FanStory.com - The Redemption of Heatherby Patrick Bernardy

The first thought Heather had after the collision was not of pain, the destruction of her car, the blood that dripped from her chin, or whether she was alive or dead. Her bewildered brain snatched information from her ears first, and all she could think about was how the deafening wail of her favorite Nightwish song melded perfectly with the off-key and continuous drone of her car’s horn.

Inexplicably, she nodded her approval at the addition to the song, and a humorous image popped into her mind of a YouTube screen with the words: “Romanticide (Car-Wreck Remix)” across the top.

The spark of creative inspiration only seemed appropriate for another second before her world spiraled into terror.

Then pain hit her.

She recalled the sonic echo of the collision.

She shrieked at the realization of what had happened.

The mini-van had hit her Honda head-on. The last image she remembered before the collision was of a middle-aged blonde woman, her mouth and eyes flying open in silent horror behind a rain-streaked windshield—both sets of wiper-blades waving back and forth as if warning them of the impending impact.

Heather's nose was bleeding profusely. She lifted a hand to her face, trying to stop the flow of blood, but touching her nose caused such intense pain that she gave up, and the blood continued to gush. Streams of it were staining the front of her white sweater, and she could feel its stickiness pooling between her thighs, moistening the thin fabric of her stretch-pants.

Always a heavy bleeder during menstruation, Heather was no stranger to the feeling of blood down there, and she recalled the one time in her first year as a teacher that she had gone to school unprepared for it. Her father had always claimed she was given to random swirls of flightiness. Sometimes bills went unpaid, an essential ingredient to a grocery list would be inexplicably forgotten, birthdays of loved-ones would pass unacknowledged. The day she had forgotten that her purse was empty of tampons had been the most memorable of these flights of forgetfulness. It had been a nerve-wracking first hour as she covertly questioned one female student after another for the needed item. It had not been the first time she resented being the only female teacher at the private school on the younger side of menopause, but it certainly had been the most embarrassing and surreal.

She looked down at her steering column and noticed that the horn-casing had been fractured open by the force of her colliding face; jagged cracks spanned the center of it like fault-lines. She knew that any face that did that to hard plastic would suffer the scars forever. She trembled with fear at the implications.

Suddenly, she was filled with rage.

Her hands gripped the steering wheel like wrathful vigilantes, trying to shake it loose in her fury. Her manic shaking forced globules of blood to fly from her face like pellets from a shotgun shell.

In the end, the only thing the outburst accomplished was more pain.

“Piece of shit!” she screamed, adding another to the long list of invectives she had created for her twenty-two year-old car. Newer cars had much softer horn-casings filled with air bags, something that would have been more than useful a minute ago. But, of course, air bags and softer horn-casings came with a car payment, something Heather could not afford with the bad debt she had carelessly incurred during her years in college.

But her face! What must it look like?

Forgetting the trickle of blood pouring out of her nose, she lifted her right hand to adjust the rearview mirror. The face that stared back at her was not anyone she recognized. Both eyes were puffy and red, and a jagged and bleeding cut stretched across her left cheek. Her nose was split open vertically on its tip, exposing the interior cartilage. Her left nostril had torn free and was flipped back against her cheek, stuck in a smear of congealing blood. Her upper lip was swollen and lacerated, and she felt intense pain from inside her mouth, where the lip connected to her gums. She spread her lips and saw that all four top front teeth were gone. She found two of them in the puddle of blood between her thighs. Lifting a large incisor, she looked at it with curiosity as if she were an entomologist studying an insect. It had broken off from its root, which Heather assumed was still in its socket.

A memory blossomed in her mind of the first second after her face hit the horn-casing. As soon as her face had rebounded back, she had reflexively spit out the teeth.

As her tear-blurred gaze absorbed this sight and processed its implications, she whimpered, bloody spit-bubbles popping between her lips.

Her cuteness was gone forever—shattered, banished in favor of hideous scars and reconstructive surgery. Would they even be able to put her face back together? What would Jack think? He loved to stare into her face, said she was adorably pleasant to look at. Would he take the engagement ring he had hidden in the pocket of his winter coat back to the jeweler? Or even worse, would he find someone else adorably pleasant to look at to give it to? How could she stand in front of fifteen teenage girls whose only criteria for judging someone's worth was prettiness? Would she have to wear a mask of gauze and surgical tape? She wouldn't do it. They would mock her behind her back, and one day she would intercept a note that called her "Scarface" or "Corpse Bride."

She continued to stare at herself in the mirror, and the blood continued to flow. Her nose was a leaky pipe with no plumber in sight. She felt a strange sensation coming from her feet. The underside of the dashboard was mashed over her lower legs. As if her recognition freed the nerve-endings, pain flew up to her brain, and she screamed again, high-pitched and hysterical.

She managed one courageous tug, trying to move her legs, but they barely budged. In agony, she gave up.

Paraplegic, too? Her grandfather lived his entire life in a wheelchair, a victim of polio when he was a child. Could she face life as bravely as Granpapa, with his loving smile, graceful patience, and endearing nonchalance about the tribulations of life? Something inside her told her no. She had been pampered beyond the capability to handle anything that did not go her way. And she didn't even want to try.

She had loving, sheltering parents; they protected her from the fact that life could change with the absurd quickness of a careening mini-van on a rain-soaked highway. They had done her no favors. The Heather they created was weak and vain. What, now, did their enduring love offer this new Heather?

Tasting the salty mixture of blood and tears, she hurled vicious hate at her spider-webbed windshield, hate for her parents who, with their love, had not made her strong enough. She even left a spiteful jab for Granpapa, who cherished his only granddaughter, making her think she was special beyond imagining, making her think she was blessed and that nothing this bad could ever happen to her.

How could a pretty, well-liked, intelligent, and gifted teacher ever function as a wheelchair-bound paraplegic with a deformed face? They were not even close to the same people. The mind inside her head was created for that former Heather, specifically for her! It was ill-equipped to handle adversity. It was groomed for success and envy, happiness and love, pride and passion.

It had not learned how to deal with scorn and bitterness, pity and prejudice, loneliness and derision.

The former-Heather’s mind had no place in the skull of a crippled, ugly woman, forsaken by everything she held dear. Why had she not just died? It would have been easier. Her troubles would be over. Maybe if she just waited here long enough, she would bleed to death. Hoping to assist the process of death by blood-loss, she sent an irrational exhale of air through her shredded nostrils. She reeled in pain as a mass of blood and mucus cascaded over her lips and onto her sweater.

All she could do now was sob.

With her mind swirling with bleak images of the future, time seemed to creep by with horrible slowness. The pain was unbearable still, but her body was beginning to go numb from it. For the first time, Heather became curious about the outside world. She could see that rain was still falling in torrential sheets out either side-window, but she could not see out the front unless she moved to the side where there were fewer lines in the broken windshield.

She leaned over and gasped. She saw a woman lying face-down on the connected hoods of each vehicle. Somehow, Heather knew she was dead. Her head was shifted grotesquely to the right, in no position an unbroken neck would support. Her face was mercifully turned away from Heather.

The song-horn melody chose that moment to end, and Heather could hear through the rain the faint cries of a child somewhere inside the other vehicle. Erupting into an instant state of panic, she used all her strength and pain-tolerance to pry her lower legs free from the collapsed dashboard. With teeth-clenched paroxysms and cursing groans, she ignored the powerful stabs of pain that must have been blunted considerably by adrenaline.

All she could hear was the wailing of the child. It was now all she cared about.

Opening her car door, she stumbled into the rain, falling to the pavement of the highway. Screaming, she pushed herself with every bit of strength in her upper body and staggered toward the van. Throwing herself against the side-door, she took a deep, agonizing breath and flung it open with the last of her strength.

Inside was a two-year old girl—adorable pig-tails, frilly pink dress—strapped in a car seat. The child seemed unharmed but bawled with fear, her little face pinched in mindless terror and lack of understanding. When she saw Heather’s butchered face, she inhaled deeply and howled. Heather instinctively grabbed a small teddy bear with a big red bow around its neck from the floorboard and wiggled it in the girl's face.

“Momma!” the girl sobbed, pointing out the windshield onto the hood. Heather could not help thinking how cruelly selfish and stupid it was of the woman to have not worn her seat belt.

Heather heard sirens, felt wretched pain beyond imagining. She sank to her knees, still clutching the bear. Rain fell down her face in streams, washing the blood and mucus away. Light-headed and woozy, she fell face-first to the pavement.

Her last conscious thought was not of her shredded face, her wrecked legs, her finicky boyfriend, or how her parents had made her soft.

All she could think about was the sorrow the young girl would suffer growing up without her mother, and she vowed that if she survived, she would help her endure this senseless tragedy that brought them together.

With a sensation of sadness as she floated away toward unconsciousness, Heather realized for the first time in her life that love was all that really mattered. She felt hands on her, heard panicked voices, and then all was silent.

THE END