The Accident Part1

 PART 1

A faint white, thin and transparent figure could be seen in the corner.

A light flashes on my eyes vertically, piercing through my pupils as I sit upstraight quickly to turn it off from running my fingers absently on a button on its holder.

I look around myself to find it all dark and gloomy at its peak. Strange. It takes a moment for me to figure it all out. The color. The smell. The aura. It’s a hospital for sure. 

      I strain my brain to remember the last memory of mine before dozing to nowhere. I was in a bus. It..crashed. I was heading towards a coffee shop with my sister, Judy, beside me on the seat. Yeah, I can recall it all now. I was hurt. A bone cracked on the left leg due to the crashing of a hefty seat on it and the pain of it made me faint. The sirens woke me up. The red blazing sun above me marked the end of that day for me. It was 20th april on that day. What is on today? And where is Judy?

I can hear the distant cribbing of news channels, the voices. At least I am not dead for sure now. It is real, I guess. I handle my head on my hands as I soft rub my face and eyes and take a shake on my leg which is throbbing. I can still feel the break but the plaster all over makes it still. I feel strong but not so much as being a builder and not so weak as being a sinner. 

Removing the white sheet over on me, I slid off from my bed, slip into the carrier chair, remove my tubes and get ready to move on outside. I don’t have an actual destination but I wanna know what had happened thereafter. I want to find her. I wanna know if she’s okay. And where is she?

As I was about to turn the wheel on with my hands, something abruptly stops the chair. I look down to find any hindrances and suddenly the door flungs open and my brother comes rushing in towards me. He stops for an instant to look at me before throwing on his arms around me tightly. I do too and out of the blue, he starts crying. 

He told me about everything. Every. Single. Thing. About how he is so happy to see me well awaken. About what happened that evening. About the sirens, ambulances, carriages, the crowd, the big news about the crash, about everything on that accident. And finally, about Judy. 

He takes a deep breath before letting all the things out of his heart in one go with shower of tears from his eyes. 

       It starts raining outside. I can hear the soft patter of rain on the window. The clouds, the thunder, the wind, everything is a chaos outside and my heart is empty. I gesture him towards the window to open the curtains. I pull my chairs towards the window, this time unhindered and gaze out of the window to let myself sleep in the rain. My brother slowly pulls up, tells me he is outside if I need anything and gently closes the door behind. When he and I both know that the castle we saw, we built up in our childhood on the beach, getting washed over by the rain and into the ocean. As I and him both stood glancing over the shore to see our fairytales wither while our Judy jumps up and down in joy to feel the rain, unaware of her castle. Unaware of us. 

I doze off. Sobbing.

I wake up in the afternoon the next day to find a note beside on the bed table filled with, still, breakfast. I open the white cut sheet and read the initials first of the sender, C.N., and read-

"I’m Carrie Noble. I came to know about you and your sister, Judy, and I’m sorry about he…"

I crumple up the note right there and was about to throw it off when I remembered that I’m 14 and I want to become a doctor and the list says I should be, resilient. I reopen the crumbled piece and read the remaining goddamn thing.

"and I’m sorry about her. I also lost my daughter in that horrific accident. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute. If you aren’t bothered, I will come by at 0630 by evening. Get well soon."

And the crap ‘best wishes’. Who is this person? Does she know me? Have I ever heard from her?

The evening comes by quickly here, laying at the hospital, doing nothing. It hasn’t stopped raining since last midnight and the sky looks yellowish with white clouds. I hear a knock on the door at sharp 0630 and call out ‘come in’ while I keep on looking out the window, into the sky, ignoring the visitor and clearly showing my disgust. But I take a look if I know her.

Carrie looks like she’s in her early 30s as her hair is clipped back with a small clutcher, catching only half of her hairs and losing grasp on the short silky strands above her ears. She safely shuts the door and gesture towards a mini chair, asking for permission if I am ready to talk. I tilt to my left and back like a cool kid and wait till she’s seated herself comfortably. She drops her red leather bag on the floor which she brought in with her and pulls out a folder on her lap. Glancing once at her file and after waving a deep sigh down her throat and closing her eyes for strength, she looks up at me with a soft smile I don’t recognize. 

                    “For the familiarity, we haven’t met before but I think I know you and I don’t know how. Actually, my daughter told me that.”

Did I read it wrong? Her daughter’s dead right? 

“I am not a psychic Carrie, if I am allowed, in case you don’t know. ” 

“Yeah, I know and I believe that I might be sounding absurd to you. Okay..starting from the beginning. I lost my 7 year old daughter in the accident you were also in. I’m-I’m just deeply moved by it and I want to know what happened. I know,” she says holding up a hand towards me,”that you also don’t know much about that. I just thought I could relate you. Cassie, my daughter, was the only person I had after her father died in a plane crash on a business trip and, and I’m an orphan by childhood so I don’t really have someone to tell and release my feelings. I thought that you and I are both going through the same stage and, and I just thought if I could confide in you? Let’s be real about this, can we? Like, um, you know, can I share it with you?”

She’s like an, old person.

“Yeah, okay. That’s fine.” I say finally because I don’t know if it matters.

“Thank you. Well..I hope you are aware that you were the only survivor of the accident” I suddenly look up in shock, “oh, you didn’t. That’s okay. I’m, by the way, very sorry for your sister.”

I shake my hand to gesture that it’s okay and I, if she caught it, am not read to speak about myself. 

“But after reading the news channels and journals on the crash, I find it very much queer.”

“Can you explain about that accident to me if you know anything? I didn’t ask anyone, though I want to know at least.” I say blurting it out of my chest.

“uh, the bus bumped on the bridge and fell down the river after the crash. It was loud and..people were afraid. The Moana bridge is at a height you know. They were afraid, from what I got to know on the internet, if anyone will survive. You did though,” she smiles looking up at me,” and thereafter, ambulances were called and the dead bodies lifted. But it was too late I guess. Too..late.”

She gazes out the window and we both, now, look at the vast stretch of life under the window and the dead sky above.

“I didn’t actually came here to talk about the accident though,” she says with a stern look and wrinkling of the brows, and now at me indicating that its serious. “The accident costed lives, it’s true. All 40 dead except one. You won’t be expecting a mother to talk about her dead child just 2 days after the incident. No one has that much courage. But the dead do.”

“I am not ashamed to admit that Cassie and I tried a million times to be able to talk to the dead. The 7 year old and I made a device through which we could communicate with the dead and this might obviously sound strange to the novice but a tough dedication for 8 months in year can bring you this. Cassie was more like a friend to me since I didn’t have any much friends since childhood. I was left alone, grew up alone and now I was happy to find a family. But after the death my husband I was left shattered for sure. For days me and Cassie mourned for that but there was this passion that me and her shared all along, that she got from me. I am a science student and I am working in a laboratory as a senior professor in a university now. And I knew how to build something. Though I and her failed to reach fully to him but we were getting signals from the same portal for few days before the accident. We tried to reach back and the lines went dead before leaving a last message-20.04. We couldn’t understand it then but now, I do.”

“I know what spirits are and I am not mad. I know no one is going to believe me, at least not an adult. Hence I reached for you. You are in the learning stage. I know you will understand.”

“Cassie and I made the device for the dead. We never did and obviously I guess, will never be able to feel the other world but it was at least, the least to reach out to them. And I wasn’t going to give up on that so easily. And I wasn’t too dead yet for the idea to pop on me. I again refreshed it and tried to reach to her and have been trying to reach to her since yesterday through that same device but she isn’t answering.”

“I read the whole case about the accident but it doesn’t says much logic but rather it is more queer.”

PART 2 coming soon