Lets Not Discuss

Cady Louise

*I'm going to take the first couple of chapters to establish the characters. Then the plot will progress and hopefully get better :)

        

           Cady felt the impact of the car wheeling around the corner before she saw it. The sound of steel clashing with steel drowned out her scream as she was thrown into the windshield. Her red Camaro skidded across the road and collided with the second car grinding against the asphalt with a screech that made her want to rip her eardrums out. The gas ignited on the other car and within seconds she was surrounded by flames. A blinding scene of fire and shattered glass stained with scarlet blood mixed with the screams of the children in the backseat of the other car turned everything muddy in her mind. There was something on top of her leg, too heavy to move, pressing hot metal into her thigh. The world was spinning uncontrollably, time passed sluggishly. Heat from the engine fire licked at her face she could see blood smeared across the destroyed dashboard there's no way it's all mine, there's too much for it to be to be all mine. Colors. Lights. Sounds. All of it a haze of indistinguishable motion. She couldn't think, there was something blocking her mind from advancing beyond the basic. She reached up to her forehead only to pull away, her hand soaked in sticky blood. Suddenly there was nothing but the pain that spiked in her shoulder and stretched into her mind drowning her in darkness.

          The pain that followed were excruciating, it felt like her skull had been impaled with a scolding iron rod that went in one side and out the other enveloping her brain in hot white pain. When she resurfaced she was in a hospital bed, nothing registered, or made sense, the colors that had danced around her vision before were gone and the world seemed so plain without them. Impossibly simple, white walls and monitors, grey and black chairs. By far, the most interesting thing in the room was the boy slumped against the wall snoring loudly. He was wearing a baseball cap, his face indistinguishable through the shadows. Maybe it was Mathew, it was possible that after whatever had just happened he had decided he didn't want to break up. Unlikely, but possible.

     Almost as if summoned by her very conciousness a nurse walked in. She looked to be in her late forties, hair tied back in a messy brown bun. She wore blue scrubs and a name tag engraved in gold lettering, Cady couldn't be sure, but she thought the nurse's name was Ann. Plastered to the nurse's face was a look of slight pity mixed with...was it... disgust?

"Hello hon'..." the lady said in thick southern accent "you're not supposed to be awake"

"Why not" Cady wondered aloud. She found her own voice light, and unfamiliar, it sounded too airy and delicate.

"Cause your head has a hole the size of a beet in it" murmured Ann fiddling with the white monitor. Cady realized it was a joke but didn't laugh.

She reached up to the white bandages wrapped tightly around her head, she assumed it was tightly she couldn't actually feel anything.

"I can't feel anything" again the light little voice spoke when she did but she wasn't sure it was her own.

"That's because you're on an excessive amount of painkillers." Ann said distractedly "your parents didn't want you, uh..." she trailed off, writing something down on a chart.

"My parents? Are they here?" Ann looked up, surprised.

"Oh yes, were here within hours of the accident, so was that young gentlemen" she gestured to the boy in the corner. "Your brother I think he said he was, hasn't left the room in days."

"Days?!" Cady was so confused she thought her head might just burst. "I've been here days?!" The nurse turned around, concerned.

"Darlin' I'mma have to ask you to stay calm, you could seriously harm yourself." Cady quickly understood what she meant, a ringing sound reverberated around her head like someone had struck a bell at the center of her brain, vibrating and making her vision blur. Her exclaim had woken the boy, and he now sat up and looked at her, relief visible pouring into his face. She didn't recognize him at first, slowly his face filled her memories of her own childhood though and she was able to fill him into the blank space in her mind that was designated for siblings or sibling, that she wasn't sure of .

"Cady! Thank god! I was so worried." He was over by her side within seconds holding her hand in his. "Mom and dad flew out here as soon as they had heard what happened and they called me and I drove up from New York. They're at a hotel right now taking care of everything, of course, Mom didn't want to leave you but dad convinced her, you know how he is."

Cady had trouble following his words only registering the last bit.

"What happened Aaron? What are Mom and Dad taking care of? What's going on?" Questions danced out of her mouth that she hadn't even thought of asking until they were being asked.

"Let me explain" he said, but then proceeded to study her intently, keeping his mouth annoyingly shut, an ironic oxymoron.

"Well?" Cady knew she was being impatient but she didn't really care.  Aaron's manner completely changed from relieved older brother to the stern lawyer mask he wore a majority of the time in an instant.

"Three days ago August Jefferson a senior at Celton High got very drunk at a party and drove himself home, he stopped to get gas and when he was pulling out of the Circle K he rammed the side of your Camaro. You lost control of your car and hit a minivan with a mother and three kids, one of the three, the youngest Jacob, was killed, and one is in the room across the hall with seven broken ribs and severe burns. There is a bunch of legal stuff I could tell you about but you wouldn't understand it. August is underage but is still facing felony charges."

His words were painful to hear. None the less they were said, and Cady knew they were true. She remembered enough to recall the sound of the children's wails through the haze of fire and destruction. She could almost see the boy screaming for help, and then she did remember help coming. A figure, barely a shadow had run through the flames, had smashed the window and retrieved one of the children. Cady saw it in her mind's eye and it unearthed a series of memories that even in the moment of hysteria she had not fully registered. People, maybe four or five of them were searching the wreckage. One had approached her window with hesitation 'she's alive' they had shouted. Everything was so clear and yet the scene itself could not be put into focus, she felt aware that this memory was only one of many but she didn't have the others. Like a puzzle that is incomplete but you've run out of pieces to use.