Exit Route

Their weekend home in Michigan is drawing to a close. They had spent it dashing between friends and relatives who demanded their time, and all who observed the couple were pleased at how they seemed to be getting on, adjusting to their new life together in Chicago, a move they had made two months prior. During the visit, Patrick’s booming laugh and unbounded energy had thoroughly charmed everyone in her life; it always did. The ease and speed with which he had endeared himself to them made her marvel. Mr. Charisma.

There was something about the way he deferred to her mother, the way he jostled and hugged her nieces and nephews like they were his own blood, the way he back-slapped and swapped stories and drank whiskey with her male friends, that made it seem like he had been there all along. A consensus formed that Molly had lucked out with this one, and throughout the weekend, she encountered many knowing smiles and intimations that a very happy engagement was surely on the horizon.

Molly didn’t tell anyone about the handfuls of Ativan and Ambien bottles she found under the bathroom sink, the hole in the drywall she hid with a generic Bed Bath & Beyond print. She just smiled back, tugged at the baggy wool sweater sleeves covering the bruises on her wrists, stuck to small talk. The sudden jolting polarity between her inner and outer life has left her bewildered and mute.

After a big family brunch at his parents’ house and all the protracted goodbyes, they finally climb into his Jeep to begin the journey back to, Molly feels, the resumption of a sentence. And at almost the precise moment they pull onto the highway: a blizzard, sudden and apocalyptic, blinding in its wrath. The road vanishes in front of and beneath them; their sudden 

seeming weightlessness as they helplessly skid forward takes her breath away and makes her hurriedly tap off the radio. Patrick’s knuckles are white at the wheel, his back rigid.

The Jeep slows to a crawl, narrowly missing other cars, continuously slipping and drifting and starting to spin, righting itself just in time. But cars all around them, every fifty feet or so, are losing control, sliding into one another, into the ditch, into the median. Still the Jeep creeps forward, and as they pass each incapacitated vehicle, Molly sees masks of shock on the faces of those inside as they pull out cell phones to call for help. She and Patrick are silent, except for his sputter as a Bronco roars past them, “Fucker’s gonna kill somebody!” Still they creep forward, and about fifteen minutes later, having hardly covered any ground, they come across that Bronco. It is overturned, on fire, in the median. A person lies beside it in the snow.

“Patrick, stop!” The force of her voice surprises them both. He does as he’s told, sliding to a harrowing halt on the shoulder, and without thinking, Molly flings open the passenger door and runs. As she does, slipping several times in her slick-bottomed sneakers, a series of terrifying revelations crystallize before her: this had just happened. She is about to be the first one on an accident scene. She has no medical training, or even inclination, whatsoever. She changes the channel during surgical close-up scenes on “Grey’s Anatomy”. She has no idea what she is about to see, or what she will do, or if she will be too immobilized by horror to do anything. And yet here she is, hurtling toward this person, heart and legs and adrenaline pumping.

He’s just a boy. Twenty, maybe. No jacket, just the nondescript twenty-something uniform of jeans and a button-down over a t-shirt. He could have easily been on his way to church, or a sports bar to meet buddies, or a part-time job at the mall. But the top half of his body is grotesquely perpendicular to the bottom half, and his head, which broke the windshield

as he was catapulted through it, is rapidly swelling, caricaturing his features. Somehow the worst part, though, as Molly drops to her knees to assess him, is that he is still conscious.

“What’s your name, love?” Again, she doesn’t recognize her voice. It sounds far away. And his, in turn- “Ryan”- is small, childlike, calm. He blinks up at her. Why is he so calm? Or do dying and calm look the same?

“Ryan, you’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna be okay, okay?” She says this repeatedly, aware of her inanity but unable to find other words. Her natural instinct is to touch him, perhaps smooth his hair or rub his arm, but no part of him appears unbroken and available for touching without agony. She kneels there helplessly. Then, realizing how fast the swirling snow is blanketing him, she removes her fuchsia pea coat and gently drapes it across him.

Others have seen the burning overturned Bronco, the boy lying next to it, have called 911, have pulled over to help. They come running, and three groups quickly form: one joining Molly, surrounding Ryan, another gawking from several feet away, and the third, all men including Patrick, surveying the car, discussing in urgent tones what should be done. Could it explode? No one knows for sure. But Ryan cannot be moved; the fire has to be extinguished. One man in coveralls and a Carhartt jacket barks with a foreman’s authority, “Grab some snow, guys!”, and the simple genius of this idea breaks like sunlight across them all. The men grab handfuls, armfuls of wet runny show and begin lobbing it into the exposed undercarriage of the car. Within minutes, the fire is out.

“Keep him talking,” a reasonable-sounding voice above Molly repeats. She looks up and sees that this voice, the same one that said an ambulance was on its way, belongs to a middle- aged woman with a steel gray ponytail and dangly silver earrings. So Molly continues to hover over Ryan, asking him questions. Where does he live? Who should we call? But after uttering

his name, Ryan’s voice has diminished to garbled incoherence. He continues to blink up at her. “Try to find his wallet!” she cries to the men hovering around the Bronco.

Something else: at one point, she looks over and sees Patrick, sees him with the others, shoveling snow into the burning car, and feels her chest swell as if too small for its contents. This- this is her man, who knows what to do, who will make this better somehow. This is who he really is, the last two months only a temporary aberration.

But he doesn’t come to her once the fire is out, doesn’t respond to the flutter of her beckoning fingers. He instead joins the gawkers, shrinking away from her, and finally turning his back on her in anxious, flurried conversation with the others. Ambulance coming any minute. Everyone called. Accidents up and down M-14. Treacherous.

Something else: the Beach Boys, blasting from the Bronco this whole time; in spite of the accident, the stereo has not been crushed. That’s what he had been listening to when this happened. Lyrics about California girls and surfing and fast cars pour from the wreck: sunny, boyish fantasies gruesomely juxtaposed with twisted metal and a young twisted body.

The foreman type approaches her, removes his Carhartt jacket, rests it on her shoulders. “You look cold,” he says simply. He has a great deal of kindness and weathering around the eyes.

“Ryan, where does it hurt?” The absurdity of her question galls her. His response is something like a gargle.

The ambulance rumbles onto the scene, its wailing siren and flashing lights creating the effect of a splashy TV crime drama. Ryan disappears into it, strapped to a spinal board, and is whisked away without any of the ceremony or fanfare Molly somehow expects. “That kid’s a goner,” the gray-haired woman predicts. No one contradicts her.

There is nothing left to do. Molly and some of the others drift numbly to the Bronco, not yet willing to disband. The Fire Department will come eventually and deal with the car. But in the meantime, there in the back, spied through broken glass, is the heavy, collegiate chemistry textbook. There is the Tigers baseball cap, brim slightly frayed. And there, still, are the Beach Boys, melodic and surreal, intermingled with the heat still humming noisily from the dashboard. The keys are in the ignition. Chemistry and Tiger baseball and California girls, like on any other Sunday afternoon.

The cold is setting in for the bystanders, slowly and silently driving them back to their cars. Many of them pause as they drift away and look back, as if expecting something else to happen. Nothing else happens. Molly makes her way back to the Jeep. Patrick is leaning against it, arms folded across his chest, jaw tight, waiting for her. And as she meets his gaze, all sense of capability leaves her. Hysteria climbs her insides like a vine.

He will put her in the Jeep, crank up the heat, fold her into his arms, hold her there until the violent shaking stops. He will tell her everything will be okay, that he loves her. He will be who she thought he was when they met, when he asked her to come to Chicago. He will be who he really is.

Instead, he hands her the keys. “I need you to take the wheel.”

“Patrick.” Her mouth forms the small O of shock. She looks west, around at the walls of whiteness pressing in on them, back at him. Accidents up and down M-14. Treacherous.

“I’m so tense right now, Molly. I’m a wreck. Please. Just do this.” He walks around to the passenger side, gets in. She takes the wheel.

As they crawl through the storm, Molly realizes in a slow syrup that she is still wearing the foreman’s jacket, and that Ryan was taken away still draped in hers. She calls the University

of Michigan Hospital, closest one to the scene; surely that’s where they took him. She describes, explains, asks for information. Name? Ryan. Last name? Unknown.

“He was wearing a plaid button-down,” she offers. He likes the Beach Boys.

“And who are you to the victim, Miss?” The woman on the other end is trying to be patient.

“I’m—“ Molly grapples with words, fails. “I’m no one.”

She is put on hold, left there. She hangs up, calls back, tries again. The same thing happens. Patrick looks out the window. She concentrates on the road. They don’t talk.

It isn’t over, won’t be for several months. And it will get much, much worse before then. But during this drive, which normally takes five hours but today takes twelve, a small knot of knowledge issues forth from her murkiest recesses, the knowledge that she too will be plunged headlong through shattering glass, then utter blackness, and will eventually emerge, conscious, on the other side.