When he comes back,
Don't you dare forget how broken you were
When he left.

.\.|./.

Crystal Monroe

|in which she almost kills god|

Everything happens in the blink of an eye, which surprises me because all my knowledge of road accidents comes from serials and movies which show that they happen in slow motion. Now, though, I realize that the world does not stop when you hit someone with your car. Instead, everything speeds up.

As soon as I stop the car and jump out of it, there are people all around me. I try to make my way to the person I hit but a crowd is already forming, blocking my access to him -- he's male, and that's all I can tell from his crooked body lying roadside and surrounded by strangers who want to make sure he's okay. I hear voices, so many of them, failing to understand anything except the fact that I might've just killed someone.

A few minutes later, I'm escorted by a couple of police officers into a bustling police station. My heart beats in my ears and I can't formulate words, barely able to answer all the questions they ask me.

"She's clearly shaken," says one at last, his face a blur.

"Get the CCTV footage," calls another.

I'm seated in a cell when another officer comes and tells me I'm free to go. "It was an accident," he says, appeasing me with the declaration.

"I'm not a murderer," I breathe.

The officer nods, sighing through his nose.

Walking out of the station on wobbly knees, I'm handed the keys of my car by another officer who doesn't say a word. My hands shake when I unlock the car and get in, my fingers trembling around the steering wheel when I begin to drive again. My brain cries out. I shouldn't be driving. I could hit someone else.

Nonetheless, I need to make sure the man I hit is okay. If he's alive, I might be able to sleep at night.

I make it to the bustling state hospital and barge into the emergency room. The receptionist doesn't answer me when I ask her where the accident patients are held, not even when I nearly yell at her. I finally take a step back, huffing out a breath of frustration. That's when I notice a couple of police officers walking out of one of the corridors and I assume that must lead to the person I wish to see.

Assuming that's the case, I head into the corridor and notice the sign 'Emergency' flashing bright red above the glass doors leading along another hallway. I pass through them, expecting to find someone who will give me the answers I need. I finally stop outside an operation theatre and see a woman speaking to a man in white.

"Please tell me he'll be okay!"

The hysteric voice of the female reaches me and I focus on the young woman with red hair pleading with the doctor. Her mascara runs down her freckled cheeks, leaving dark trails in their wake. She doesn't wipe it away, too distressed for whoever she's here for.

"We'll try --"

"No," she cries out, throwing her hands into the air. "You have to do something. I swear if anything happens to him, I'll kill whoever hit him with their car. I swear, I'm going to --"

"I'm sorry," I blurt out before I know what I'm doing.

The woman spins around to look at me, her eyes a shade darker than Jeremy's blue ones. 

"You?" she sobs. "Who are you?"

"I ... I hit someone with my car today," I say uncertainly. "I don't know if you're with him but ..."

"You hit him?" she gasps. "Why are you here?"

Her question makes perfect sense, but my answer will not. I hold it in, refusing to tell the woman that I want to make sure that the stranger is okay. He might not be, and there might not be much I can do to improve his state. Regardless, apologizing will perhaps make me feel less responsible for his pain.

"Listen here you!" The woman stalks up to me, poking a finger at my face and glaring at me with venom so that I wince under her gaze. "If you're the reason he's here and if anything happens to him. I swear to God I'll kill you. I'll kill you if my brother dies, you hear me?"

My breath catches in my throat and my shoulders sag under the weight of her words.

Brother?

No. No, please no.

Brothers are sacred.

Brothers are special.

You can hit boyfriends with cars. You can hit husbands, and friends, and even fathers. But you never hit brothers.

The first code of being a girl: respect another girl's brother.

"I'm sorry."

My broken apologies sound rehearsed. They feel automatic and insincere. That would explain why this girl standing in front of — ready to kill for her dying brother — doesn't look like she believes a thing I'm saying.

She drifts into silence, turning her back on me like I don't exist, and I cave in on myself.

Anger hurts. Anger breaks. Anger kills a piece of us.

I don't even know her, but her anger hurts and her hate does too.

I don't want her to hate me. So many people already hate me. My parents, my family, my friends, my boyfriend. Even I hate me.

She takes a seat on the dingy, metal bench, her palms rubbing her thighs like she needs to do something with her hands before she throttles me. I stand in the middle of the bleached hallway until people bump into me enough times to make me move. I then end up plastered against the cold wall and wishing I could melt through.

Two hours feel like twenty thousand when waiting, and for me, the wait is even worse. I'm waiting for freedom. Freedom from guilt and from the realization that I might be someone to take away a girl's brother. You can't lose brothers. As I said, brothers are special.

I lost my brother because of someone. Someone who didn't mean to take him away from me.

I lost him because of myself when I picked Jeremy over him. I could either have Jeremy or my brother, and I made the wrong choice.

Staring at my own black-and-white Nike joggers, I wonder how it would have been if I hadn't been looking out in wrong directions, searching for Jeremy in strangers' faces and singing along to his Gomez.

I wouldn't be standing here feeling like shit, for one.

The door to the operation theater opens wide and a tired-looking doctor steps out, stretching his mask off his mouth and dropping it around his neck like a noose.

Doctors always look so sad. Doctors have sad lives.

Maybe everyone does.

I catch snatches of conversation. I can hear more if I try, but something about the doctor-to-sister chat feels personal. It feels sacred, and I don't want to hear it. I don't want to intrude into something that matters to the girl more than it could ever matter to me.

I'll know what to think. If the girl flies at me with knives in her hands in the next two minutes, I'll know I took her brother from her. If she relaxes, I'll know I didn't.

She does neither, slumping onto the bench and slapping her hands over her mouth. She cries.

Her sobs shake through me, rattling me to the core. I never wanted to be the girl who would cause someone this much pain. I never wanted to be the girl who put people in surgery.

Yet, I am this and more.

A gurney rolls out of the theater and towards the other end of the wall, with the sister running after it like her own life depends on it. They vanish around the corner, and I don't follow. I don't deserve to follow. I'm not family. I'm the unwanted cause of all of this.

So I stand there in the hospital corridor smelling strongly of phenyl, waiting for God-knows-what. I don't know what I'm waiting for. Maybe the formal declaration that the person I nearly killed is alive. Maybe I'm just waiting for someone to yell at me and curse me out.

Jeremy has taught me to expect that.

Jeremy ... that is the name all my thoughts come back to. Every minute of every day. With every breath and every heartbeat, with every self-deprecating thought and every moment of self-loathing I indulge in, it's his name I always come back to. His name is my anchor.

My Jeremy.

My Jem. My gem.

That's what he used to be.

The boy I thought he was before I saw the man he actually was. For, he isn't my knight in shining armor. He is my villain in all his Joker-smile glory. He's my Edward Cullen, willing to suck the life out of me at the slightest temptation. He's my Christian Grey, getting off on hurting me. He hurts me emotionally. He enjoys it. He relishes it and revels in every moment of it, every chance he gets.

Food got cold: 'You can't even make half-decent sandwiches, Cris.'

Too late in opening the door: 'Who are you hiding in your closet, Cris?'

Didn't answer text fast enough: 'Playing hard to get again, Cris?'

He loves to see me hurt, break me down bit by bit so he can stand over the shattered pieces and rub his sly-mouthed love in my face.

'I still love you, Cris, you know that. I love you when no one else will.'

His half-meant I-love-you's lost their touch a while ago, but some part of me still believes them. Maybe it's my own coping mechanism, telling myself I'm not alone because I have an emotionally abusive boyfriend to watch out for me three days a year. I wonder why I still call him my boyfriend and not my 'ex'-boyfriend. Maybe because I don't want to know what he'll say if he finds out I ever said that. He'll probably sit over me and say things till I beg him to hit me instead. This is the effect his words have on me; they leave wounds worse than I left in the man I ran over this morning.

"Hey, you?"

Speaking of that man ...

His sister stands two feet from me, her arms folded across her chest and her face flushed. She looks a little calmer, though, so I'm assuming her brother isn't in too bad of a state. Maybe today we both get to live after all. Honestly, if I found out I ended his life, I would gladly let his sister beat me to death right here in this hospital corridor.

"You wanna see him?" she asks me.

My lips part a little, not understanding why she would want me anywhere near her brother. I almost killed him the last time I was within proximity to him.

"You look like someone who would like to apologize so you can sleep at night," she adds.

Okay, the girl has a good eye. She saw this much of me in these awkward hours in the hospital, even when neither of us looked at the other. Her brother is lucky to have her. Unlike my brother. Unlike my anyone.

I need not answer, as she's already spun around like a diva who means business. Her twirl alone tells me she would claw my eyes out with manicured nails if she had her way, but by the looks of it, she's letting me near her brother against her will.

I don't mind as long as I get to throw that apology off my chest and go home.

So I follow her around the corner, around another, and through a single, white door that says 'private room 6' on it. It takes a moment for me to stop outside the door once she has gone through, and I suck in a deep breath through my nose before pushing through the door like I'm going into a wrestling ring.

That probably would have been easier and more convenient considering what I actually walk into. If this is a wrestling match, or a football match, or even world war III, I've already lost.

As soon as my eyes see the face of the man lying on that bed, I'm losing.

I've lost my mind before. I've lost my heart. I've lost my family, my freedom, my self-confidence, and even my virginity to the biggest playboy across the Alaskan territory, maybe even the world.

But here, standing in the hospital doorway like I've just been hit by a truck and left suspended mid-air, in a coma, with my body preserved for the 2090 museum, I'm losing the thing I've been trying to keep intact for the past four years.

I'm losing my sanity.

Because I think I fucking killed God.

.\.|./.

Question: Do you have a brother? If yes, how do you feel about him? If no, do you wish you had one?

My answer: I love my brother's more than life itself ❤️