Details

Every time my mind flashes back to that morning, I try to remember that 5 second interval between the moment I was driving on the road and the moment (and everything afterwards) that I was in the ditch. For the most part, the scene replays in the same, unchanging sequence:

I am in first gear, urging my car to go faster across the black asphalt towards the median while my brother plays music on his phone. As my brother sings along to the chorus, my fingers shift their position on the wheel without my consciously knowing it because I have made this particular left turn too many times to count at this point. I wonder--mumbling to myself--how will I pass this French midterm today?

And then I stop wondering. The music stops playing. My brother stops singing. Everything. Just. Stops. There is only a great whoosh filling my ears, rising higher and higher and higher until

I come to again, and my eyes are watering and my nostrils are stinging from the sharp tang of gasoline inside the car. My hands fumble to get the windows down--I'm coughing and gasping--and my brother. Is my brother alright? He's fine. We're both okay. The ringing inside my head has not gone away yet and neither has the numbness in my mouth, but those things don't matter because we're alive.

I try hard to fill the gaps in my memories, but my hands inevitably start to shake as soon as I recall the more minute, sensory details of the impact: the iron grip my fingers had on the steering wheel, the great roar surrounding my car as the truck forced it out of the road, the tight clench in my chest as I held my breath.

I'm not ready to relive this. Not now. Not yet.