Glass lay sparsely on her body, as the tiny pieces sparkled. My vision was still blurry but as I shook her arm, there was no response. “Liv wake up, Liv can you hear me?,” I said sobbing. As the tears poured out of my eyes I looked in the backseat. Alex was screaming in pain, his leg dangled off his body as if it were unattached.
“Call a damn ambulance!” Alex said, as he continuously groaned in pain.

“Ok I will hold on,” I muttered through my whimpering.

I searched for my phone but my motor senses were still not there, everything felt the same. As I felt around my seat little pieces of glass stuck in my finger, at this point I was so numb from pain and the previous shots of Fireball I didn’t even notice my fingers bleeding. A notification went off and I finally found my phone. I turned around to tell Alex I found my phone when I saw he was passed out.

“911 operator speaking, what’s your emergency?” a monotone voice responded.
“I, I crashed into a tree, my girlfriend isn’t answering me and…”
“Sir, please calm down I can’t understand you.”
“My girlfriend is unresponsive and my friend is screaming in pain.”
“What is your location?”
“I don’t know, last time I saw I just got onto exit 7a.”
“We are sending help, please remain calm.”

I quickly threw my phone onto the passenger’s seat, Liv’s body was motionless as her torso lay on the hood of the car and a puddle of blood had seeped into her hair. The windshield was nonexistent;, the remnants of the glass littered the frame of where the windshield once was. Through all the madness my seat belt was still buckled in. I unbuckled and crawled onto the hood, as I turned over her body, her face was unrecognizable. The once alluring face was overtaken by the bruises and the cuts which were concealing her apparent beauty. Her once long golden hair was messy and stained to a tangerine color. 

Blue and red lights flashed as sirens continuously cried out;, as the sirens grew louder and louder my hope grew stronger. The ambulance approached, firefighters hurried to the car they gently took Liv’s body out of the car, as two men lay her down on the stretcher her body looked stiff. The front of the car was molded by the tree, a large indent lay directly in the front.

“Blake Langston is that you?” a deep voice asked under his firefighter helmet.

I got nervous, would I be arrested, I was only 17 didn’t my parents have to be here? I soon replied, “Yes, it is.”
The man shook his head in disgust, rolling his eyes at the thought of me. As he pried open the door I got out, unlike Liv and Alex I was walking. My lip was busted and skin was split above my eyebrow, but my seatbelt that I wore miraculously saved my life. As I took three steps out of the car I stumbled unable to catch my balance. My head was spinning as if I was in a bad nightmare and when I hit my head on the ground, everything went black.

As I awoke I didn’t move but I opened my eyes. My parents were so occupied with comforting each other they didn’t notice that I was awake. I suddenly closed my eyes hoping to open my eyes again and be in my own bed. When I opened them again I saw the same thing; white walls, gloomy decor, a heart-broken mother, and a disappointed father.
“Mom, where are Liv and Alex?” I said.

She looked as if she heard a ghost the once emotional wreck, sobbing, and whimpering, then her attitude quickly changed. Her shoulders tensed, the crying stopped though lines of tears remained on her face. She didn’t answer, and her silence created a large pit in my stomach.

“She...uh...um,” she muttered out before she returned to her frantic state of uncontrollable crying.
I now was annoyed and fearful at the same time, “Mom what happened?,” I croaked out holding back the tears.
“Son, Liv didn’t make it,” my father said calmly with a deep sorrow in his voice.

As his words hit my ears, I felt a knife plunging in and out of me, a deep pain pierced through my heart and my eyes began to well. The words registered but the thought was too hard to grasp, my driving killed my girlfriend of three years. I didn’t make a noise I sat there, wide-eyed and shocked. As tears fell out of my eyes my mouth moved still as if my eyes knew what happened and my mouth didn’t. Numb, that is all I felt.
“Blake, Alex is alright but he broke his femur, he is in surgery right now,” my dad said softly.
It all piled up and I finally released my emotion. As the tears started coming, my dad came over. He held me in his big arms rocking slowly back and forth. I let him hold me and I cried like a young child, realizing that I had made the biggest mistake of my life, and I couldn't change it.

A bright smile was on her face accompanied by large framed glasses, she was wearing dark blue scrubs. She smiled at me and began to review a clipboard of papers. She seemed unaware of the incident that had occur because she was oblivious to my emotions.
“Blake, Blake Langston, why does that sound familiar to me?” the nurse asked herself waiting for me to engage, I sat quietly unwilling to make small talk. “Oh I know, you are the basketball player who got a full ride to Duke, right?”
This hadn’t even registered in my head until now, I not only lost Liv, I lost basketball. My eyes filled up again when I thought about never seeing Liv again, and I cried again. The nurse awkwardly stood there pretending to read something but I saw her looking at me. My dad whispered something to her and the once cheery nurse now avoided contact and wouldn’t look at me.

I tried to close my eyes but I only saw  Liv’s face. The long golden hair resembling the sun, the crystal blue waters only found in the tropics that resembled her eye color, the light pink lips that would pout when she was annoyed, her long black eyelashes that framed her eyes, and her nose that twitched when she was mad, this face of an angel haunted me. I couldn’t escape from my own thoughts, my head hurt from torturing myself and my eyes were irritated from the tissues wiping my eyes. I felt trapped in the hospital room and it represented all the bad news I had just received.

“Dad, I’m going to go get a snack in the cafeteria,” I said.

“Blake… you can not wander around this hospital,” my dad said firmly.

“I just want to get a snack, I don’t know why I can’t go, stop babying me, I messed up, I messed up everyone’s lives,” I began to yell and take out the anger I had at myself out on my dad. He shook his head in frustration and took out his wallet and gave me all the cash he had at the time. He gave me a crinkled five dollar bill and two ones.

The elder faces in the hospital were morbid, while the young children were in nightgowns that were too long and their faces were innocent. The carpet was a pale gray, and the walls were the same bland white that was in my room. The cafeteria smelt sterilized, it smelt like a bottle of Clorox had been doused all over the room. I picked up a water and a granola bar and went to go pay for it, I quickly turned to go around to the register and I saw Liv’s mom. Her eyes  were swollen and her mascara was streaming down her face. I avoided eye contact unable to see the woman who I had just taken a piece of. We made brief eye contact before she walked over to me, I had no clue what to expect would she comfort me or would she blame me for the accident. The tears were back, each step closer to me she looked more and more like Liv.

“You took my baby, you killed Liv,” she began hysterically yelling at me, “it’s all your fault, why would you drive if you were drunk? You stupid kid!.” 

I couldn’t argue. I stood there hunching my back and crying., Sas brutal as she was being, everything she said was true. It was all my fault. In a weird way, having someone mad at me saying it was my fault felt better than my parents pitying me. She began to curse and sob, she was muttering out words, I couldn’t understand her but I knew it was nothing nice. I thought she was going to hit me when she began to cry in my arms. I felt bewildered as I hugged her shaking body, we sat there and cried together. Her pain was as prevalent as mine I lost my one and only true love and she lost her one and only child. The hug never stopped we leaned on each other for support as our body’s crippled together from the pain of Liv’s passing.

After what felt like hours we drifted from each other, we both avoided eye contact knowing the tears would only begin again.

“I….I’m so sorry,” I said.

She shook her head as tears still slowly rolled out of her eyes, she didn’t respond she just walked away. She walked as if each step she took someone was pulling her other foot, I saw in her face she didn’t want to walk on a planet that Liv was not walking on too, she looked empty. As I walked back to my room I felt poisoned by my sorrow. My head was aching and my eyes were irritated., I kept thinking, why me? Why did I survive? Why was I unharmed? Each step was another painful second without the presence of Liv. As I arrived back to my room there was another figure in my room. A harsh collar sat around his neck, and a gold badge shined on his mut outfit. His face was stern, his eyebrows arched right above his eye giving him a harsh facial expression. He stood very stiff, and was very tall and my parents body language had changed tremendously. My mom who was once slouched and defeated was now upright sitting with clear words, and my dad looked at peace with the situation.

As I walked in everyone looked up at me, I was nervous what was going to happen. I knew I should be punished for my actions but somehow still had butterflies fluttering in my stomach. When he went on to speak his voice was deep and echoed in the room.

“Hello Blake, I am Detective Jack Harrison, and I need to ask you a couple questions about the accident that occurred last night.”

I took a deep breath and nodded my head yes.

The gym was quiet at this point, the once chatty bunch excited to be at an assembly were now attentive hanging on my every word. Faces were blank and hopeless, I could see in there eyes they were waiting for the happy ending. At each speaking at least one person showed the same face, they looked at me disgusted as if I had made a horrible mistake, a girl in the second row gave me this look staring into my past. I adjusted my glasses which shifted down the bridge of my nose, a tear started to slip out of my eye, the insecurities about my horrible decisions in my adolescence still haunted me, and that look she gave me reminded me of the rest of the town when they found out about the accident. I continued on trying not to look in the second row.

“So after the interrogation they pressed charges on me, I was charged with underage drinking, I got a DUI, and I was charged with manslaughter. I ended up being sentenced to 14 months, $1,450 dollars in fines, and 62 hours of community service. My basketball scholarship to Duke was revoked and due to my record I have had a tough time finding jobs. The time period of the trial and sentencing felt quick compared to the agony I faced for the rest of my life, for the grief of killing Liv.”

The gym grew quiet, as the pit in my stomach returned again, this was a feeling that never went away.