The windshield’s a spiderweb. My door is empty glass. I’m bleeding. Shirt soaked. Chest sticky.
Mine?
I move my fingers. My arms. My legs. Pain flares, but I can move.
Smoke rises from the hood. Gasoline stings my eyes.
“Dad,” I croak, throat raw. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, son,” he coughs. “You?”
“Yeah.”
We’re outside the vehicle now. Sitting on the shoulder, slumped in gravel and glass. Someone must’ve pulled us out.
A voice calls out, distant but growing. “Is anyone else in the car?”
A flashlight slices through the smoke. A uniformed officer approaches.
My father lifts a hand. “We’re it. Just me and my son.”
The cop nods. “Who was driving tonight?”
Silence.
I stare at my father. Blood in my mouth. On my hands. On his shirt.
He stares at the cop, then back at me.
“I need one of you to take a Breathalyzer,” the officer says calmly.
“My son was drinking,” my father says, voice low and rehearsed. “I know he has to face the consequences… but as a courtesy, can you book him later this morning?”
My lungs stop working.
I wait for the cop to askanything. To use his eyes. To see the bruises, the bleeding, the placement. But instead, the man squints at me.
“You know,” he mutters, “usually the drunk driver walks away clean. Nice to see karma give someone a bruise for once.”
He turns to my father. “Let me call my supervisor. Hold tight, Mr. Dawson.”
As the officer walks away, my father leans in, breath still laced with whiskey.
“I owe you,” he says. “Whenever you need a favor—whatever it is—you just say the phrase:Warned You. I won’t ask questions. I’ll do it.”
I say nothing.
“Son, did you hear me? Ioweyou. This was my wake-up call. I swear.”
Still nothing.
EMTs arrive and wrap gauze around my head, take my vitals, draw blood. One of them whispers that I’m lucky.
But luck doesn’t explain the seizures that follow. The blackouts. The years I lose to a truth no one believed.
Later, a doctor clears me. “Just a gash,” he says.
Just.
