2 Hours and 37 Minutes

Chapter 9

Mason's POV 

Just a couple months before I turned sixteen, my parents got divorced. My dad had an affair with his secretary. I mean I don’t really hold any angst toward him or anything; I hated him that he did that to Mom, but he was still the man who raised me. And one mistake wasn’t going to throw that down the drain. He and my mom get along okay now-a-days, but there’s still that awkward tension, you know? Like my mom looks like sometimes she could strangle him while my dad looks like he’s ready to run for the hills. They’ve been divorced for four years; right after my little brother was born. Lee grew up with a part time dad because Mom and Dad got custody of us. I forgave him for doing that to Mom, but I haven’t quite forgiven for what he did to Lee. His affair meant that Lee didn’t have the chance to have the father I did.

Anyway, on my sixteenth birthday, my dad got me a motorcycle. I know what you’re thinking, “this story’s not gonna end well,” and you’re right but listen anyway. I don’t know what possessed him to get me a motorcycle; maybe it was the fact that I had in fact just gotten my license and was in need of transportation, but if you ask me, he did it as some kind of compensation. You know, to make up for what he did or some other crap like that. The motorcycle was actually pretty cool: a black Honda. It was so sleek. When I first got on it, I had the urge to say “I’m am Batman.” Mom was livid. Have you ever seen a crazy redhead? Well let’s just say, I thought World War III was in the making. You could practically see the smoke coming out of her ears and the fire coming out of her mouth as she spoke. She was yelling and cursing and clenching her fists in a ploy to keep from beating Dad to a pulp. It was actually quite entertaining watching Mom go all badass while Dad was practically cowering.

In the end, Mom let me keep the motorcycle after some serious negotiation between her and Dad. I had to wear a helmet, call her when I got to where I was going, and notify her if anything happened. When I say anything, she wanted to know if I hit a pothole. Mom’s always been crazy protective. Emphasis on the crazy. Even though I’m nineteen, I’ll always be her baby boy. And I’m okay with that, you can mess with me, but you don’t mess with my mom.

Mom wouldn’t let me get out on the highway until I had significant practice. In Florida it’s hard to find places to get driving practice you know with all the traffic, but we settled for deserted parking lots and less busy streets. I had never driven a motorcycle or even ridden on one, but I learned quickly. I figured out the clutch and the shifting of the gears. I was so excited when Mom said I could finally ride on the highway. Like I was totally stoked; I mean after weeks of just driving around parking lots? The motorcycle actually came with a helmet when Dad gave it to me: black with midnight blue siding and “Mase” in royal blue on the back, and it was full face that had a face shield.

You should have seen me when I got on that motorcycle to take off. Now I didn’t do the cliché with the leather jacket; I was just wearing a hoodie and my helmet, and trust me, I looked total bad a. When I walked out of the house, it felt like there should have been an explosion behind me. It was like slow motion. After my mom frantically firing off things for me to watch out for and her telling me call her in case I needed anything, I was ready to roll.

It was like the middle of the afternoon when I hit the highway. I was just taking a simple drive; like heading to the mall or something. I was at an intersection, and the light was green so naturally I went. Well some dude ran the red light. It hit right side, and I didn’t even see it coming. The wreck wasn’t even my fault, but that didn’t change the fact that I still felt like an idiot for not seeing it coming.

The guy must have been running late or something because that joker was flying. He was doing sixty-five in a fifty, but at least he was driving a little car, or the damage could have been a lot worse than it was. When we collided, I swerved and fishtailed, and the bike turned over. The bike slid across the asphalt sparking as the metal made its way over the concrete. I don’t even know how far the bike slid before it finally came to a stop. One leg was trapped under the bike, and I swung the other leg over and was laying my back. I yanked my helmet off, and it was so bright. I heard faint sounds of people shouting and sirens in the distance, but I couldn’t hear anything clearly over the ringing. Sweat shinned on my face, and I just knew that my hair was sticking out in all different directions. The thought running through my mind at the time was that I had to get the bike off of me. So with all my strength I extended my arms to push the bike while simultaneously trying to drag my leg out from underneath it. Raising my arm, I felt something warm and sticky between the skin and the material of my hoodie. There was a slit up my sleeve that foreshadowed the gash that lay beneath it. Ignoring the pain and the blood leaking from my person, I got the bike off me. By the time I got out of the bike’s grasp, I felt like I was weightless, like I was being lifted.

The next thing I knew I was in what appeared to be an ambulance. My vision was blurry, and I kept spacing out. I heard snippets of what somebody was saying on a radio. Young male. Collision. Lacerations. Internal injuries unknown. ETA.

“Can you hear me? What’s your name?” I heard the voice ask.

“Mason,” I croaked out in response. Everything hurt and felt numb at the same time.

“Mason, you’re on the way to the hospital; you’re going to be…” I couldn’t hear him anymore. The darkness was taking over my vision. I lost consciousness. 

When I woke up, bright lights were passing overhead one after another. The swarm of lights came to a stop, and I felt my clothes being torn away and needles sticking me and adjustments made to the mask over my mouth and nose that I just now noticed was there. Seriously how had I not noticed that? Suddenly everything became dark again just as I heard my mom’s hysterical cries from the opening of the ER. My dad holding my mom was the last thing I saw before the darkness consumed me once again.

The second time I woke up I was in a room with all kinds of machines hooked up to me. My eyes slowly opened as my vision came into focus. I saw my mom sitting in a chair she must have pulled up to the bed. My hand was grasped in hers, and I noticed she was nodding off. How long had she’d been sitting there? Squeezing her hand, her eyes sprung open.

“Mason,” she cried and jumped up to give me a hug. I winced, but tried not to let on. Mom must have realized that it hurt, that mother’s intuition I guess, because she retracted almost immediately. When she pulled back, she had tears rolling down her cheeks, and she had so many emotions at war on her face. Joy. Relief. Anger. Anger? I later found out how the anger came into play. Mom was so pissed at everything: Dad for giving a “death trap,” the guy who caused the wreck for being negligent and reckless, and me for scaring her half to death.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked. You could see the fire simmering in her green eyes at the mention of Dad.

“He went down to the cafeteria,” she gritted out.

“And Lee?” I had just though about him.

“We took him to your Grandma’s house,” she responded. Lee was only a couple months old at the time so he didn’t understand what was happening. He still doesn’t know, to this day, that I was ever in a wreck. Some day when he’s old enough to understand I’ll tell him. He’ll probably think it was so cool.

“How bad is it?” I wondered. They had me hopped up on pain meds and antibiotics; I had no clue the amount of damage done. She then explained to me how my left leg was broken, from the impact of the bike landing on it, my left arm needed twelve stitches, from the clutch grinding into my flesh when the car hit, a couple broken ribs, bruised lung, and a mild concussion. I could’ve been worse, but by the grace of God, it wasn’t. My mom then proceeded to cuss profusely at the guy who hit me and how he came out with only a couple scratches. My parents wanted to pressed charges against the guy, and they did. He ended up getting charged with reckless endangerment; he didn’t get any jail time, but he did have to pay my family compensation for pain and suffering plus he covered the hospital bills. He really did feel bad about it; I found out later that he himself was on the way to the hospital because his wife had gone into labor. I could understand where he was coming from, you know the need to be in a hurry so I don’t hold any malice towards the guy. He agreed to pay the sums of money without any hesitation probably overridden by guilt. Since his car was pretty much totaled, he hitched a ride on the ambulance. He actually visited me a couple times during my stay in the hospital to make sure I was okay. I was kind of impressed by the fact that he actually came to see me. When he came, you could see the guilt imbedded in his eyes, but you could also see relief that I was okay, and finally you could see sheer happiness at the fact that his child was being born.

I was in the hospital for a little over a week, and needless to say the bike was wrecked. When I got out of the hospital, I was only crutches for like eight weeks for my leg to properly heel. Now the only things left besides the memories are the scars, like this one. But scars are sexy though, right?