I remembered that moment. It’d played out in my mind repeatedly, throughout the years. I’d tried to tell myself I’d imagined it. I’d been laying on the ground unable to move due to the massive pain in my chest and stomach. I’d been ejected from the car’s backseat, through the windshield. I suffered minimal damage to my head, cuts and bruises, but had been impaled by large shards of glass on my chest and abdomen. Emma’s hand covered my chest and the searing pain I’d been in immediately ceased, and I felt covered by a warm glow.
I watched it all play out right in front of me, some twenty-eight years later. Emma leaned down to whisper in my ear that everything was going to be all right. I glanced up, watching yet another car pass. My mother had stopped yelling for help then. All I heard were her soft, tortured moans of agony.
“You knew my mother,” I stated low.
Present-day Emma walked up beside me. “And she knew me, very well. I was with her from the time she was a child as well. She begged me to keep you safe until help arrived.”
I snorted. “Help. All the cars that passed. Not one of them stopped. Selfish bastards.”
Emma shook her head. “This moment right here is what has made you the most cynical. Not even your father could’ve done the damage this one moment did.”
“No,” I shook my head. “That moment just finished what my father started. He taught me he was an asshole. They,” I jutted my head at another passing vehicle, “taught me that most people are assholes.”
“Oh, Aaron.”
“How is this helping me find my fucking wife?!” I yelled.
“Look at them, Aaron!” Emma shouted for the first time ever.
I would’ve been surprised if I hadn’t been so angry.
“Those people. Look at them!” she insisted, moving closer to me, touching my forehead.
We were suddenly inside of the backseat of a car. I looked down to my left to see a little boy who couldn’t have been more than three years old. His dark brown eyes were wide with fright.
“James! Those people look hurt!” a voice from the passenger seat beckoned.
I turned to see a dark-skinned woman, with a panicked expression, saying to the man in the driver’s seat. “James! Did you hear me. Ow!” she howled when the man abruptly punched her in the ribs. She curled over, holding her side in pain.
“The fuck you want me to do, huh? I got all this shit in the car. You’re high as hell. You want me to call the police?” he yelled, then shook his head. “Nah, those people will be all right,” he stated. The car accelerated as he pressed his foot to the gas, leaving my dying family in the distance.
“And the next one,” Emma stated, touching my forehead once more.
Again, we were thrust into the backseat of an older model car.
“Breathe, baby, breathe,” the male driver in the seat encouraged.
“Ahhh! John, it hurts!” A woman shrilled.
I bent at the waist to see into the front seat. Immediately, I noticed the swollen belly of the blonde-haired woman. She held her stomach and breathed through another contraction. Her loud breathing eventually turned into a moan, which turned into another shrill yell.
A sight outside the window caught my eye, and from that vantage point, I saw my father’s mangled vehicle, our bodies at the side of the road. I looked to the man driving the car to see his focus was on the woman next to him.
“He never even saw you,” Emma stated as we passed. She touched my forehead again and we were back on the road.
“What’s that supposed to prove?”
“Perspective. It changes when you get up close.”
I remained silent.
“Sometimes people can’t see your pain because they’re too busy dealing with their own. Those people who passed you that night had their fill of their own pain, in one way or another. They couldn’t see yours. But, Anita, the one who was with James, she was able to look past hers for a little while. When they arrived home, she snuck off to a local pay phone and called the police, reporting the accident. It could’ve been the next day you were found. That road was so seldom traveled.”
“What does this have to do with Patience?” I asked, growing impatient.
“Perspective, Aaron. Widen your perspective.” She touched my forehead again.
That horrible scene of my childhood faded to black.
