Road of Life IED...

Whenever we went somewhere together, Stephanie drove her shiny little convertible. A MG Midget, not much bigger than an amusement park car broken free of its miniature track. 

Small, cute, perfect. Her automotive doppelganger. 

On that rainy morning we got up early to drive down to Virginia Beach for a bit of fun in the sun. The weather channel said it would be clear by early afternoon. Her idea, I was just fine hanging out at my place, but having spent the week on a carnival ride from hell with my work, I was seeking vacuous pleasure with someone else in charge.

It was hard to see the road that morning; a dark, cloudy, rain spattered shit of a day. Wind driven water forced itself through the path of least resistance and dripped from the line of rubber lips where the convertible top shut its mug down tight to the windshield. It was never tight enough.

I really enjoyed being the passenger for a change, rolling a joint, kicking back. Usually I was the one in charge of our time and activity. It was much worse at work. I felt like the head babysitter of a bunch of kids with severe ADD. So I really needed a break, for her to take the wheel that day and  to drive everything, with or without the car. “You decide” I said. Where we were going and what we would do was her job, I was just along for the ride. Not an easy thing for me to do, I finally relaxed and started to enjoy the letting go. That's when she splashed dramatically around a tight curve and drove head-on into the front end of a big Chevy four door. A fucking boat of a car. Young Stephanie had put a wheel over the edge of the road on the right side, quickly over-compensated, and cut a hard turn to the left, directly into the path of the Chevy.

Boom! And it was done.

Stephanie, oh Stephanie, such a sweet little fawn of a girl, smashed that beautiful face of hers into the steering wheel. In an instant, the plastic disk at the center of the wheel broke away and allowed the metal post of the horrifically designed horn mechanism to slice her face open like a kill strike from an ax. From her upper eyebrow line down to the center of her nose she was divided into opposite halves. We hit in slow motion, my legs driving into the glove compartment and dash, molding the metal to the shape of my knees. The beach towel I had been using to stop the leak at the top of the windshield flew free and splatted itself to the radio controls like a fresh application of white paper mâché.

Stephanie hit the wheel hard with her face, bounced back and turned slowly to me with a look of surprise and wonder. I could see her brain clearly, beneath specific layers of sinus cavities and bone, cleanly opened by the surgeon of traumatic impact. Her face had been split in in the middle. At first there was no blood, just clean white flesh and bone, layers exposed, like a chart hanging on the wall in a cranial anatomy class. I was interested in the detail of the horror, taking mental notes, observing the dissection. Time clicked by in mini seconds dressed, in costumes of eternity. The arterial blood startled me as it began to spurt from the center of her face with surprisingly hot ejaculations that colored my arms with a thick crimson goo.

Pulling the beach towel off the dashboard, I folded and pressed it to her head. Cars backed up behind us in both directions as I held towel tight to her face, my left palm cupping the back of her head.

The rest of that day is mostly a blur, but sometimes even in the darkest clouds, there’s a silver lining. 

We had crashed in front of a State Prison with its own ambulance sitting at ready. The prison doctor radioed ahead to the hospital where a team waited. Once there, they sprang into action and a prominent plastic surgeon who was just about to go home, was called back in.

My legs were sore afterward, but I was fine, although not allowed to see Stephanie for several days. Once I was able to go to her room, I didn't recognize her.  There was no way to say for sure that she was even human.

Heavy bandages covered the grotesque horror of two eye slits and a tiny oval mouth slashed crudely into a Halloween pumpkin made of horribly swollen flesh splashed purple with antiseptic. Fortunately, Stephanie was too out of it to even know I was there.

Weeks later, after the swelling went down and the bandages came off for the first time, the girl in the hospital bed next to her was surprised to see the unveiling: “Oh my God…you’re pretty!”

Like me, she had assumed her roommate was permanently and horrifically disfigured.

Two months after that, the same plastic surgeon was able to almost completely erase the scar that ran up Stephanie’s nose and between her eyes.

That pretty girl was herself again, with a smile that lit up her surroundings like fresh sunshine...after a rain..

As for myself, I need to drive, or if someone else is driving, I’m happiest sitting in the back seat, buckled in and reassured by the people in front of me that act as impact cushions if that kind of unexpected road of life IED ever blows up again...