Day Nine: Last Summer…

Today’s Prompt: A man and a woman walk through the park together, holding hands.

Today’s twist: write the scene from three different points of view

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The Man

She insisted that we take a walk in the park to calm my nerves. As if my nerves could turn calm after what we did last summer. I think that it’s her nerves, she wants to calm more, in this walk, than she wants to calm me. I still can remember the lady’s cry of pain when our car rammed into her. Her vivid grey eyes that grew vacant and closed at the hospital. The pain in the tears of her son who had come all the way from half-way around the globe. He hadn’t blamed or accused us – but the innocent faces of her grandkids as they clung onto her boy, their father, was accusation enough for me.

Talk of the devil.

That’s her. On that bench. She’s alive. Impossible. Unless, the accident didn’t kill her, it injured her. I had been under the impression that she wouldn’t survive. But she has.

I fell on my knees.

Oh God. Thank you.

I could no longer bear it. My relief breaks out as tears.

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The Woman

It’s been several months and neither of us came out of it. Even though he doesn’t talk much about it – his guilt shows up. He’s neither touched a bottle nor the steering wheel in the months since the accident.

And hence, to relax and keep calm, I pester him to take a walk with me. As we walk around the park, I keep checking him to make sure he doesn’t collapse or anything because of the traumatic experience. We had caused an accident a few months back. Unfortunately, the victim was an old lady who succumbed to her injuries.

We were already leaving the hospital when I stopped for a word with her son. He didn’t blame us. He believed that it happened because it was meant to happen. He did feel sad at the fact that his children might not get exposed to the love of a grandmother, but that was as much as he said. And that left me even more guilty. It is one thing to shout and vent out whatever you feel. It’s another to do what he did. Fill me with remorse for whatever we did.

Talk of the devil.

It simply can not be the lady. Either my eyes are playing tricks on me or I’m in a nightmare and she’s back from the dead to haunt us. I’m pretty sure I saw her declared dead by the doctor. I start praying. He does the same I believe. He’s fallen to his knees and is crying.

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The Old Lady

It’s been a few months since the summer accident, and life has never been the same since. Most of my daily time and energy is spent looking after the kids. Right now, I am knitting a small, red sweater for the younger one. I spend my life self-absorbed. Even now, I’m not aware of who else is doing what around me.

I don’t think life can go back to normal. For a normal life excludes the car accident that claimed my twin sister.