Nikki (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, There was a light rain. The windshield wipers beat out a slow, methodical rhythm as her mind drifted subconsciously from one thing to the next.
One moment she was 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.
It was her 40th birthday. She knew that when she got home there would be no celebration, no greeting of “Happy Birthday”, no gift, not even a card.
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. Forgotten. Powerless. She dreaded this part of the day. Going home to ……..
She silently shook her head and tried to push that thought away.
Instead, her thought morphed from the destination to her internal struggles.
The isolation. The loss. The physical abuse. The emotional chaos. 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 lightning flashed and her entire world changed.
She heard the screech of tires. The crushing sound of metal ripping through 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, Miss, are you OK?", 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 wore off she felt the pain.
Her mouth tasted like copper pennies. Her face was covered in blood. She struggled to breathe.
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 lightning bolt of that first impact. A police officer shaking her awake. An ambulance ride. An EMT telling her to hang on. She was lifted onto an emergency room trauma table.
Someone cut off all her clothes. For a moment she lay there, completely exposed for everyone to see. Then a nurse threw a sheet over her body. She felt the pain. In that moment, in that state of vulnerability she felt the immediate pain from the crash 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 units of O-negative in here STAT!”
“Activate the massive transfusion protocol.”
A nurse replied, “Yes, sir.” And scurried out of the room.
She heard alarms, bells and buzzers as someone else said, “Her blood pressure is dropping rapidly.”
Then a more urgent, “She is crashing! We’re losing her!!!”.
Everything in the room slowed down and got quiet. The only sound Nikki 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)