After the Crash

They say your whole life flashes before your eyes before you die.

For me, it was just a flash of headlights and then... silence.

We were driving home from a friend's dinner party.

Thursday night. Laughter still echoing in the car.

Dominic was humming to himself, his hand warm on the wheel, the old brown Explorer bumping along the city road like it always did.

I was looking at him when the other car hit us.

That’s the last thing I remember before everything fractured.

---

I woke up sideways.

Upside down or maybe just wrong.

Everything buzzed. My vision pulsed. There was blood in my mouth and a searing pain in my temple.

“Dominic?” My voice cracked as I reached out, hand grasping blindly for his.

His fingers twitched in mine.

A groan. A breath.

"I'm here," he rasped, barely more than a whisper.

It was all I needed.

Until the sirens came.

Until they pulled him from the wreck and I couldn’t feel his hand anymore.

---

The hospital smelled like bleach and fear.

I’d been there for hours. Days maybe.

Doctors came and went like ghosts, speaking in clipped, rehearsed tones.

Finally, one of them stopped in front of me. A tall man with eyes that had seen too much.

“Mrs. Herer,” he began.

That was all it took.

My heart knew what he was about to say before my brain could stop him.

“Your husband suffered a traumatic brain injury. There’s significant damage to the spinal cord.”

He paused. “He may never walk again.”

The words hung in the air like smoke.

I couldn’t breathe them in.

“Paralyzed?” I asked.

He nodded. “We’re doing everything we can.”

---

When he left, I sat by Dominic’s bed, staring at the wires and machines that now connected us more than our hands did.

He looked peaceful.

He always looked peaceful in sleep, even now with the bruises and bandages.

But something in me was unraveling.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to shatter something, anything, to match the way my world had been shattered.

Instead, I whispered, “I’m here.”

Over and over again, like a mantra. Like a promise. Like a prayer I wasn’t even sure I believed in anymore.

---

There was no one else to call.

Not because there were no people, but because there was no one who would understand.

My mother would make this about her.

My father hadn’t called in years.

Friends faded fast when the noise of grief became too loud for them.

It was just me and Dominic. And silence.

---

The days blurred together.

I learned to read the heart monitor like a second language.

I learned the nurses’ names.

I learned how to fake a smile when they asked if I was okay.

Dominic didn’t wake up.

Not fully. Sometimes his fingers twitched. Sometimes his breathing changed. But his eyes never opened.

Still, I talked to him.

Told him about the weather. The nurses. The things I remembered from the night before the crash.

And every time, I ended with the same words:

“I’m here.”

---

One night, two weeks after the accident, I brought an old photo album from home.

I flipped through it beside him.

“Remember this?” I said, showing him a picture of us on the beach, sunburnt and grinning. “We fought over that cheap plastic umbrella. You swore you could set it up without reading the instructions.”

No response.

Just the quiet beep of machines.

But I swore—for just a second—his finger curled ever so slightly on the blanket.

---

Hope became something dangerous.

It crept into my chest when I wasn’t looking.

It whispered lies like, maybe he’ll open his eyes today, maybe he’ll say your name, maybe this isn’t forever.

And every night, I crushed it down again.

Until the morning it happened.

---

I had just finished brushing my teeth in the hospital bathroom when a nurse ran in.

“Mrs. Herer, he’s—he’s awake.”

Time folded.

I don’t remember walking into the room, but suddenly I was there, at his bedside, my heart hammering louder than the monitor.

Dominic’s eyes were open.

Dazed. Clouded. But open.

“Hey,” I said, breathless.

He blinked slowly, and for a moment I thought maybe he didn’t know me.

Then…

One corner of his mouth lifted.

“Still here?” he whispered.

Tears came fast and hard.

I grabbed his hand. Held it to my heart.

“Always,” I said. “I never left.”

---

We don’t know what the future holds.

There will be surgeries. Therapy. Pain.

There will be days when neither of us recognizes our life anymore.

But we’re still us.

And that’s enough.