Reality At Its Finest

I don't believe the sun had ever shined brighter. We endured ongoing waves of rain and bouts of cold weather for weeks, but on this particular day the sun decided to make an appearance. It's glow was kind and welcoming, like an old friend popping in for a visit. I had the windows rolled down in my car and my favorite CD playing in the stereo. My music danced with the music of passing cars, and I knew that everyone around me was in tremendously good spirits as I was because of the beautiful weather. I thought it was the perfect day for the sun to drop by, for it being Mother's Day. The sun might as well be the mother of this world, looking after the natural beauty she had given us. 

I made my way down probably the largest hill in Lemont, passing by the many tall churches. I had only just started driving up the bridge on my way to Woodridge when it happened. I didn't witness it myself, but I didn't need to. The sounds themselves were enough to tell me exactly what I could have seen just moments earlier. The screeching of rubber against concrete. The piercing sound that reminded me of a train colliding with something. Then the eternal caterwaul of a car alarm. The cars in front of me rolled to a dead stop and immediately a double line was forming. A few people who had their cars stopped on the bridge in the left lane exited them and ran toward the scene. On the other side of the bridge, I saw a young girl in a red dress with black tights on and no shoes on her feet clamber out of her destroyed vehicle. It looked like some kind of beast had taken its giant, clawed hand and ripped off the entire left side of her car. She was shuffling very slowly towards the center of the bridge, to what I wasn't sure, with both hands shakily covering her mouth in shock. I could hear her sorrowful cries over her ongoing car alarm. Occasionally the cars in front of me would move inch by inch to move into the right lane. I was on the lowest part of the bridge, and as I inched forward, part of the scene that had just happened was coming into view from underneath a parked van in front of me. I put a lead foot on the brake immediately. My stomach began churning in all kinds of ways- and I began to feel ill. 

The only thing I could see was a single mangled, booted leg lying on the concrete. The van blocked whoever the leg belonged to. As I grew nearer and nearer to the scene, I saw a woman civilian jump out of her car on the other side of the bridge and run over to the hysterical girl in the red dress and put an arm around her shoulder, leading her away from her scrapped car for safety reasons. I could see a pink fluid running from the car down the bridge. The man the woman civilian was driving with carried a navy blue sweater and I thought to myself for a moment that maybe it was going to be used to cover the possible corpse that was lying on the concrete. I felt my heart dive into my stomach and it took every ounce of strength I had to force my foot on the gas pedal to keep moving slowly with traffic, all the while getting closer to the scene. 

The pile of shredded motorcycle was the next picture that came into view. It occurred to me now just how fresh this calamity was. There were no sounds of sirens emitting from any direction. No police cars. No ambulances. There were just the spectators and the helpful civilians. They were the ones taking care of the scene. I swear there was a bird fluttering its wings in my chest, and my anxiety was at an all time high. I didn't want to see what came around the bend. But I knew I had no choice. My eyes were fixed on what was before the van in front of me even though I didn't want to look. I moved forward the last few inches, passing the van and moving very slowly until I rolled to a complete stop. Only five feet away, I set my wide eyes on a conscious young man lying on his right side and holding completely still. He wore a black leather jacket and faded old blue jeans- and looked remarkably fine except for his mangled right leg.

"Hey man, can you come over here?" I heard him call one of the civilians at the scene. There was a huge wave of relief that came over me. The boy was awake and talking. He was fine and I didn't have to worry anymore. I was completely overjoyed, but I couldn't shake the adrenaline running through my veins, making my whole body shake. I put on my blinker and made my slow merge into the right lane to bypass all the parked cars. I stopped suddenly next to two middle-aged men climbing back into their silver corvette.

"Is he okay?" I asked them, the obvious worry littering my face. I already knew their answer because I had already seen it for myself. Something in me just had to ask.

"He's fine, we just called 911." The driver replied. I sighed.

"Good, that's great. I'm so glad." I told them. They nodded and I proceeded to drive away down the bridge. All the way on my sunny drive to Woodridge, I could only think about what I had just witnessed. I wondered to myself just how come things like that happen on such good days. A beautiful Mother's Day. Then I thought about the young man's mother and how worried sick she must feel. I picked out the silver lining in this somehow. I'm just glad that a mother didn't lose her son on this gorgeous Mother's Day.