Page 111 of Something Like Sunflowers

The marriage certificate and ticket to Ellie’s freedom sit directly on the seat to my right, and nothing has ever looked more intentional. I clench my hands tightly around the steering wheel, ready to get this done once and for all as I fly past Mullins Road and—

Crash!

I’m jolted.

I hear the screeching of tires, feel the scraping of metal, smashing of glass, the impact throwing me to the side faster than I can blink.

The sound reaches me from within, bursting from my eardrums, and the beat of my heart pounds with the same intensity as the song that plays on repeat through the speakers. My body curves unnaturally upward, the air rushing from my lungs like it was stolen. It fights its way out of me, clawing the inside of my throat, and my body cracks, smacking hard against the interior of my Jeep. I distantly gather that we must be upside down.

Blood rushes to my head as time slows, and my neck whips violently to the left, smacking my skull against the window. We’re rolling.

I feel the pain in every nerve ending upon impact as my brain thrashes within the crevasses of my skull, and the fullness lulls my head from side to side with the direction of the vehicle. It’s fuzzy. Everywhere I look I see blood, slowly dripping down my forehead, into my eyelashes. Sticky. Thick. Paint from a barn door before the summer rain, spattering, dripping from the sky.

For a fraction of time, it’s just me, the air, and a floating paper that represents my purpose.

That, and the beat of my heart.

The car falls to its side, my vision in and out in colors and pain, and it’s not exactly slow motion, but it is long enough for Abel’s words to run through my head. A chance to choose again.

And I chose them.

Even if that chance ends today, with my last breath, I have no regrets. I’d do it all over again. I know what Hunter means when he says that now. I’d choose the time spent with Hunter and Ellie all over again despite any heartache life throws my way.

Because in the end, that’s choosing the most important thing of all.

It’s choosing individual moments you can’t replace. It’s choosing the here and now, even if those things are hard and scary.

Imperfect. Or broken.

It’s choosing to make them whole again with love.

The earth shifts in an instant when the car comes crashing down to the pavement, the shards of metal, glass, and plastic exploding like fireworks across my vision. And I know nothing in this moment other than the abrupt smack of all-encompassing pain, as my body slams hard against space and time.

And there is only darkness.

Chapter 41

Hunter

Beep, Beep, Beep.

The machines hooked up to the woman I love are too familiar, and it’s near impossible not to feel transported to another time, in this very hospital, with the similarities.

The damn waiting.

“Open your eyes for us, Ponygirl. We need you,” I whisper from the rolling chair I’ve nestled as closely as I can to the hospital bed. I’d climb up in there and snuggle her the way I know she likes if the nurses didn’t keep checkin’ up on her every five seconds.

It’s comforting to know they’re here and paying attention, but it’s concerning that they need to be with her so often.

None of that is surprising when you consider the way she was brought in…who knows how long she had been injured prior to being cared for. Katie never got the paperwork Devyn was on the way to bring her. It didn’t take long before the sirens reached the courthouse, and the judge ordered a recess since the opposing counsel never made it to the courthouse either, stuck behind the wreckage like half of town.

The other car was damaged too, and the passengers unconscious like Dev. The doctors informed us as of yesterday that if she’d continued to bleed any longer, recovery might not have been a possibility.

At this point, they say her recovery is entirely up to her.

“Stay with us, Ponygirl.”

Ten Years Ago

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