Chapter 19 #3
“Seriously, Ellie,” Ben said. After they paid, they pulled back onto the dark street.
“I want to know what you’ve been thinking about lately.
We talk about the trivial stuff, but I think it’s time for you to make a plan.
What you’re going to do with your life after college.
Where you’re going to live. How you’re going to avoid parties that require fleeing. ”
“My plan,” Ellie said, “is to eat my weight in fries.”
“Well, instead of that, I think you should write.” Ben pulled one of her fries away. “You’re good at it.”
“Writer, schmiter,” she said. Ben’s timing for a serious conversation was terrible. Ellie was half-drunk, half-falling asleep, and he was hitting her with lofty questions. Her annoyance kicked in. “Why are you asking me this now, Ben?”
He sighed. “Because we should talk about these things before I leave.”
The word leave reached out and struck her.
They were supposed to be acting like it wouldn’t, inevitably, happen.
Ben wouldn’t head off to med school. Ellie wouldn’t have to take a flight, albeit a short one, to see him.
He barely seemed to mourn this distance.
They’d been attached at the hip since she was born.
When he’d gone off to college, it was only an hour from home, and she’d soon followed him there.
Where would Ellie even fit in once he began his new life?
“I don’t get why you’re suddenly telling me what to do,” she retaliated.
“You’ve gone kind of cliché lately. Now you’re running off to become one of them? ”
“What’s your beef with med school, man?” Ben asked, more curious than upset. They turned onto the freeway.
“No beef,” Ellie said, despite a clear beef. “I think it sounds boring.”
He nodded a little. “Well, I think it sounds nice.”
“Nice?”
“Nice.” Ben rolled his sleeves up a little more and crunched down on another fry. “Yeah. Helping people. I mean, look, I’m not squeamish. I’m good at memorizing things. I want to listen to people, sis. Save them. Give them another chance.”
Ellie sighed. They had usually been on the same page about everything: life was about fun, and excitement, and mischief.
While Ellie had flailed around at college and continued to change majors, her brother had found a new purpose.
His passion fired up her attitude. “Well, I’m sure they throw great parties, those doctors in training,” she pouted.
“You’ll all get to drinking and start practicing your sutures—”
“I’m not going there for the parties, Ellie. I’m going to be studying. I’m going to be busy— ”
“If you’re going to be so busy, I guess I won’t visit you.”
“Don’t get all drama school on me. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“It’s fine,” she insisted. “You’re going to be busy. I won’t visit you.”
The radio announcer brought up the contest again. Spill. Your. Secrets. Ellie sighed and turned the volume down. “I don’t think I ever told you, but …I went on a date with this guy,” she admitted.
“With the radio DJ?”
“DJ makes it sound fancy,” Ellie said. “It’s college radio.
I think five people are listening.” Ben skipped the exit that went to campus and moved toward the one leading to his apartment.
He must have intuited that Ellie would want to stay there instead of the dorms, a choice that meant he wasn’t holding her tantrum against her.
“Anyway, this DJ had amazing taste in music, but an exhaustive number of food allergies.”
Ben chuckled. “Oh, yeah?”
“It took an hour to order at dinner.”
Ben gave a single “ha.” Ellie smiled.
She often swore they were the same person, but it was their differences that made him better. Ellie liked to sink her talons into a good grudge. Ben was quick to forgive, especially when it came to her. “I’m sorry I said all that,” she told him. “I think it’s beautiful you want to help people.”
Ben gave her a skeptical eye. “Beautiful, eh? You really think so?”
“I do,” she said.
They got off the freeway, onto a smaller highway, and eventually slowed for a stoplight in a more residential area.
As the circle overhead flashed red, an embarrassing thing happened.
Tears streamed down Ellie’s face. “I’m being a jerk because I’m crushed that you’re leaving,” she admitted.
“You’re my favorite person, Ben. I say that without irony.
I look up to you so much. And I’m a jerk because I can’t stand that I’m not going to have you to Spill My Secrets to anymore.
And I’m crying because I do think it’s beautiful you want to help people. And also, because—green light.”
“Green light?” Ben asked. He was lost in the middle of her words. This level of confessional was rare for Ellie, even though they were close.
“The light’s green,” Ellie said. Ben didn’t move. “Go!”
Here was her saving grace: something as simple as a green light. She had been about to say something humiliating. The light had helped her reel it back in. Go! She’d said instead.
The car flew into the intersection on her command. Go! Ben’s eyes were transfixed on her, his expression so sympathetic, wanting to help.
Go! she’d said. And he’d listened.
Only, Ben hadn’t looked away from her face. And Ellie hadn’t looked both ways.
Lights filled the inside of the car to Ellie’s right, growing brighter until they became blinding.
What was that look on Ben’s face? Surprise .
Was it surprise? As if saying, “Why go ?” Why—he must have wanted to know—had she really seen a green light?
Metal collided deep in her ears, followed by the punch of an airbag to her chest. The smell of thick chemicals was everywhere, dust deep inside her lungs.
The car began to spin off the road. It wasn’t a real car that could respond this way, was it?
So flimsy. It was a toy car on a track, a car moved by a troubled child—by Ellie herself, maybe.
Eventually the car stopped. The windshield was busted.
Every part of her chest felt bruised, and bits of sharp glass strung in her hair.
“Oh my god.” Ellie reached out for Ben’s arm.
“We’re so lucky,” she said, straining to catch her breath.
“That could’ve been bad. Really bad. But we’re okay.
We’re okay!” She believed this because Ben was always okay.
Despite his adventures and escapades, he narrowly dodged the worst side of things.
Only this time, Ellie realized, he hadn’t.
Ben’s airbag had malfunctioned, turning his body into a rag doll over the steering wheel.
There was blood on the dashboard. Blood on the sides of his green sweater, like a terrible, sticky belt.
Blood pooled out and around on the gray seat of the car.
The dinosaur key chain dangled from the rearview mirror.
Ellie searched Ben’s face for help. He would know what to do. He always knew what to do. Helping people—people in emergencies like this—was about to be his specialty. Did she soak up the blood? Did she sit him up straight? Did she get him out of the car?
Air. She needed air.
“Call,” Ben said. His voice was quiet.
Call for help. Of course, she should call for help. Ellie fumbled for the phone in her pocket. The screen was black and very dead.
She hadn’t charged her phone. If she had just …
Next, Ben’s pocket. She checked his jeans, tapped the seat beside him—
His blood, on her trembling palms.
“Compartment,” he was saying.
“Compartment. Compartment?” Ellie repeated. Time ticking away, energy draining, precious seconds lost. Finally, Ellie figured it out. She clicked the compartment between them open. His phone was in her hand. It was charged. She punched in 9-1-1.
What’s your emergency? a warped voice asked. It was coming through a tin can.
Ellie undid her seat belt to get a better look at Ben. Her bones hurt. “Uh, there’s been an accident. My brother was driving.”
Where are you ? the tin can asked.
“I don’t, I don’t know where, I don’t know where we—”
Can you give me some landmarks —
The exit name came to mind. Ben liked to growl when he said it. Grrrr-over . “Grover exit,” she said. “On …” What was the highway called? Ellie couldn’t tell. Any sort of sign was out of sight.
We’re on the way , said the tin can, which became not a voice on the phone, but a drill bit inside her head. Ellie could feel the voice on her teeth as it asked a series of follow-up questions. Talk to your brother, her teeth vibrated.
“Ben, please.”
“Okay, Ellie,” Ben said.
Keep talking. We’re going to be there soon.
“Yes, you’re okay,” Ellie said. “You’re going to be fine.”
“It’s okay,” he repeated.
The heaviness of it’s sank in. Ben wasn’t okay, he meant.
It’s okay . As if to say, a life without him would be okay for Ellie.
She would move on. She had their mom and dad.
She would make friends that felt like family.
She would meet someone and start a family and tell her kids about their wild, wonderful uncle.
Those stories, the framed photos on the walls, the smell of him she might catch as she rounded a corner during the holidays, would be enough.
A lifetime of feeble attempts to connect stretched out before her like a lonely, wavering road.
“Don’t forget me,” Ben said, his voice getting smaller.
“Ben, of course, I won’t forget you. I could never forget— I promise I could never forget you. But, hey. You’re not going anywhere.”
A horrible irony settled in as Ellie said the thing she couldn’t at the green light. It was even truer now, even more relevant, and so easy to put to words. “I can’t do this without you,” she begged.
Ben didn’t respond.
A little later, Ellie and Ben were drowned in a sea of lights and the hot red sound of sirens. A man pulled her from the car. There was a scratched-up blanket, a ride to the hospital, a dreamless sleep. Or maybe the whole night was a dream, a terrible, vivid dream.
Ellie was in the hospital where Ben was born.
It was a hospital so illustrious that Sandra and William Marshall had driven an hour to have a child there.
William had filmed Sandra, wound up in pain, as they walked to the delivery room.
Sandra grunted for a few minutes, then her baby came out in “the world’s shortest labor. ”
Later that afternoon, her dad brought Ben to the window, according to Marshall family lore.
“Look there. At the world,” he whispered.
It was a view of the parking garage. The idea of the world was enough, though.
There were so many possibilities waiting for him, possibilities that had been better than what they’d had.
A new generation. A fresh start.
Now, Ellie was three floors up.
Inside the room with her was a swarm of doctors, specialists, and questions she couldn’t answer.
The room smelled like Jell-O. She started to feel like she’d crawled inside the mold and was wobbling with humans around her, speaking a foreign language.
Then, something clicked. Ben’s name. They were saying Ben’s name.
Her dad was next to her. He asked the doctors to leave them alone for a while.
Ellie shivered under the crisp, white sheets.
William leaned toward her but didn’t take her hand.
He broke the news so simply; confusion must have marked her face because he could tell she didn’t understand.
His voice was mundane. The moment itself was heartbreakingly mundane: the gasping of an IV bag draining fluids into her.
Talk-show hosts who droned on in the background about travel destinations.
Cancun . Belize . Where was the moving overture?
Where were the tears? Why hadn’t her dad turned the television off?
Ben had died, she learned, right there at the hospital.
Her dad sat with her for a few minutes after he explained it again.
He told her she was in the car with him, near the Grover exit.
The other driver ran a red light. So far, it seemed like the other driver wasn’t drunk. It was just “one of those things.”
One of those things.
Ellie’s dad left the room. Her mom was somewhere down the hall.
Ellie could hear her crying, she thought, or maybe it was somebody else.
How many families were grieving in this space, at this precise moment?
Losses wrapped around them like bad wallpaper.
Grief pushed down on her chest and made it hard to stay in her body, but there was a tinge of something else there, too.
Guilt.
Ellie forced her eyes shut and tried to remember the accident. Sober driver. Red light. Grover. Sober driver. Red light. Grover. Grover, Ellie, and Ben—Ben who was such a good driver, wasn’t he? The best driver. Responsible. Wild in his whims, but never when it came to safety.
Which only pointed to one thing.
Sitting in the theater, Ellie realized there was a reason her mind had blocked out what happened. Her body was trying to protect her.
She was, as she’d always feared, to blame.