The Lion of God - Abigail Part 1
Abigail (Part 1)
It happened in an instant. She never saw it coming.
There was no time to think, no time to react, no time to brace herself.
One second she was driving home from work in the afternoon rush hour traffic, her thoughts were scattered, her mind drifting subconsciously from one thing to the next.
One moment thinking about the conversations of her work day, then the next minute her mind thinking ahead, to the uneasy undertone of what awaited her at home.
Disgust welled inside her and she released it with a “huff” as she thought about home. She didn’t know which was worse, the shouting, or the silence.
No, she thought, it’s the indifference. The not giving a fuck if she lived or died. The indifference is what she hated the most.
She felt alone. Powerless. Forgotten. She dreaded this part of the day. Going home to ……..
She silently shook her head and tried to pushed that thought away.
Instead her thought morphed from the destination to her internal struggles.
The isolation. The loss. The betrayal, The shattered dreams. The dysfunctional marriage……. The past.
She always came back to the past.
She felt defective. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. She felt unloved. Worse, she felt unloveable.
Truth be told she felt like yesterday’s trash. Something nobody wanted. Something to be used and thrown away.
The light at the intersection up ahead was green. Without thinking, she moving into the right hand lane, then slowed, making a right hand turn at the intersection.
Suddenly a bolt of lightening flashed and her entire world changed.
She heard the screech of tires. The crushing sound of metal ripping thru metal.
The shattering of glass.
She felt the sensation of being steamrolled forward. Slammed from behind, then crashing into the car ahead of her, like hitting a brick wall.
She was knocked unconscious as her head hit the steering wheel
Then minutes later she was being shaken awake by a responding police officer.
She smelled the acrid fumes of burning rubber and gasoline.
“Miss, help is on the way”, she heard the police officer say.
Initially confused she finally was able to grasp she was in a car wreck.
She heard voices. Then when the initial shock worn off she felt the pain.
Her mouth tasted like copper pennies. Her face was covered in blood. Her leg was pinned and she struggled to breath.
As the minutes ticked away she heard sirens and then she lost consciousness again.
She would occasionally regain consciousness to catch glimpses, flickering images.
The lightening bolt of that first impact. A police officer shaking her awake. An ambulance ride. An EMT telling her to hang on. She was lifted her onto an emergency room operating table.
Someone cut off all her clothes. She laid there, completely naked. Exposed for everyone to see. She felt the pain. In that moment, in that state of venerability she felt the immediate pain of broken bones but also she felt the pain of broken dreams, the loss of innocence, the pain of a broken spirit and the pain of never being enough. The pain of being yesterday’s trash. Something used then discarded without a care. Everything came crashing down.
She heard someone say, “She’s lost a lot of blood”.
Someone else with a voice of authority ordered blood.
“Get me two liters of O negative in here STAT.”
A nurse replied, “Yes sir.” And scurried out of the room.
She heard alarms, bell and buzzers as someone else said, “Her blood pressure is dropping rapidly.”
Then a more urgent, “We are losing her!!!”.
Everything in the room slowed down and got quiet. The only sound she could hear was the slowing cadence of the heart monitor.
BEEP ………BEEP ……………….. Beep…………………………………………..beep ………………………………………………beep …………………………………………………………………
……………………………..Beep …………………………………………………………..beep …………………………………………………………..
beep…………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………..beep …………………………………………………………
Then the steady piercing sound of a flatline
Then everything went black.
(To be continued)