It wasn't the cold, and it wasn't the ringing in my head. It wasn't even the heavy sound of wind that rushed through my ears or the strange heaviness that filled me from the diaphragm down.
It was something simple: my hand. I couldn't move my hand and it was the near panic at losing that sort of control over something so very basic that set my heart to racing and my breath catching in my chest as I tried to sit up.
"Baby, take it easy," Beth's voice soothed, her hands pressed against my chest and as I looked over her head, I saw my brother, my brother whom I hadn't seen since just before Beth, I, we...
"Get your hands away from her - you've done enough."
It was an easy enough story to put together - we'd almost been side swiped on the left side by another vehicle and in an attempt to avoid the car in front of us, the rapid deceleration caused the car behind to slam into us which threw our vehicle into the right lane where we then hit another car, then flipped.
Noah had protected me from the drum case that had tumbled our way, but no one could have prevented my arm from breaking between my body and the second side impact.
And no one could have prevented the internal damaged wreaked by the sharp blow against my lower back.
I myself wasn't permantly injured but...I felt a very quiet sorrow that settled somewhere in my chest when I realized what it meant.
We never made it to the show - and while Noah had shattered an ankle, he could still play. The show would go on without me, I went home, an uneasy truce drawn between my brother and Beth, a heavy cloud over my head that didn't lift, even when ensconced in our bed with the whispered reassurances that the loss wasn't my fault, that in time we'd try again.
It wasn't that I didn't want to do that with her, for her - it was the thought of doing it again, the same way that made me want to scream defiance.
But I knew how emotionally fragile Beth was and for the time being, forebore from telling her that I'd be willing to do anything but that, not again. It had hurt not my body so much, though there had been that, too, but my mind. I was starting to think I still wasn't over the sheer shock of the whole thing.
I tried, in my own way, to suggest we do something slightly different, something not so...well, it didn't matter. Beth was convinced that it was beautiful, that it would be fine, and
I started to cut myself again in places that wouldn't be seen when Beth wasn't home, and once the cast was fully off, I stopped eating.
