Page 53 of Way Down Deep

6.17pm

Are you there, stranger?

I’m here. Mostly. A bit misshapen.

I’ve got so much to catch you up on. When did we last talk? Almost a week ago, I think. It must have been, since it was Tuesday morning when I got partially run over by a hatchback.

We said a lot of things that night, and one of us wasn’t entirely sober. I hope you didn’t think I was ghosting you. It’s been torture, not having any way to get in touch.

Let me back up.

So. Tuesday morning I took the boy out for a run. I’d had big plans for the afternoon, to go on our first mission in search of bedding and all that stuff I’d mentioned. I think we were probably three miles in when… Well, I don’t remember the moment it happened. But basically a car shot out of a blind drive and hit us.

The boy’s fine. I want to throw up when I imagine what would’ve happened if I’d been running just a tiny bit slower, the stroller taking the hit instead of me. But he was okay. The stroller got flipped into the road, I was told, but for that price you better believe it was safe, plus the street was quiet. He had a couple scrapes on his face, but they’re already faded almost to nothing.

Me, I’m not quite so lucky.

I’ve got a shit ton of bruises and a broken collarbone and my arm isn’t so much fractured as… Crushed? I won’t get graphic, but suffice it to say it was disgusting, and it’s going to take months to heal and it might not ever work quite right again. But on the plus side, it’s my left arm and I’m right-handed.

I’m texting very slowly now, let’s say.

What else? The woman who hit me… Not even a woman. A girl. I was really, really angry at first, right up until she came to see me the day after the accident. She’s seventeen, and I swear she was more traumatized than me about almost killing some dad and his little boy. She was a fucking wreck, probably needs therapy for a year. So my anger’s fallen aside, for the most part.

One thing that’s come out of this whole nightmare that’s sort of miraculous was how the boy reacted. Like I said, I don’t remember what happened right when I got hit. I think I came out of shock a few minutes later. By then, someone had gotten the boy out of the stroller. The first thing I was aware of besides the pain was that he was on me. Like, physically on me, latched to my leg and shrieking “Da! Da! Da!” over and over. Which, as it turns out, is his first word.

So that was actually rather special, in its perverse way. Not how I’d have chosen to snap the kid out of his selective muteness, but here we are.

Since the accident, he’s also said “tar” and “mag jee,” which mean guitar and mac and cheese, respectively.

What else?

Oh! I was on the local news. They interviewed me on Wednesday in the hospital. The accident was the most interesting thing that’s happened around here in ages, apparently. If you ever wanted to know what the boy and I look like, you could probably Google your way there.

And that’s the gist. I’m not sure what became of my phone, whether it got run over or lost or picked up by somebody after I got taken off to A and E.

The boy’s grandma got me a temporary one from a corner store. But I didn’t have your number, and I’d never logged into my O2 account for any reason, just paid the paper bill and tossed the records. So I had no idea what my account info was or if I had a password, didn’t even know my own fucking phone number. And I was stuck in the hospital for days. I got home last night, and today my only mission was to get to the nearest O2 shop and convince somebody to print me out a copy of my latest statement. Which is how I have your number!

I have no idea what you may have been texting me since we last spoke. That’s all trapped on my missing SIM card, along with all of our other texts.

That’s been the worst loss, in a way. Losing our history.

We have a history, one that’s been entirely documented. The moment we met, the moment we first went to bed together in our weird way. The moments we turned ourselves inside out and bared everything, and the moment I nearly said something to you, something I now wish I had.

I have no idea if you’ve been angry or sad or scared all this time I’ve been silent, though I can safely assume you were confused. Maybe pissed. Maybe you blocked my number. If so, guess I got around that one!

I know I’m coming off kind of weird and up and cheerful. Part of that’s the pain pills, but part of it’s because I’m pretty fucking lost, and when I feel lost I tend to act like everything’s extra fine.

But things aren’t fine.

I hurt. All the time. Down an arm and a collarbone, I’m basically useless, especially when it comes to caring for a toddler. The boy’s grandma is here a lot, and I appreciate that, but I don’t enjoy it.

I can’t really bathe; I’ve got a massive cast, and I can’t even wrap it in trash bags or whatever, because that requires the use of both hands. Sponge baths—hooray.

Even texting hurts. I have to tap the screen just so, otherwise it tweaks a tendon or nerve all the way up my good arm and tugs at something painful in my busted collarbone.

I can barely get food out of packages and into either of our mouths, to say nothing of cooking. And I probably don’t need to spell out the guitar situation.

His grandma’s been staying with us while I adjust. I’m basically a stinky, ungroomed, doped-up misery, pretending to feel warm and grateful toward a woman I frankly don’t like especially.

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