“He’s gone.  I’m sorry ma’m, but I am going to need for you to step back and go give the police your statement.  There is nothing more you can do here.  Did you get yourself checked out?  Your head is bleeding pretty bad.” The paramedic looked exhausted.  Like he hadn’t slept in weeks.  Or maybe it was the fact that he just had to pronounce an eight year old boy dead.

“What was an eight year old doing out so late without his parents? Where were they?”  She looked down at her watch.  The glass was cracked and it had stopped working.  It had hit the dashboard in the collision and the glass was broken.  The time had stopped at 8:52:36.  ”I wonder if that’s when he died.  I wonder if that’s when I killed him. Oh god,” her voice cracked and she started to lose control, “I killed that boy. I took all of the potential away from him.”

Right then a tan Toyota Camary sped around the corner. “Where is he? Where is my baby?” A woman in an old, worn black t shirt and faded jeans jumped out of the car.  She must have been flustered from the police call, she had forgotten to put shoes on.  ”Michael? Mikey where are you?”  She searched all over, refusing to go towards the ambulance.

Megan wanted to go over to her, maybe tell her how sorry she was, but all she could do was sit on the curb and think about how none of this was actually happening.  She looked at her car.  It looked exactly it did before she left the house. Shiny and in one piece.  ”It should be broken.  It can’t look like nothing happened.”  In that minute, Megan grabbed a rock ad started to smash in her windows.

“Ma’m! Please stop! You are going to hurt yourself.  Please, please sit down. ”

“I can’t.  Where is she? I need to see her.  Where is the boys mom.  I need to tell her how sorry I am.”

The paramedic looked unsure and hesitantly pointed to a woman staring into an ambulance with a look of pure despair.  Megan took a deep breathe and walked over.

“I- I don’t know what to say.  I didn’t see him.  He ran out into the street, I couldn’t stop in time, I tried, I just couldn’t do it.” Megan looked at the woman hoping to see forgiveness in her eyes, all she saw was the same despair she saw from before.

“You killed him…he’s dead.  My baby is dead.  2 hours ago he was alive and running around the house and now he’s…he’s never going to run around the house again.”  She turned to face Megan, “And no matter how sorry you are, that won’t change anything.  Your words, they mean nothing to me.  Words can’t ever bring him back.”

The despair in her eyes was now mixed with a hatred so deep that Megan began to get scared.  The woman walked forward and stepped up onto the ambulance.  She pulled back the sheet to see Michael laying there.  If she hadn’t known better she would have just assumed he was asleep.  His face had a few scratches on it, but nothing major.  It was when she peeled back the sheet a little more that it was clear he was not just sleeping.  The car had ran over him, causing his stomach to be bruised and cut open.

Both the mother and Megan stood back, amazed that a person could look like that.  ”Excuse me, but we need to take him back to the hospital now.  Ma’m,” he looked at the mother, “would you like to ride with us, or are you following us there?”

“Um, I’ll, uh, I’ll follow you there.  I have to call my husband.  He’s at work.  I need to let him know.”  She pulled out her cell phone, looked at it for a minute and shoved it back into her purse.

Megan watched the women as she walked away, got into her car and drove away behind the ambulance.  Soon all that was left at the scene was Megan, her car and the few policemen that had lingered at the scene.  She had never felt more alone.  She had nobody to call, nobody to see how she was, she just had nobody.  And now she had taken away the one person that mattered most to this family.  She could not picture herself coming back from this moment.

“Bill,” she said breathlessly, “they are here. They are actually here.”  Bill looked up from his computer with a somewhat exasperated look on his face.  ”Marissa, I really don’t get what the problem is.  They are just my parents.  You are making a way bigger deal out of this than you need to be.”

“I thought you said they probably were’t going to come! Have you seen the house? It’s a disaster area! Your mother is going to walk in and pick out every single flaw in here! Also, it is almost ten o’clock at night.  Who shows up unannounced at ten o’clock at night!”  Marissa threw her hands up and collapsed in the chair next to her.

“Honey, don’t you think you should go and let them in? They will probably be confused as to why you are not answering the door.  Do you really want to deal with those questions along with the hundreds you are sure to get throughout the week?”

“He’s right…he’s always right,” she thought to herself.  Slowly she got up and walked down the stairs.  When she got to the bottom she looked around for a minute and saw everything that would bother her mother in law.  ”I guess it is time to let the monsters in.”  Marissa walked to the door, put a smile on her face, and welcomed her very unwanted in laws into her house.

Looking inside you can see that there used to be three rows of seats, but now there are only two rows.  He replaced the last row with a very intricate first aid kit.  He tells me it is just in case something happens.  But I know it is because after he came back from war, he needed to make sure that he would be safe at all times.  He keeps his car in the best condition possible.  Each Saturday you can see him in the parking lot behind his apartment cleaning her and vacuuming her.  As the doors open the smell of cigarette smoke and his cologne that he got over seas.  It is one of the most comforting smells I know.  I don’t really like that he smokes, and thankfully it isn’t that often, but the smells together remind me of him.

The seats are comfortable and worn in.  You sink into them when you sit.  I open his glove compartment to find a detailed journal of when he bought gas, where he bought it, how much it cost and how many miles were on the car at the time.  He keeps a small knife in the glove compartment, for emergencies he says, but again, I know he has other reasons he needs to keep that with him.  Along with other junk he has a cd collection of the craziest assortment of music you could think of.  You put in a disk and on the same cd you could hear Viking death metal and 80’s pop music.  I open the console between the passenger and drivers seat to find a bottle of perfume.  I guess it belonged to an ex of his.  I wonder why he still keeps it around.  What could that possibly mean to him?  The fact that he keeps it worries me a little.  But I guess everyone holds onto things that they don’t really need anymore.

I look up and see him walking to the car.  He has a very set posture.  Shoulders back, chest out, eyes straight ahead.  If you look hard enough you can see the Celtic cross on his forearm and the Celtic wedding band around his ankle.  He is wearing his usual army cargo shorts and a camouflage color shirt, today it is a tan shirt, yesterday it was a dark green shirt.  He sees me by the car and his expression softens a bit, but not much.  He keeps his military walk the whole way there.  When he speaks he has a slight South Carolina drawl, well I guess that’s what it is.  That’s where he is from, so I assume that’s where the accent is from.  He talks about how Gertrude needs a tune up because something happened to some coil.  He said it a lot better than that, but when he talks about cars I usually just smile and nod.