Chapter Eight Shenanigans #5
‘Don’t try to move!’ I tell him, desperate not to see him do anything that would make the situation worse. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll call the police,’ I say, which earns me the slightest of nods.
That’s all my cowardly little heart needs to turn away.
That tiny nod.
Permission from a dying old man to do something else – anything else – than actually try to help him. Actually try to prise his door open, and see if there’s any lifesaving measures I could take to save him.
But I don’t know any!
I never have!
You Should. You Should Be Able To Help, You Useless Bastard.
I drop the phone twice trying to call 999.
Later that night, I will look at the heavily cracked screen and think it happened during the accident.
No. That’s not right.
I will know it was caused during the accident, because my brain will have already started the work of building a very secure, thick and impenetrable wall around the truth of what happened here today.
It will concoct a much easier and less horrific story to tell myself, and everybody I love. One where everything is cleared up quickly, and nobody is hurt all that badly.
A story where everybody is totally fine.
Totally Fine.
‘Hello, this is the 999 service, what’s your emergency, please?’
‘Please help!’ I almost scream. ‘There’s been an accident! He’s dying!’
‘Please calm down, sir. Where are you?’
‘He’s dying!’ I scream again. ‘He’s dying!’
It’s all I can say. It’s all my brain will allow me to say.
Help Him, You Useless Bastard.
Then the teenager is standing right by me, and is taking the phone out of my hand. His face is as white as the old man’s, but he looks calm. Far calmer than me, anyway.
The young kid talks to the operator on the other end of the call, while I suffer some sort of breakdown. I slump back against the side of my car, shaking all over, my breath becoming increasingly hard to catch.
This will be the first panic attack I have. It will be followed by many more, culminating in the largest one of all in the back of a hired limousine.
I don’t know how much time passes, but there’s a woman now at my side. I have no idea who she is, but she’s nice. Her voice is kind, and she has blonde hair that reminds me of my new girlfriend, Annie.
The woman helps me to the side of the road – where I will sit in a daze for a good thirty minutes, watching other people move my shattered car to the side of the road, and also trying their level best to help the old man in the Datsun Cherry.
I am useless.
I am a lump.
A lovely lady lump.
I am unable to do anything except take short, unsatisfying breaths and let my brain do the work of constructing a fiction that will let me get through the rest of my life guilt free.
A fiction that will supplant the teenager’s role in the aftermath with the version of me I wish actually existed. Someone calm and capable, who can easily arrange for the police to come. Someone who can make sure my car is parked off to the side of the road, in the lay-by.
Yes, yes. It’s me that did those things. Not my teenage friend, who doesn’t seem too bothered by that small cut on his forehead at all. It was me.
That’s the Charlie King everybody knows. That’s the Charlie King I know.
Not this useless little thing, sat at the side of the road and barely able to comprehend the scale of what’s just happened.
It sits there and watches as the paramedics arrive. It stares on as they try their level best to save the old man’s life.
It doesn’t do much of anything as other paramedics check it over, and declare it uninjured, apart from the very obvious shock of being in a car accident.
But after this has happened, the useless lump starts to be taken over by Charlie King again. The man in control. The man who knows how to organise. How to problem solve. How to make things better.
Constructing events is my bread and butter, after all. So why can’t I construct a version of this day’s events in my head that is so much easier to deal with than the truth?
Of course I can.
As long as I don’t look over at where the paramedics have given up trying to save the old man’s life. As long as I don’t engage with any of that again.
I’ll just keep looking the other way.
Down the road I was driving along before all this happened.
Yes. That’s the way to handle this. Look forward. Put all of this behind you.
Forget it.
When the police come to talk to me, I make sure to keep looking down the road, and never back. When I call my insurance firm to tell them about what’s happened, I keep looking down the road, and never back.
When I am eventually told I am allowed to leave the scene, I make sure I head down the road a little before calling an Uber. I never look back.
It’s much easier once I am away from the scene of the accident.
Much easier to lie to myself. Much easier to believe the story my brain is telling me.
So much so that by the time I get home, I am pretty much back to normal. On the surface at least.
And when I get calls from both the police and the insurance firm over the next couple of days, the fiction has set in so much that I can easily forget that those calls ever happened, mere minutes after they are complete.
The foundations of my lie are strong. They will not buckle.
The lie of being Totally Fine.
That will be my story moving forward.
The story of Totally Fine.
And it will be a good story, a convincing story – that absolutely feels like reality, right up until I hear that damned Black Eyed Peas song again.
Because all stories have holes. They have places where the truth of them falls apart, no matter how hard the writer tries to prevent that from happening.
My story falls apart slowly at first . . . but then the dissolution becomes more and more rapid, until one day the whole thing unravels completely in the back seat of a limousine, surrounded by panicked friends.
And now the story of Totally Fine has fallen to pieces, what on earth does it get replaced with?
The Truth.
Please.
No.