"Almost, But Not Quite" by Ariel F.

They slowly come to a stop at the light. All she can hear is his laughter that fills the car.  She recollects all the memories they have growing up together to this point. She thinks to herself, ‘ How’d I get so lucky? I’m in love with my best friend and he’s in love with me.’  She’s content with the life she was given. The light turns green and as they cross the intersection, someone’s headlights shine from his side in the passenger seat and a forceful impact consumes the car. She yells for him and sees his hand which is attached to his body as she crawls out of the turned over car. She screams his name begging him to wake up as she grasps his hand for dear life. Then it all fades to blur.

She wakes up in a hospital and sees her parents, they’re sleeping. She tries to speak but her parched throat wont allow it, ‘what am I doing here? Why do my parents look like this is the first time they got to sleep? ‘She thinks to herself. She looks to find something to show her family or the nurses that she’s awake, but she sees a button that says nurse and she presses it. A nurse comes rushing in to see her awake and thanks the heavens the poor child was saved. The nurse wakes up her parents and her parents realize their baby girl is awake. They start crying and tell her they are so lucky that she’s alive and that it was so hard to hear what happened. All the girl can do is look utterly confused as to what her parents are talking about. She reaches for water and once her thirst is quenched she faintly asks what happened. Her parents tell her that a drunk driver hit her and the car had flipped over, she’s been sleeping for 2 days because of the impact of the collision and the amount of blood she lost. Images replay in her head and she remembers her boyfriend and grasping his hand. Her parents tell her he had been flung out of the car and that he is still in ICU, but it doesn’t look too good.

She fights the nurses to let her in his room and they reluctantly give in, she goes in and sits at his bed in ICU, she grabs his hand and cries. Praying, hoping that he will make it. She continuously goes over and over how she can’t loose him; he’s been in her life too long to leave now. She starts to talk to him going over the best moments they’ve shared together which is every moment she got to be with him, she does this for 30 minutes until the nurse comes in and tell her she needs to rest. The girl reluctantly gets up and before she leaves she faintly touches his cheek and says, “you’re the strongest person I know, you can get through this, I love you.” As she reaches her hospital bed, she clings to her mother and desperately asks for a miracle. “Mom I can’t live without him,” she looses all feeling at the thought of not seeing him again. All her mother can do is stroke her daughter’s hair and calmly tell her everything will fall into line soon.

Days pass by and she was released within a day and a half of waking up, but she’s been at the hospital everyday in his room, not leaving his side until the nurses have to physically take her out. She’s always prompt to be at the hospital when the visitor hours begin so she can spend the whole day hoping for a miracle. She doesn’t sleep because she fears that when she does, something will happen. Out of pure sleep deprivation and exhaustion she fell asleep for the first time in what seems like days. Unluckily she forgot to set an alarm and when she woke four hours after visitor hours began she rushed out of the house, still in her PJs and sped through all the traffic, not even bothering about a ticket and parking in a red zone. She runs through the doors and runs to his room only when she gets there, he’s not there. She goes to the nurse’s desk and hysterically cries while asking where they had taken him and the nurse says he woke up in the middle of the night, and his parents wanted to take him home. the hospital reluctantly allowed it. As the nurse was trying to finish what she was telling her the girl bolted back to her car and continuously sped through traffic to make it to his house. She thinks to herself, ‘this can’t be happening, thank you for saving him.’ She doesn’t realize she’s still crying, but now it’s out of happiness.

She pulls up to his house and runs to the door furiously knocking, begging someone to answer. His parents open the door, doe eyed and redness consuming their face, they try to tell her something, but again she runs to his room. When she reaches his room she stops and takes a breath, as she steps in she sees him watching TV, she runs to him and hugs him while speaking incoherent words to him. She realizes he’s not hugging back and looks up at him and realizes something’s off when he pushes her off.

They meet each other’s eyes and he’s the first to speak up and say, “Who are you?”