The Middle Man
My writing group had a prompt to write about the "middle man." This is what I came up with.
Shane slams on his brakes about 7 seconds too late. The car in front of him makes contact with his front bumper and his first thought is, “How did they back into me so hard?”
At almost the same time his body is forced forward as another jolt impacts his car from behind and the sound is a physical force. How can sound be so loud and why does he feel it in his chest?
Once everything stops, the sounds, the engine, the shrieking in his brain, he tries to take a deep breath. It’s funny how hard it is to inhale while a steering wheel is sitting on your chest. Or in your chest, in Shane’s case.
I just need to get butter, he keeps thinking as the woman from the car in front of him gets out of her car and looks back at him, stunned. There’s blood on her face. I wonder if she was going to the store too, he thinks. Maybe they would have passed each other in the dairy aisle in another universe, him nodding politely as he waited for her to grab a pack of butter. She would have smiled and thanked him for waiting, turned her cart and left. He never would have thought about her again.
Now, he’s taking in this woman who is walking in slow motion to his car. Her dark hair has come loose from her ponytail and a few strands are stuck in her lip-gloss. She doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
Kara has hair almost as dark as this woman’s. But Kara’s is longer and thicker. She complains about how heavy it is.
“Why don’t you cut it? That would cut down on the weight, har har.”
“Because I like it long. It feels like a warm hug around my shoulders and back. I can live with the weight,” she would reply, pulling it into a ponytail.
The woman is now at his window. He can see her eyes, brown, nothing like Kara’s green eyes. She’s knocking and he can hear her asking if he’s okay. He can tell the moment she sees his abdomen. Her hand flies to her mouth, her eyes wide and she looks around. Probably looking for help, or a way out of this nightmare. She looks behind his car, to the car with its nose is in his trunk, and she chokes. Tears are everywhere, on her face, her shirt, in Shane’s ears.
He looks in the rearview mirror and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The car behind him has no windshield. It’s cracked and hanging off to the left side and someone is laying on the hood of the car. They’re facedown and not moving and Shane is glad he can’t see more. There’s a man behind the wheel who is staring out the driver’s side window not moving.
Shane looks away.
He should call Kara and let her know he doesn’t have the butter. She’s waiting for it so she can make the cake. She’s been agonizing for weeks over this cake.
“I think we should make a strawberry cake. She loves pink and I can decorate it with pink and white icing flowers.”
“That would be pretty,” he’d said, falling in love with her a little more as he basked in her excitement.
“Or maybe lemon? Yellow and white flowers would be pretty too.”
“Honey, she’s only one. I think she’ll love whatever sugared concoction we put in front of her and let her faceplant into.”
Kara had laughed then, and he remembers thinking she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her joy at planning their daughter Hailey’s first birthday had consumed his wife for weeks and even though he thought making such a big to-do about her first birthday was over the top, he loved seeing how excited Kara was. She’d finally decided to stick with strawberry, and she spent hours lost online looking up cake recipes.
“I want it to be healthy but still yummy,” she’d said and didn’t appreciate Shane declaring that wasn’t possible.
She’d made three different cakes in the past two weeks, insisting he sample each one and waiting eagerly as he chewed. They all tasted the same he thought - pink and bland - but he couldn’t disappoint Kara and he didn’t think Hailey would care, so he finally declared the last one the winner.
“Delicious,” he’d said, as she clapped her hands grinning.
“It’ll taste better once it’s frosted. I’m going to splurge and do a buttercream frosting, but not too thick.”
This was why he needed butter. Kara had discovered they were out when she went to take the sticks out to get to room temperature that morning. He thought she might start crying when she realized she’d need to add a trip to the store to her already full to-do list for the party, so he’d wrapped her in his arms and told her he’d go.
“You don’t have to do everything yourself,” he’d reminded her. “We’re a team. I’m a very capable human being.”
She relaxed into him. “You’re the best, thank you. Hailey and I are so lucky to have you.”
“The luck is all mine,” he’d replied, meaning it.
Shane was brought back to the present when his passenger door was opened.
“Sir are you able to move?” the young paramedic asked.
Shane looked at him and wondered if his mom had made him a special cake with buttercream frosting for his first birthday.
He closed his eyes, wanting to go back to his memory of this morning, when he was whole, and everything was filled with joy.
Hailey, standing in her crib, dimpled legs bouncing in her morning delight at being awake in the world.
Kara, messy bun, and her favorite pink pajamas, carrying Hailey into the kitchen singing Happy Birthday as his little girl giggled and reached for him.
Him, taking his daughter in his arms and relishing the weight of her, the warmth and the love that came with holding her.
“Sir, we’re going to get you out. Sir, can you tell me your name?”
Shane opened his mouth, but his throat was dry, and he immediately closed it. They’d find his license soon and know his name. He was too tired to try to speak.
He could hear the sounds around him, the sirens, the man in the car behind him wailing, “No no no.” When he opened his eyes he saw the crowd gathering, the police telling people to move on, back up. He knew this scene would be broadcast to someone’s social media, #accident #sosad, #death.
He felt his body being moved and then he felt the pain. Hot, stabbing, stealing his breath and his desire to remain conscious. He felt hands on him, voices trying to get into his head while his own head lay slack and heavy. He felt his body on a stretcher the pain now excruciating as he lay flat instead of propped up with the steering wheel keeping him upright. He smelled the blood, acidic, metallic, and rubbery from the tires.
He didn’t know how long he laid on the stretcher before being loaded into the ambulance. He was at home again, in bed with Kara, Hailey between them, the TV blaring some silly kids show with ridiculous but upsettingly catchy music that he knew he’d be humming again tomorrow in the shower. He looked at his wife and daughter and wondered how a kid with an alcoholic dad and a mom who left when he was three could have pulled himself out of the fate that was in store for him and find his way to college, to the English lit class that sat him next to kara and into this bed with this tiny perfect being.
“His name was Shane Gray, age 32.”
“Blue Toyota?”
“No, the gray Honda. He was the middle man.”
The middle man.
Was.