Accidental Damage

An acquaintance of mine wanted me to read their story to give them my opinion of it. Bear in mind that it was a homework assignment rather than something that was written on a whim. Personally, I loved it and despite how many points I made as to why I think it was well written, they still remained skeptical. As such, I told them that I would put this up for all of you to give your unbiased opinions. So without further delay...

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With my binder completely put together, I got up out of my office chair to head home for the day. Walking out in front of everyone made my heart pound a mile a minute and I remembered what the doctor told me earlier in the day. I had found out that I had high blood pressure. Even when I was relaxed, it was abnormally high. I was not a careless eater. In fact, I very rarely buy processed foods at all, just a hereditary problem I guess. It was interesting that I came to have this problem, even though I knew it was hereditary to some degree, another hereditary problem made life an endless circle of unintentionally hurting myself.

“See ya Grant!” a friend called to me.

I waved back acknowledging the coworker who had called out to me. The blood rushed to my face as I did so. Even though this person had not been able to see my face at the time when I was waving, it was almost painful to do it. I knew that with that wave, not only would he see it, but others would too, therefore invariably calling attention to myself. The thought of everyone in the room peeking up over their cubicles to look at me, possibly judging me, made me completely sick. It was a feeling that I knew would haunt me for the rest of the evening. Hours from now, I would still be thinking about this wave and how it could affect how everyone treats me at work. Could the wave possibly not be sufficient? Perhaps a verbal acknowledgement would have been a better response. Should I have not done anything at all?

These were the symptoms of the disorder that most likely prompted my heart problems. I had Social Anxiety Disorder. Moreover, what a bad case it was. It was indeed hereditary; my father had a long and infamous habit for barricading himself in the house to avoid anything related to the public world. Despite his many fears, he never got the gall to move out to a piece of land where privacy would be easily had. That was the irony of the situation; moving to a secluded place made him anxious because he would have to meet many people in order to accomplish that, but by not moving he only perpetuated the cycle of anxiety from the people around him in the city longer. The worst part about having this is knowing that I have it. I am abnormal and the disorder makes it even that more apparent.
I got into my car just as paranoid as before when a different coworker called out to me.

“Hey Grant, can I ask you a favor?” he asked. He trotted over to me without me giving him a reply. “I guess so” I said. He finally stopped on the other side of my car catching his breath for a quick moment before telling me what he needed. I thought my knees would collapse just standing there.

“Would you mind giving me a ride to my place? My sister was supposed to come and pick me up but her dentist’s appointment is lasting longer than she thought it would.”

My face was frozen for a second. I would have to let him into my car, a personal space that has never had anyone in it but me. What if he saw how clean it was and decided that I was a neat freak? What if he heard the music I listen to and labeled me an outsider for not listening to something more mainstream? A cool breeze knocked me back into awareness.

“Sure, why not” I said. The words had come out when my thought were still running.

“Thanks so much” he said, and he opened the passenger side door.

He looked relieved; I wondered how long it would be before he found out that I had a disorder. He had never been in such close proximity before with no set agenda on what to say. I was usually good at avoiding those situations pretty well.

We sat in the car for about a minute while I got myself situated and put the key in the ignition. In my nervous mind, I tried to pretend he was not there. In my head, I was repeating to myself that he was only there for a moment and then it would be all over and I could go back to trying to relax.

“So, what part of town do you live in?” he asked. “I’m closer to the east side, over by the capitol”.

I nodded so that he would know that I understood where I was to take him. The engine started and my music quietly interrupted the silence between us. I put the car in reverse and backed out of my parking spot. In my turn to check my blind spots I was confronted with the sight of him. The passenger seat was not far away, especially when I was straining to look around. His face looked relaxed and his brown hair was blown around a bit by the spring breeze that had been blowing in the time that we were outside. His hands were relaxed and at his sides. This man obviously did not have the sort of problem that I had. I was looking normality right in the face without being able to fathom what it would be like.

My movements were quick and my hands were tightly gripping my steering wheel. I pulled onto the highway with ease, even thought rush hour traffic was in full swing. Seventy miles an hour bumper to bumper. My hands were shaking now, and so were my legs. I had started to sweat while still not saying a word in the car. This was just a business favor and business would be finished soon. A phrase or a sound that I could not quite comprehend correctly was repeating in my head. It was soothing but for the life of me, I have no idea what it was. Then a realization struck me. He had asked a question before about which side of town I live on. Was it too late to reply and try not to look rude? I opened my mouth and the words came out quiet and reluctantly.

“The north side” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Um, the north side that’s where I live” I said, my voice was trembling as it exited my body.

I turned to look at him; just a quick glance to gauge his reaction and it all seemed to happened at once. First a look; I watched his face change shape from a relaxed expression to one that was strained and wrinkled. He was opening his mouth to speak, but the expression seemed too wide to just be speaking. He let out a gasp and then shouted, “Grant!” before I felt the jolt and feeling of tumbling. It seems as though in my observing him, I had hit the vehicle in front of me, but not directly in the rear. I was a little off to the right. When I hit my brakes the vehicle behind me pushed my car off of the hill that the highway was set upon. It never occurred to me before how unsafe it was until I found myself on it in the most uncomfortable of ways.

For me, it was a relief. Hopefully this would end my life and I would never again have to go through the agony of putting myself in front of people. As we tumbled and tumbled trapped inside by our safety belts, I saw my arms flailing and some parts of my body were experiencing sharp and nearly unbearable pains. I was not in control of myself anymore. My fate was sealed and I was carelessly letting my body fall where it may. My passenger had his face scrunched in together, bracing for every impact that hit him. In this place, we were not so different anymore. I wondered to myself amidst the racket if he had a family or someone who would miss him. How careless had I been, to think that although my life was empty, that someone else’s life would be just as vacant? I was staring at his body becoming just as mangled as mine was becoming. I stared at his face as the pain left his expression when one jolt knocked him unconscious.

Finally, we came to a stop. In my confusion I had assumed that we were upside down, but I was seeing the grass outside of my passengers window, which probably meant that we were on our side.

An impulse told me that I should try to break free of my seat belt to help my passenger get free of this crooked block of metal that he was trapped in. As I went to free myself it occurred to me that I was trapped too. My legs seemed useless. I could not move them without using my arms to direct them to where they should be. My heart rate had been up since I got in my car so I knew that it was sky high now. I was panicking. My heart rate was becoming more apparent to me. What was wrong with me? Just a split-second ago, I was happy at the prospect of my life ending in this run-of-the-mill accident and now, when face with the idea that my heart may be the one that finally takes me in the end I was scared. I was outraged at the idea that the disease that held me down during life, would also bring me down to death.

My arms stung with unimaginable pain as I struggled to guide them to help the rest of my body. I could see small amounts of blood on the roof of my car and I tried not to think of whose blood it was. I looked to my left and grabbed the handle to let the window down. I was cranking it with all of my strength and it could not come down fast enough. My passenger was unconscious and I had not heard any sirens yet. I thought for a moment that I heard voices but I could not see anyone outside the car. I was moving a lot and could feel the overturned car sway with every abrupt attempt I made at freedom from my seat belt. I looked down and pulled with everything I could muster before remembering how a seatbelt works. I pushed down on the red button and the click made me sigh. I had forgotten about gravity which made my upper body and my painfully useless legs fall a little to my right. I turned to my left to use my arms and try to pull myself out of the window I had opened. With half of my body out I could see that there were indeed people on the outside of the car. I could not hear what they were saying but they were certainly being vocal. A last push made my body slide off of the curved end of the driver’s side door and onto the ground. I scrambled quickly to move myself from the heat of the underside of the car. The people standing by helped me as I worked my way to what was now the top of the car, to push the car over to being right-side up.

To my surprise, my legs were not as useless as I thought they were. I could move them but surely they were both broken in multiple places. I had never broken a bone before so I had no way of knowing for sure, but the assumption was good enough for me. The car turned over and landed with a large thud. As it settled I could hear the sound of glass falling but did not look for the source. Instead, I watched the strangers open the passenger-side door and work to pull my passenger out. I glanced over to see that emergency vehicles had arrived even though I heard no sirens or noise to alert me. I stared at the unconscious body as they put him on a gurney and rolled him to where the emergency vehicle was.

As the paramedics assisted me and asked me a series of questions, of which I answered none, I thought of the man who had been next to me. Is it possible that our fates were crossed and he ‘caught’ the death that I had assumed was mine? Even if he was not dead, could his close proximity to me been his downfall? In some round-about way I knew that it was my fault.

In the statements that the police produced from other people on the highway who stopped to help, the wreck was an accident. An accident, that was the term that it deserved but one that I could not give it.

I wheeled myself out of my hospital room a few days later after speaking with my doctor. I was not released but I could roam if I chose to. Since I had heard nothing of my passenger, I decided to try and find him. There were so many rooms in this hospital. I did not know the name of it. Come to think of it, I did not know the name of my passenger either. I ‘pulled-over’ to the side of the aisle to reflect on the fact that when this man asked me to give him a ride, he had known my name. It was a possibility that he had asked another co-worker, or even looked at the tag attached to the small wall in front of my cubicle to find out what my name was. Either way, he had taken the time to know my name and considered me a reliable source for a ride.

I looked up from my contemplation to see a tall woman and a small child walking out of a patient’s room. They looked quickly at me before passing me going the opposite way. I felt outside of myself, I could not feel a blushing of my cheeks or a trembling of my hands. My breath had not quickened at the knowledge of their small assessment of me. It was only momentary, I was sure.

Out of curiosity, I wheeled myself over to the room that the two people had come out of. I looked inside and squinted to see the small details under the name on the chart. It would be likely that a great number of people in this hospital were here for injury in a car accident, even one on the same day. With a surge of courage that I had not known existed in my body until now, I pushed my hands to show the wheels I was going to go in. My heart was steady as my chair glided into the space. I raised my head, in an attempt to analyze the person in the bad. I saw a lot of tubes and of course the standard machine that beeped symbolizing a heartbeat. An IV was hooked up to his right arm on the other side of the bed from me. I stretched my body to get a better view of the person on the raised bed in front of me. The head on the pillow had brown hair and the skin tone looked familiar. I used my arms, which were still sore, to raise myself up even more. It was him; this man had been my passenger.

A moment later, I was approached by a nurse asking me if I needed any help. She had seen that I was looking at the man and perhaps wished to speak to him. From what I could see, he still looked unconscious. She went to the other side of the bed and whispered that he had a visitor. Apparently, he had not been unconscious; the side of the bed that I was on had less of a view of his face and the shortness of my wheel-chair left me at a disadvantage height-wise.

The noise of him stirring in his bed alerted me that he was turning to see me.

“Hi” he said with a gruff voice.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“A little sore but I think I’ll be okay” he said with a small smile on his face.

From there we had the most normal conversation I had ever experienced. I had learned that he had been unconscious for two days after the wreck and that the people walking out of his room were his sister and her daughter. After only a half hour of talking I was growing tired and he expressed that he was as well. I wheeled myself out of the room and turned before I got to the door.

“I’m sorry” I said. It was the one thing I had forgotten to say in our pleasant conversation.

“It’s alright” he said. “It was an accident”

I smirked and left the room. In the busy hall, I remembered that the bystanders had called it an accident too. A turn of events had caused a car accident and accidental damage to our bodies and minds. He did not seem so changed except for his physical body. His personality was more apparent to me, but I think that had less to do with his personality and more with the feeling that had come over me lately. My eyes were seeing a sliver of a world outside of my own.

I got to my room and a nurse helped me back into my hospital bed and brought me some food. The T.V. was on the entire time but I was not interested. I could not keep from looking out the window. I was not happy to have my life back, as some might say after having a serious accident. I was content to have the possibility of a life I had yet to experience. It was not a revelation, my world was still small, but perhaps with some effort it could grow to become something that did not center around my fears and sources of anxiety.

I looked down to see that my pudding was the last thing left on my tray. In two days time my doctor would release me with medications and a few notes to remind me to be wary of my injuries. I decided I would save my pudding and the pudding from tomorrow until after I left this place.

I leaned back into the angled part of the bed and let my eyes wander around the room. I fell asleep with a feeling of solitude and the vision of opening my puddings after I returned to my home.

This is kind of long, so I will read it as soon as I get the opportunity. Just so you know it hasn't gone unnoticed.

I’m not correcting the grammar in this because I wasn’t asked. However, I will say that I came across quite a few mistakes from that area. Then again, it doesn’t matter what I’m reading, I tend to almost always find a mistake or two. Even in books that have been around for decades.

Okay... so... As far as the story itself goes, it was decent.

It was interesting to have it written from the perspective of someone with a disorder like that. It was was described in such a short time.

However, the car accident felt as if it was being related by someone outside the story, someone who had never experienced it. Everything felt as if there wasn't enough reaction to it. It was kind of bland.

The end was kind of neat with how something like that seemed to have helped his mental well-being. It still felt kind of bland, though.

I would tell your friend to try to give the story more "feeling" because that will add interest to it as well.