cont.: The Reality Like in the books, I woke up on a spotless bed in a room that I immediately identified as an ER in a hospital. My parents were next to me; my mother held my hand and cried noiselessly but with sharp contortions of her shoulders. My father stood next to her and kept his silence, though he was almost as pale as the scrubs of the doctor who was taking my blood pressure. He saw that I had opened my eyes. “Very good, very good,” he said. “You have returned to us. How are you?” I stared at him, I was confused, and I didn’t understand for a moment what I was doing in that place. All I knew was that I left my parent’s house to go to work and . . . A totally sharp, clear picture appeared in front of my eyes; a kind of flash of a second or two in which I saw his face look at me with eyes wide in consternation, a moment before the impact. “No!” I shouted in a voice unfamiliar even to myself, and I tried to straighten up. I wasn’t able to get up, my limbs didn’t seem to belong to me and they simply refused to obey me. “Take it slow,” said the doctor and moved my face back. “No sudden movements from you,” he instructed, “you are connected to all kinds of instruments, and we don’t know yet exactly what’s happening with you. We have to be careful.” I have no idea how long I lay in that place before I woke up, or for how long afterwards. I stared into the air. My mother tried to tell me something but it was hard for me to concentrate in order to understand what she was saying. My ears heard her, but my brain had difficulty in deciphering her words. I couldn’t answer; I concentrated all my strength on one goal: avoiding the image engraved in my brain, over and over – the image of a young fellow sprawled on the hood of the car in front of me, his face pressed against the front windshield, exactly opposite my face. I remained in the hospital ward under observation, meaning for physical examinations; apparently nothing had happened to me, not even a scratch. But it was very clear that something had happened. I could not function, food did not interest me and I barely responded to things that I was told. I was injured, very injured, damaged in a way that no X-ray or advanced, expensive imaging device could reveal. It was a mental illness. I knew that I killed a human being. I don’t know when or how I became aware of this, it could be that no one ever said so expressly and that it was my intuition that spoke. But that feeling was closely tied to reality. The fellow whose face I saw for a second before he slipped and fell on the road, had indeed died. “You are not guilty,” my mother cried a thousand times. “He had earphones, he was thinking of something else and stepping into the road without looking in any direction, even the police said that. You clearly slowed down before the intersection, you entered exactly as you should, slowly and cautiously. And if he hadn’t received the blow to his head he would not have been killed. Speed was not a factor here, it was totally bad luck. He shouldn’t have died from the collision, at most a few bruises. You shouldn’t have harmed him, because you drove cautiously.” I understood clearly: it was an unfortunate and unusual confluence of circumstances, in which the injurer was not guilty. But the injured party could no longer explain anything: why he went into the road so suddenly, why he didn’t wait a second before crossing, why he didn’t pay attention. There was no one to ask, and I couldn’t escape the feeling that I had killed a human being. The Guilt I would not wish it upon anyone in the world, not even my worst enemies: to hit another person even accidentally, to hit someone even if you are not blamed, even without getting a criminal record or points. Certainly not someone whose surprised face you saw in his last moment on earth. The feeling that you were the emissary for this terrible outcome is so severe and harsh, that you cannot escape it even for a moment. I was discharged from the hospital and my parents were given the clear recommendation to take me to psychological therapy. They did this right away, but it wasn’t easy for them because I did not cooperate. It was hard for me to leave the house, let alone go somewhere. I cannot describe the feeling I had of getting into a car, certainly not in the driver’s seat, not even in the front seat. Even in the back seat with my mother next to me, I constantly saw the surprised face on the front windshield, and I trembled like a leaf. I understood that I needed help, but in my mental state I was so passive that I didn’t care about anything. I went to the psychologist; actually I was dragged to him. He said that in my mental state, I needed pills to straighten me out first and then I could begin psychological therapy. In my current condition it was a waste of time to see him. My parents took me to a psychiatrist who prescribed pills for me. It took time until they adjusted the exact dose for me, but eventually the pills did take effect. The nightmares slackened a bit, and when they didn’t strike, I was at least able to hear what really happened. That’s when I found out that the police had cleared me of all wrongdoing; my car was totally fine mechanically, it underwent all the required tests and there were no problems. Even the human factor – that’s me – was beyond reproach. If it was anyone’s fault, it was the unfortunate victim who is no longer with us to hear the accusations. He paid the price of negligence and the fact that he could not be parted from his earphones and his music even for a moment. The poor fellow. Then a short time period passed in which I underwent a combined therapy of pills together with talks on the psychologist’s couch, until my parents dared to talk to me about the accident. They told me that the victim had been an only son to his parents, an only child! A fellow about my age, an only son, whose parents have no child left! This fact, when I found out, caused a big regression in my mood; and since the incident my mood had not been the greatest anyway, to say the least. I couldn’t avoid seeing his face in front of my eyes, with his eyes wide open and his mouth screaming. It was already easier for me to bear the sight with the help of the pills, the time that had passed and the talks. But I was still not even at the beginning of the path to real normalcy. Despite the noticeable improvement I still suffered nightmares, I woke up in the middle of the night sweating and shaking. I daydreamed a lot and found it difficult to concentrate. Go back to work? That was not in the plan, not even other social activities although the psychologist strongly recommended it. My parents didn’t know what to do with me, I sat at home as if I was giving up on my whole life. Nothing was able to move me from the apathy into which I sank. The Meeting Then one day my father came home from work and when he saw me crouching in front of the television without moving, holding the remote but not even changing channels, he flung at me, “Do you know that Eitan’s parents want to meet you?” Maybe this was an attempt to shake me out of my apathy. The remote fell from my hands in alarm. Eitan is the fellow I killed, the only child. What reason could his parents have to meet me, if not to kill me? At second thought, that seemed like not such a bad idea. I grinned to myself, that was the first shadow of a smile my parents had seen on my face and it made them happy. They didn’t know what I was thinking, but this different reaction on my part encouraged them. It turned out that they had known about this unusual request for a few weeks already, but had been afraid to tell me because they realized that it was an unusual request. I was happy because I thought that they wanted to get even with me and it even seemed like a good idea to me. But my parents knew the truth: Eitan’s parents did not blame me for his death. After the accident, while I was deep in my depressive trance, my parents had collected all their strength and gone to pay a condolence call to the parents who were sitting shiva [mourning] for their son. They were very apprehensive about the encounter, but to their astonishment they were received pleasantly, if with great pain. Eitan’s parents made it clear from the onset that they did not blame me. They received the police report, and saw clearly that my bad luck had brought me to that place at exactly that moment. They actually wanted to meet me to tell me that, thinking maybe it would relieve me. But I was shaken at the thought. I could not imagine what I could do or say to parents whose only child I had killed. Whether guilty or not, I had done it! What could I say to them? What if they asked me what he looked like at his very last second of life? What would I tell them? Astonished? Shocked about to scream? What could I say, without adding to their pain? No. I was certainly not going to do this of my own initiative. For a while, I remained sprawled out on that couch in the living room opposite the flickering screen without knowing what was going on. I even turned off the sound; it irritated me to hear normal people. The furthest I walked was between my room and that couch. I spoke only when I was asked something, and even then it was in brief, and slowly. My brain worked in slow gear, and I had no initiative to change the situation. I barely had the strength to live. My family was in a dilemma. Countless meetings were held between my older brother and sister and my parents. What to do with the lively fellow they had known, who had become a lifeless rag doll? What could be done? I was taking medications, going twice a week to the psychologist where I spent most of the time in silence. True, I was alive – but not really. In an attempt to make a change, my parents made a daring decision. One day, I lay on the couch in the evening as I had gotten used to doing, staring out into space, withdrawn from the atmosphere in which my parents would try to draw me out and sometimes my brother and sister came to visit with my brother- and sister-in-law. A knock was heard at the door. As usual, I didn’t even turn my head to see who entered. Who cared, anyway? An unfamiliar man and woman entered the living room and approached me directly. The man extended his hand to shake, but I didn’t even bother to lift my hand. “Hello,” he said. “I am Eitan’s father.” Even an earthquake of ten on the Richter scale couldn’t have shaken me the way those three words stunned me. I jumped up from my place, a very unusual movement for those weeks. “Eitan’s father …” I muttered in dread. I saw the deceased Eitan stretched out, in front of my eyes, on the hood of the car. ““Eitan’s father …” “Yes,” said the woman. “And I am his mother. We came to visit you and apologize in his name that he entered your life so unexpectedly.” That was greater than I could understand. Now I was tense and taut, as if those long weeks during which my brain was petrified had not existed. Eitan’s parents are here! Not only are they not angry, they came to apologize … Was I hallucinating? Mother invited them to sit down and Eitan’s father chose to settle himself on the couch, closest to me. Mother offered them coffee and tea as if they were acquaintances who had popped over for a routine visit. It was an evening that I could never have imagined in my wildest fantasies. Just imagine, two sets of parents meeting and talking as if this was a nice friendly chat. No one could guess that they had never known each other until a few weeks earlier. What linked them was a tragic accident, in which the son of one family was no longer, and the son of the other family was technically alive, but in essence was dead…
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 08:18:17 +0000