He was stubborn, intoxicated and thirty-seven miles over the speed limit. It's strange that a number, something as meaningless and unimportant had found itself seemingly embedded into his mind.
He drove a beat up suburban. On the dash there was an old hula figurine that bobbled and swerved on a plastic surf board. His mother had given it to him in remembrance of their home in Honolulu. He could still picture his mother's laughter at the sight of it propped in car.
Henry Mitchell stood a foot apart from his car. It's chipped beige paint, and the burnt aroma sifting through his lungs. On the ground his mother's hula girl sat still against cement. Though that wasn't of the wreckage, he surmised.
Paramedics had rushed to her side. Her auburn hair and pouting lips had been stained slick with blood. He hadn't the courage to find her eyes, but the rhythmic moans; her pleas, were impression enough as he cried.
He couldn't breathe, he had assumed in those moments that he was breathing for even as his knees crumbled. Even as her life weakened before him, his heart held hope that she would cling for this world. That even as it pried, as it scraped and clawed to have her; that she wouldn't leave him. That she would fight.
He felt the arm of an officer holding him up in support. He heard his children, the three of them confused and frightened, but unscathed.
He looked toward their aunt, their mother's stronghold. He looked to her, and Henry found her hatred as he was led away from his children; away from his battered wife, and ordered into the seat of the officer's patrol car. An image of the crushed hula girl crept into his mind. The dented sunroof, the crumbled passenger seat, and his children's mortified expressions.
He looked to the blood on his hands and remembered Piper's disgust. Henry remembered Paige. He remembered her smile, and the absentminded laugh he had made as his head turned. He saw the truck; he felt the impact.
God, help me, he thought. "There's no pulse." Help her. "She's gone."