(Mine)
"You never saw what hit you, did you?"
The words sledgehammered their way into my fractured skull. Somewhere between the pulsing hospital lights and the incessant Taiko drumming against my abused cranium, I realized that she actually expected a response. I could only manage a grunt.
"You knew you shouldn't drive after late nights in the OR. You know all about sleep deprivation. You're a doctor." The voice continued.
As the sixteen sets of fluorescent lights overhead slowly converged into four, I left the voice behind and set myself to the task of figuring out who this was and what she was doing here.
I was married, I think. I could certainly remember snippets of a wedding, and a lavish honeymoon in the Caribbean. I remember the lovely week of exotic shopping trips and even how thankful I was for Diane. That was her name -- a lovely, supple and sexy college senior who shouldn't have fallen for a balding fifty-year-old doctor. But she had. She relieved my fears constantly over the past year while we'd been dating. She'd supported me through long nights, doing her own studying in the hospital café. And yes, here she was at my bedside even though I could barely focus my eyes on the bright and vaguely familiar lights.
"I'm all bruised up from trying to drag you out from under that wreckage. You wouldn't speak… do you realize just how terrifying that was to me? You must never do that again." Diane kept talking, in that soft, slightly patronizing voice of hers and I drifted off into blackness, happy she was there.
Days later, they released me from my own hospital. By that time, I'd gotten back most of my memories, if none of my mobility. I was paralyzed from the waist down, my job as a surgeon was gone. And yet Diane was there pushing the wheelchair down the hospital ramp. I still couldn't remember much from the day of the accident, just some shadowy lights that forced me awake at night and caused the nurses (and a very sleepy Diane) to rush to my bedside. That will eventually pass, I was told. Diane patted my hand as I was lifted into the van.
That night, with Diane in her soft nightie curled up next to me, I finally felt safe. As Diane slipped out from my semi-conscious arms, it occurred to me that she was supposed to be driving me home that night. She had come all the way to the hospital just so I wouldn't be driving sleep deprived. I remember waking up to the click of my releasing seatbelt and the sudden lurch of the car. In almost slow motion I saw Diane tuck and roll out of the driver side door, as she steered the car into the oncoming semi, the headlights blinding.
I woke up screaming for the tenth night in a row.