I wake up panting in my bed as I do night after night. The same nightmare haunting me over and over again. Five months. Five months have passed since my wife died. Five months, during which my scars remind me day after day of what happened.
I'm driving along the beach in my blue Cadillac, my lovely wife to the right, both of us singing along to an Elvis Presley song on the radio. She looks at me the same way she did on the day we met, 7 years ago. My wife telling me something in a calm voice, the car suddenly starting to spin out, a loud bang, a shriek from the front seat to my right, blood, then plain darkness. The next thing I remembered was a bright light and a distant mumbling of a conversation. My eyesight became clearer. I was lying in a bed in a sterile room. Then I noticed two people on the far end of the room. They were talking in some kind of foreign language. Was it French? I wasn't sure. At last, they saw that I was awake. They started talking to me in rather bad English but I could partially understand what they were trying to say to me. Something about a car crash and a woman. Then I fell back into a deep slumber.
As always I try to distract myself from these blurry memories and concentrate on the surrounding noise. I can hear the constant sound of water splashing onto my bedroom floor from the window. I can't remember having opened it. I walk up to the widow, close it and go back to bed. Jessica's last words still ringing in my ear while I fall asleep:
''It'll be all right Jake. You'll figure it out somehow, we'll figure it out somehow.''
I wake up early in the morning. I have my first appointment at a new psychiatry. The psychiatrist that had helped me out the last few months had committed suicide about a week ago and I still had my nightmares. They had to go away. Now he, John, my psychiatrist, was also in them.
As always when I had an appointment at a new place I filled out the standardised questionnaire.
Name: Jake Blake
Age: 26, born 19.3.1949
Address: Lombard Street West 21, Dublin
Remark: Widower, lost my wife, Jessica Blake, in a car crash
I did it again. I killed someone. He knew too much, they both knew too much. I wasn't careful enough with what I've I said in the past. The woman's death caused too much attention. This time, the murder was perfectly executed. No one assumes that something was odd. No one doubts that it wasn't suicide.
I feel relieved after talking to a professional. Jessica's death still haunts me every night and then there's that one question which has never left my mind:
Was it all MY fault? Did I really lose control over the car?
If only I could turn back time. I'd do anything to do so. I would do anything to keep her alive. I would have taken her place. Now it's too late. I can't change anything...
I'm back on my way home. Walking past people, not knowing about their past, nor them knowing about mine. I only know a few people. I only have very few friends, or should I say I had only a few friends. They're both gone now. The only two people who ever supported me. Trying to help me. Jessica and John.
I got my first tattoo because of Jessica. She wanted us to have matching tattoos. The heartbeat of our significant other and one word written next to it. No, not love or Jake and Jessica. We agreed that this was too cheesy. I, no, we had the idea to get the word 'Live' tattooed next to our collar bone, above our hearts, reminding us that we would live in each other's heart forever.
And then there was John. John, he was the one who convinced me to write down my feelings in my diary for when he wasn't there for me. For the times I needed to get rid of all my dark, dark thoughts. I used red ink. Red as in the colour of love, red as in the colour of both of their blood, which had been spilt in the last few months. John had been my psychiatrist and best friend.
Everyone knows now. They all know about the psychiatrist's death. But they don't suspect anything. I am safe. Am I safe? Yes, I am safe.
Two days have passed since I had my appointment with the psychiatrist. Two restless nights, again. Two days passing by slowly. Nothing to do. Nothing worth doing. I stand up and walk to the fridge for the tenth time in the last hour. There still isn't anything in it that I want to eat. Nothing. Nothing worth living for. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing but the ticking noise of the clock echoing in my head with Jessica's last words. The memory of the car accident starts to fade away and I ask myself over and over again:
''What would be all right? What would we figure out?''
I can't remember, but what difference does it make? She's gone. Gone forever. Never coming back. Leaving a dark, endless hole in my heart and soul. Sucking me back into depression. The same sort of depression I had been in before Jessica brightened up my life. Jessica.
