The Accident

Summary: She's involved in a accident which causes a man to lose his life. How will she and her friends handle it, knowing that she was partly responsible for what happened?

Chapter 1

Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least others can learn from.

~ Al Franken

It was a cold, dark winter night in the middle of December. She was driving home from a surprise party for one of her closest friends, but had started to feel a little sick so she had left the party leaving her friends there. Even though they had offered to come with her she had declined, simply because there was no reason for all of them to have a bad night. Right?

On the other hand, she had been drinking but not nearly enough to get her drunk. She wasn't even tipsy. There was no way that one drink could have an effect on her driving. At least she hoped it couldn't.

She was driving past Karen's Cafe just like she always did on her way home. She stopped in front of a red light and waited impatiently for it to turn green.

"There isn't even anyone else on the road!" she thought out loud. "That's it. I'm not waiting any longer." She started to drive slowly past the red light but quickly started to go a little bit faster. She didn't even have time to blink when a man suddenly appeared in front of the car.

Crash!

It took almost 5 minutes for her to regain consciousness after the crash. At first she had no idea what had just happened. At least not until she saw a man lying on the ground in front of her car.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed in horror at the scene in front of her.

She struggled to open the car door and slowly stepped outside into the cold, trying to get to the man she just had hit, even though her head was pounding like crazy. When she finally reached him, he was just lying still on the ground, face down with his lifeless body.

"Oh my god! Sir? Can you hear me?" she asked the stranger but didn't get a response. She tried to find a pulse but when she finally found it, it was barely even there.

'I need to call an ambulance' she thought.

She realized that she had left her phone at home so instead she checked if the man had one. She found one in the man's back pocket and immediately called 911.

"Hello? Yes, I need an ambulance to…um," she looked around frantically for some kind of sign to where she was. She drove past there every day and yet, she couldn't remember where she was. "…Karen's Café. It's right outside from there. It's in…" she said desperately into the phone when a woman picked up at the other end, still trying to remember her exact location.

"Don't worry, miss, I know the place. Now can you tell me what your emergency is? the woman asked.

"I...I think I hit him with my car. It was an accident and now he barely has a pulse and he isn't breathing and...Oh god…what have I done?"

"Just calm down, miss. The ambulance and the police will be there shortly. Do you know how to do CPR?"

"I took a class but..."

"That's good. Just do everything you remember from that class."

"O...Okay...I'll try..."

She put the phone down on the ground beside her and slowly tried to turn the man around so he was facing her. She then put her hands on the man's chest and did CPR to the best of her ability.

"Come on! Please, wake up! You can't die...You just can't! Come on...please..." she begged. Suddenly the man started coughing.

"Sir? Can you hear me?"

"C...Cold..." the man stuttered in a low voice, almost whispering.

"Okay...Here, you can take my jacket," she said and took off her coat so she could put it on the freezing man. "The ambulance will be here soon so just hold on," she told him.

"No...time..." the man said and tried to move, but yelled out in pain instead.

She hadn't even noticed the cuts and bruises all over his body until he pointed it out. And God only knew how much internal damage she had caused during the impact. There was so much blood...He would probably bleed to death before the ambulance would even get here. But of course she couldn't tell him that.

"You're going to be okay. Don't worry, they will be here soon..."

"Tell my wife and kids that..." he started.

"You can tell them yourself when you see them," she cut him off.

"Tell them...Tell..." he struggled to breathe.

Then suddenly everything just stopped. His lips stopped moving, his breath was like it had never even existed. He didn't even finish his sentence. She saw when he closed his eyes and heard his last breath. She knew deep down that he was gone but didn't want to admit it.

"Sir? Sir, look at me! No! Come on..." she said as she started shaking him. But she knew that it was a lost cause.

She started to sob because she knew he was gone and there was not a damn thing she could do about it. She had killed a man. Intentionally or not, the results were still the same. She could here sirens from far away so she just sat there beside the man she had killed so that he didn't have to be alone...She just sat there and cried. For him, for her, and for all the people that would be affected by this.

There was no going back now…