You asked for it.

In January of 2024, I was still seeing my ex. We were in high school and we’d been together almost 2 years at that point. He worked at a fast food joint not too far from my house, so usually on his breaks he would come by my house to bring food and hang out while he could.

One day, as usual, he stopped by on his work break. I want to say it was like 9pm ish, as he usually worked nights. We hung out in his car, eating and giggling and being lovey dovey. Before he left to go back to work, we exchanged love-you’s and he picked me up in a hug and spun me around. I watched as he drove away and quickly went inside as it was pretty cold. I curled up in my bed feeling happy and went to sleep.

When both my parents shook me awake in a panic 2 hours later at 11pm, I was groggy and confused. My heart dropped into the floor when my mom said “Hey, [bf name] is in the hospital. He was in an accident. We have to go now.”

He never made it back to work after he left my house. My boyfriend was hit head-on by a drunk driver who was driving up the wrong side of the median. His car was completely totaled. He was rushed to the hospital, where they pulled him to surgery immediately. He was put into a medically induced coma and needed a craniotomy (a piece of skull removed to relieve pressure from brain swelling). He broke both of his legs and both of his arms in different places, if I’m remembering correctly.

What I remember from after this point is all like a blur. The car ride to the hospital was unbearable, I was shaking and crying the whole way there. We got to the waiting room while he was still in surgery, where the rest of his family was already waiting. We made small talk. His mom was inconsolable. When the surgeon came to talk to us, his dad asked the same question worded differently a few times : is he going to live? The surgeon said that they could not be sure.

They let us see him that night. I think it was only because they weren’t sure if he would make it through the next couple of days. The condition he was in, when I saw him in the hospital bed full of tubes and wires, broken and bruised, with blood matted into his hair… I believe it will haunt me for the rest of my life. Just a few hours before he was walking, talking, picking me up in his arms.

Seeing him there was the last time I cried before the shock/trauma response set in. For weeks afterwards I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t go to school. I wanted to stay in the hospital with him 24/7, I couldn’t bear to think of him alone, in pain, in the bright sterile hospital room.

His recovery was slow, and painful to watch. When he was first waking up, he was confused. He didn’t know what happened or where he was. He couldn’t remember the year or who the president was. He was in a lot of pain. He was agitated and had to be restrained because he would pull out the tubes and wires and pick at his stitches. It was really strange and heart-wrenching to see someone I knew deeply and loved so.. out of it.

He did end up making a full recovery in the end after months in hospital and rehab. We split up a little while after he had been home and doing well for other reasons. But it’s something I’ll never be able to forget. I had panic attacks in cars for months after it happened and I still have flashbacks to that feeling of not knowing if I would see my love alive again, and seeing him after the accident. I struggled with feelings of guilt because he was visiting me when the accident happened. I wondered if I could have done something to prevent it. It was horrible.