Shards of glass crunched between the weight of his shoulders and the ceiling of the car as he struggled to turn himself just far enough to slide out of the passenger window. There was nothing left of the driver side seat, that is, other than the bits of a mangled body protruding from between the crumpled roof, dash and floorboard. A bloody grimace had replaced his sunshine smile and a gnarly gash had made itself at home where his left eye had once inhabited.
The shriek of sirens made its way over the hill and around Dead Man's curve.
Now lying on the ground beside the car, the sirens and voices faded in and out of his eardrums:
"--- deceased!"
"--- ain't no savin---!"
"Hold on! --- on the ground!"
"Git that---!"
"Holy shit he's---!"
"Hold on, son! We fixin'a gi---!"
"Git that goddamn EMT down here now, Brett!"
The eye that was still left in his head rolled back and he plummeted into unconsciousness.

"Emilia? Where's Emilia?" he groaned.
His voice was gritty. His tongue felt like sandpaper against his teeth.
"Get the doc, Mary! He's conscious!" a deep voice boomed from the left, a blind spot in his vision.
Not knowing there was no eye there to open, he tried to lift his hands in an attempt to pry it open, but they were glued to his sides, so weak that all he could manage was to lift the tip of his pinky. A familiar warm feeling filled his fingertips.
"Don? Can you hear me, son?"
Pops. That warm familiar feeling was his grandfather's hands surrounding his own, a feeling that had brought comfort to him many times in his life.
"Donovan..." A sniffle filled in the silent pause. "Emi's... Emilia's gone. She... she didn't make it, son."
Pops' voice shook between breaths.
"They said she died on impact, Don. There... Son, there was nothing they could do."
Donovan couldn't turn to see his face, but he could feel the grief in his grandfather's hands as Pops broke down beside him.
Donovan's mind drifted off to the first time he'd laid eyes on Emilia. Her hair was a mess of unruly brown curls. Freckles littered her cheeks beneath the chunky black frames she wore. Green. Her eyes were emeralds reflecting the olive t-shirt she wore, her favorite, the one she'd ran out of the house in the last morning he saw her.
Gone... His Emilia was gone and nothing could lessen the guilt he felt and the tremors that enveloped his body.

His one week stay in the hospital was a blur of tears, beeping machines and tests. Donovan sat in the waiting room staring out of the third floor window while his grandparents spoke to the nurses at the release desk.
A miracle-- that's what they'd called it. It certainly did not feel that way. An unexplainable anger welled up inside Donovan every time he heard the words although he knew his grandparents repeated it so much because they were grateful for his life being spared, allowing them to only need grieve one young life lost instead of two. But Donovan was grieving for more than his fiancé's death. A mixture of emotions inundated his brain with memories and plans, all the dreams and goals he and Emilia had set before them. He grieved not only for his lost bride, but for the future they had planned together.

The drive home felt endless. Donovan tried to distract his mind with passing signs, the lines on the road, counting cars, the layers of clouds scattered across the blue sky, a hawk swooping down to land on a power line, but he saw Emilia in every thing.
She found so much joy in these little things when they would drive around for hours with no destination in mind. She had always been his passenger princess, except for that day. She had insisted on driving just once. When Donovan had asked her why she was so persistent, she laughed and asked him if he doubted her ability to drive.
He couldn't help but wonder if somehow she had felt that something would go wrong that day. She had a way of knowing things before they happened, though he doubted that she could have known she would not make it out, that their perfect future would completely vanish in the blink of an eye. He told himself that there was no way she could have known an eighteen-wheeler would come barreling around the curve in the wrong lane, instantly crushing the driver side and throwing the car down the gully like a piece of trash tossed out the window.
"Don?"
He blamed himself. If only he had said no just once...
"Don? Hon?" His Mamaw Mary's voice broke him out of his daze and he turned to face her.
"We home, hon. You gon' stay in ya dad's old room downstairs until you get to walkin' good again. Pops and I are gonna help you get settled in and then I'll get supper on the stove. I know ya don't feel much like eatin', but I won't stand for you wastin' away another day." Her voice was firm and Don knew she would not take no for an answer. She was a stubborn woman, like Emilia had been...
Emilia...

Due to the mangled state of her body, an open casket funeral was no option. Even if she had not been pulled piece by piece from the wreckage, Emilia's parents could not face planning a funeral for their only child. They directed the morgue to have her cremated and her remains divided into two urns while Donovan was still recovering in the hospital.
"Part of Emilia to keep close and part of Emilia for the light of her life" her mother had croaked out between sobs.

Three days after Donovan was released, Emilia's parents decided to face Donovan and bring to him the only piece of Emilia they had left to offer.
Emilia's mother's grief was more than she could bear. When Donovan opened the front door, the sight of his missing eye and the scar left behind sent her careening down to her knees in a pile of polyester, tears and snot. Emilia's father stood broken beside his wife. His eyes were hollowed out holes deepset in his pale face. Donovan collapsed in front of Emilia's mother when he saw the urn cradled in her arms like a newborn. Emilia's mother weakly lifted the urn and gently sat it down in his hands.
"She... she loved you, Don."
Every emotion that shock had set aside rushed back and made a knot in his throat. Tears carved their way down his face and spotted the concrete under him as his body shook. He pulled his Emilia close to his chest as he had done a thousand times before.
"I love you, Emilia Rose Connor" he whispered, "And don't you go forgetting it."

© caspershay