything else I’ve written here.

Whatever happens, don’t get out of the car. Don’t come back to check on me. Don’t do what that van driver did five days ago. Don’t be curious. Don’t be decent. Don’t let whatever’s left of your conscience talk you into getting close to me. Drive away, exactly the way you did the first time, and don’t stop until you’re somewhere far away from that road.

I am asking you this because I believe, more than anything I’ve believed in for a long time, that you can finish what you started.

And because I’m no longer sure what I’ll do to you if you don’t.

Whoever ran me over on Harrison Drive, better luck next time.

Please don’t miss…

Because I won’t.

Credit: Dr_AK_Myst

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