Chapter 1

The silence that followed the collision was almost deafening in comparison to the noise of the crash itself.. It returned all at once instead of gradually, settling in and enfolding Stephen much like a cocoon will enfold the promise of the new life that exists inside of it. It frightened him a bit, this calm serenity, it seemed unreal, impossible, completely out of place with the violence that had preceded it and the pain he himself was beginning to experience. In his mind, the world should have responded to the events being played out, there should have been a vociferous roll of thunder from the heavens, an angry upheaval from the earth beneath him, something, anything to signify that his agony was not his and his alone. Instead a breeze soughed the branches of the trees above him, night birds resumed their chatter, and the world continued as ceaselessly as it always had, untouched, unfazed, unmoved.

He had been driving too fast, this thought occurred to him next. It was a common mistake of his, always in a hurry, always needing to be somewhere other than where he was, and more often than not needing to be there five minutes prior to his actual arrival.

"You'll be late for your own funeral Stephen," his mother's words, engrained upon his mind from years of having heard them and the irony of this phrase suddenly left him a little chilled as too quickly he realized the possibility of finding out the validity of this statement might be coming sooner than he had once anticipated.

"You'll be late for your own funeral." It was funny that this notion had once amused him, and yet, at that moment, he could find no amusement in it whatsoever, only a sense of dread and a rushing sense at that.

His next thought was of the severity of his injuries. He had purposelessly avoided doing an assessment of them, or maybe it hadn't been purposely, either way by the time he finally got around to figuring out how hurt he truly was the pain had gone from being merely uncomfortable to downright excruciating. Much of it was centered around the top of his head, no doubt from his journey through the windshield.

"Fasten your seatbelt Stephen," another bit of advice his mother had always given him, another bit he had chosen to ignore as well.

He hadn't bothered strapping himself in that night, could clearly remember the moment that had come and gone in the blink of an eye. He had been in a hurry, always in a hurry, and even as he had started the car and pulled away from the restaurant, the notion that he might regret his choice to remain unharnassed never occurred to him. He was Stephen Morgan after all, unbreakable, accomplished, renowned even, nothing could touch him, nothing could harm him, he controlled his life not the other way around and if he wanted to tempt fate by remaining unbelted he would do so.

"Good choice," he whispered aloud to himself and no one else.

Anyway it was his head that hurt the most and without having to lift a hand to it, even if he could, he could feel the damage. A vision came to him all at once of a melon split wide, it's seeds spilling forth and he prayed that this was merely a figment of his overactive imagination and not a true picture of what his own head might look like.

His legs were the next problem. They felt wooden, useless, there was very little pain which at first had seemed like a good thing but very gradually seemed less so. He had a vague recollection of the way he had landed once he had been catapulted through the window glass, and this recollection told him the lack of pain ,might turn out to be more of a problem than a blessing.

In a burst of insight that lasted for all of five seconds at best, he saw himself spending the rest of eternity in a wheelchair, crippled, his worthless appendages withering away from lack of mobility and use. It was a scary thought and surprisingly only pushed aside when the thought that he might not live to see this moment intruded upon it. For a moment he pondered this, was it better to die a man, whole for the most part, or to spend the rest of his days confined, pitiful, needing more than wanting. He had no answer and very quickly decided this was probably a good thing as well. Best to let fate decide lord knew it would whether or not he tried to control or influence it.

Other than his legs and his head the remainder of his injuries were superfluous, or to be more exact less severe. Of course this was a little like being shot and saying other than this huge smoking wound through my heart I'm just fine. This thought he did find humor in and how it was he managed to laugh he didn't bother to question, but laugh he did, gruffly, almost breathlessly though it ended in a hoarse cough, one which left his mouth full of blood and only made him feel more frightened than he already had.

"I don't want to die, not now, not like this. " He couldn't afford tears but they came nonetheless and he gave into them, weeping gently as he felt himself sway in and out of consciousness for a time, never completely giving into the darkness. Merely grazing it, feeling it's pull, but unable to succumb.

It was the moaning that drew him fully back to reality and at first and for a long time after the soft utterance he was certain it had come from his own lips. He felt very much like moaning, not only from the pain but from his own self indulging pity, born out of a sudden want to live that he was certain he had never addressed inside of himself before. Sure, no one wants to die, it's not something that most people , or rather most sane people look upon as a welcome intrusion on their day to day existence. But this was different. This was facing the yawing maw of immortality head on, sensing its inevitability and rebelling against it with ever fiber in your being.

The moaning drew him away from it, from the edge of that maw and it was only then that he was reminded that he had not been alone in the trauma this night. There had been a second car, one he vaguely remembered seeing in his head lights right before he had flown through the night with all the grace of an eagle, landing with all the grace of a sack of wet diapers.

"Hello!" His voice, barely a whisper, sounded strange even to his own ears, raspy, foreign, and in that one word he heard such a level of pain and fear that it frightened him to no ends. It sounded like the voice of a man who was accepting his fate, embracing it, giving in to it.

"Hello," this time he called as loud as he could, the fear was still there, as was the pain, but gone was the sounds of settling and for this he was momentarily grateful. He had never been a quitter, not once in all his 38 years of living had he ever merely given up on anything, and he wasn't about to start then, not when his tenacity meant his very own survival.

"Help me."

His first thought was that the voice he heard in response was that of a woman, and from every conceivable place inside of him guilt began to creep. In too many ways, he was there, she was there because of him, her suffering, and it did indeed sound as if she was suffering, was a result of his stupidity. The guilt swallowed him whole and for a time overrode anything else including his ability to speak.

"Are you still there? I'm pinned, I can't move," she called next and it was her urgency that shook him from his own reverie this time.

"I'm here."

"What…what happened?"

"There was an accident," he told her, omitting a lot of the facts for the time being deciding at least for the moment it was best to concentrate on the events at hand. Later, if there was a later for either of them, they could hammer out the why's and what fors, but right then and there, getting out of the moment alive was what mattered most.

"Where are you? I…I can't see anything."

Thus far Stephen had done his best to simply lie still, remembering one thing, if nothing else he had ever heard in reference to emergency treatment, never move the victim until the extent of their injuries had been established. Other than a quick assessment, he had no idea how severely injured he might be, and because of this, he had simply remained upon the ground where he had no doubt landed, his face in the crushed grass beneath him that had already begun to cool in the night air. But her words inspired him to lift his head, slowly, cautiously, with great care and for the first time since he had awoken he allowed his attention to turn to something other than his own wounds.

As near as he could tell, they were in some sort of clearing in the trees just beyond the road both of them had been traveling on, to his right was a sharp incline marked with now broken trees, to his left was shadows enfolding what appeared to be a slight incline leading down no doubt to the stream he had spotted and crossed over several miles back when he had been driving. Not the greatest place in the world to come to rest, but far better than many he supposed. It was during his survey that he spotted his car, though the word car could only be used in the loosest since of the word for the twisted mass of metal his eyes rested upon. His vehicle had at one time been a grey jag, custom leather seating, stereo surround sound, heated seats, enough room for five adults easily. It had been the first thing he had purchased for himself when his career had begun to take off and God but he had loved it, loved what it symbolized, loved how he had felt behind the wheel of it. In that car, he had been the master of his future, the king of his destiny, a blazing star on his way up.

There would be no salvaging it that much was apparent as it seemed the entire vehicle had become wrapped around the trunk of a rather large, almost menacing looking tree. If he had remained inside of it, he too would have been wrapped around the same tree, and for the first time he managed to find a little gratitude not only for the fact that he had been thrown clear, but that he had managed to survive at all.

"Are you still there?"

"I'm here," He responded to her urgent words, turning slowly toward the sound of her voice. The car she had been driving was small, smaller even then his jag, an ugly blue that reminded him for all the world of a bruise. It was a rental, no doubt about that, and though it appeared for the most part intact, he had a feeling that first looks would no doubt be deceiving on this. The entire vehicle was upside down, it lay upon it's roof like a squashed insect, and though at ground level he should have been able to see right into the front seat, it was turned in such a way that he could not.

"How badly are you injured?' He asked next, and when silence followed this question he felt himself panic a little. It was enough for him to know that he was the reason both of them were there and hurt, he wasn't certain he could live with the idea that his foolishness had taken an innocent life.

"I…I can't tell." She whispered finally, and he let out a sigh of relief. "My legs are pinned beneath the steering wheel and I can't focus on anything but them. What about you?"

"My head hurts like hell. I think I went through the windshield, and…I can't feel my legs."

Saying this out loud, admitting this even to a nameless faceless disembodied voice frightened Stephen, it made it all too real, and that was the last thing he wanted , was for it to be real. Everything about the night had a dream like quality to it, even before the accident he remembered thinking that events had flowed one into the next much like they sometimes did when he had been drinking, back in the dark days, back before he had found both the wisdom and the strength to turn his life around. He hadn't touched a drop for nearly five years, a fact he was proud of and yet he knew right then and there if some how, magically, an aged bottle of brandy managed to fall out of the sky he would cast his sobriety aside in a heartbeat for a few moments relief from the pain and the fear now gnawing at him.

"I don't remember what happened, do you?" Her voice drew him back from these troubling revelations in his mind, and with a sigh he lowered his head once more to the cooling grass.

"Vaguely," he whispered.

"Was it…did I cause this?" For a moment he ignored her words, knowing it would be too easy to allow her to think the accident had been of her doing, entirely too easy, just open his mouth say yes that was all it would take and at least for the time being she would believe it. Eventually, when the shock wore off, she would no doubt recall the truth, but for a time at least, someone in the world would feel the guilt and the anger he was feeling at that moment toward himself.

"No, it wasn't you." He heard himself admit however, a little surprised with all the lies he had told in his life how easily the truth slipped from his lips. "I was driving too fast, not paying attention, my cell phone…."

Hastily he lifted his head once more and looked toward the wreckage of his jag. Somewhere in the midst of the twisted metal was his phone, his life line, his tie to the real world. It would be impossible to locate and just as quickly as the thought of finding it came to him, he pushed it aside reclining once more.

"You alright out there?" The trapped woman questioned him once more and he knew without having to be told that this time she was not asking in reference to his injuries.

"Yeah…I guess. I'm sorry for this, sorry for all of this."

"That's why they're called accidents, because there not planned."

A ghost of a smile crossed his lips as he again felt the pull of sleep. It was a comforting sensation, completely normal in a world that no longer seemed as such and even before he gave into it he had known he would.

"You shouldn't fall asleep," her voice startled him awake and he opened his eyes for a moment forgetting where he was, how he got there and why he was laying on the cold ground. He had been dreaming he was in school, a child back in his primary days. Reality came back to him in a rush however, and with a sigh he lifted his head again toward the sky, trying to figure how long he had been out this time.

"I'm awake now," he said softly.

"How long do you think it'll take before someone realizes we are missing?"

He hadn't thought along these lines, had automatically assumed help would be along shortly, but her question forced him to consider all the facts he might have otherwise overlooked. The road he had been driving, both of them had been driving in fact, was secluded, out of the way. He himself had chosen this route because it shaved at least ten minutes off his drive time and more than anything else that night he had wanted to get home, to put his feet up, sip a cup of tea and forget for a time who and what he was. No one knew his planned itinerary. They simply knew he had left the party with the explicit instructions that he not be bothered for the rest of the night.

He had an appointment at ten in the morning, an interview in fact, but until then he wouldn't be missed and suddenly 10 am seemed an eternity away.

"I…I don't know," he was suddenly forced to admit, realizing on top of everything else that had just occurred to him that not showing for the interview did not guarantee anyone would come in search of him. He had missed appointments before, skipped them in fact, it wasn't unusual for him to disappear for a few days and even if by some odd chance some one realized this time might be different, no one would ever think to come looking for him in the place he now found himself. One more glance toward the road above them only further proved what he had already concluded from his first survey, they were isolated, hidden even, any car driving by would have to know the exact place they went off the road to even locate them and the chances of that happening were about the same as him winning an Oscar for his last movie appearance.

"Does anyone know you are even out here? Did you tell anyone where you were going?'

"That wouldn't have been possible, I took a wrong turn about five miles back, I was lost and besides, I don't really have anyone I could tell. I came here on vacation alone."

Somewhere inside of Stephen's mind he heard a door slam, loudly, loud enough to reverberate almost painfully throughout his head and hastily he shook the noise it made away not wanting to think what it meant.

"we're gonna die out here aren't we?'

Of all the things she could have said, this was the last thing he wanted to hear, and though a protest rose up inside of him he was surprised to find he didn't have the strength to voice it.

"I don't know." This was the closest he could come, and even to his own ears it sounded pitiful.

"I don't want to die out here, not like this," he heard her tears and her words, reminiscent of his own and once again the protest rose inside of him, dying on his lips however just as it had before.

For several moments he simply lay his head back down, grateful for the cold grass that immediately had a calming affect on him. Then the car, her rental car shifted a little, not much, barely an inch or two.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to free my legs from this damn steering wheel." She was still crying, and for the first time since she had spoken to him he found himself wishing he could see her, look her in the eyes, share her pain and fear that so matched his own." It's no use," Silence once more as she gave up the struggle.

"What's your name?" Silence followed his question, a long silence that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, and when she finally responded he knew she had not spoken sooner for the simple reason that she had been trying to regain control of herself, at least somewhat.

"Sam, my name is Sam. Samantha actually, but no one has called me that since I was a kid."

"I'm Stephen Sam,"

"I'd like to say I'm pleased to meet you, but under the circumstances…:

For the second time, a ghost of a smile crossed Stephen's lips as he lifted his head in her general direction.

"Where ya from Sam?"

"California, and before you ask, no I do not know and stars."

His smile became a small laugh all at once, and this surprised him as he had been all but certain he would never hear laughter again, especially from himself.

"I'm scared Stephen," she said next and the laughter slipped away as rapidly as it had come leaving him feeling hollow and empty for several moments.

"So am I," he admitted.

"I wish I could see you at least, it's a little disconcerting talking to a faceless voice."

"I was thinking the same thing."

Without realizing he had done so, Stephen felt himself inch forward in the grass. Here was very little pain to speak of as he did this and with only the slightest bit if hesitation, he pushed himself forward several more inches. He managed all of a foot at best before his body seemed to awaken to what he was doing and a flair of pain stopped him cold, sending shivers throughout his system and forcing him to bite his lip to keep from crying out. After that he simply stayed where he was for a time, feeling the push pull of consciousness, certain that any moment he would again go teetering over the edge of the abyss into sleep.

"Can you at least talk to me? Tell me about yourself a little. Say anything, I don't care…just talk," This wasn't a question on her part, it was a plea and slowly Stephen extricated himself fropm the fingers of oblivion that had been playing over his mind.

"Like I said, my name is Stephen…Stephen Morgan," He paused as he always did when he gave his full name, waiting for the usual burst of surprised recognition that generally followed, only this time it didn't come and oddly enough he was grateful for this. Somehow, amidst everything that had happened and was yet occurring it would have been a little too morbid if the woman, Samantha or Sam rather, had heard of him, seen his movie, perhaps been one of those fawning fans that both frightened and excited him at times, the ones who said they would do anything for him, and generally meant it.

"What do you do Stephen?" She asked him, and the ghost of a smile returned as he realized she truly had no clue who he was, had never heard of him, or at least for the time being couldn't recall having heard of him.

"Not much if you want to know the truth. "

"Are you retired or something?"

"Not yet," he whispered, again that flash of insight followed these words, visions of himself trapped inside a wheelchair and as hastily as possible he tossed hem off.

"I'm only 38," he told her next, and from her place of entombment there was only silence. "You still there?"

"No, I popped out for donuts and coffee, how do you drink yours?'

It was a joke, and the fact that she could make one, even one as semi lame as this, forced Stephen's ghost to become a full blown smile.

"I'm British love…we prefer tea."

"Right, I forgot."

The rental car shifted again, ever so slightly as if she was attempting to make herself more comfortable and the frustrated sigh that followed this movement told him she was having trouble doing so.

"So what about you Sam? Are you married, kids? Tell me a little about you."

"Not married, I was but…let's just say I beat that wrap and managed to escape with almost all my dignity intact."

"No kids?' He questioned, laying his head flat against the ground once more, and again feeling the push pull of unconsciousness. It was her silence this time that drew him back, not all at once, but gradually as he began to realize it was not the silence of someone unable to find words, but that of a person who had the words and didn't want to speak them aloud.

"Sam?"

"I…we…had a daughter, Sabrina, she…passed away about eight years ago. She was 7 at the time. The doctors said it was an aneurism."

The perfunctory apology rose to Stephen's lips and he bit it back quickly, knowing from experience how hollow and lacking it often sounded in these sort of circumstances.

"So sorry Stephen. Our apologies on your loss," these words filled his own mind until he found the strength of will to rebury them.

"Sabrina…that's a beautiful name," he whispered instead.

"It fit her…so well. She was a beautiful little girl."

Stephen gave her a moment, sensing somehow that she needed it and while he waited for her to gather herself he found himself thinking of the child he himself had lost.

Nathan had been seven, and though he hadn't been taken from him the way Sam's Sabrina had, he might just as well have in the end. It had been nine years since he had seen his son, not because he couldn't simply because Stephen himself had chosen not to.

"It'll be better this way mum. Much better for him."

"For him …or for you?" He remembered she had used the same lecturing voice she used when telling him to buckle his seat belt or eat his vegetables only this time there had been that hint of disapproval in her eyes, a hint that had later become full blown, undeniable.

"Anyway…after she passed, her father and I realized she had been the glue holding us together, without her, there was no reason for us to go on as a couple and we went our separate ways."

"I'm sorry Sam," he whispered finally, though the apology in this moment was anything but perfunctory. He was indeed sorry, for her, for her tragedy, for his own losses, for the hand of fate that threw the two of them together on that road.

"So now I live alone on the beach. I have two dogs, Skippy and Shep. I'm a substitute teacher at the local high school, and a full time writer."

"Anything I might have heard of?' he asked brushing at the tears that had miraculously appeared in his eyes without him realizing they had done so.

"Mostly poetry. I did publish a novel…it didn't do very well though I'm afraid. I'm working on another right now, or at least I was before I came here. It's crap though, which is probably why I didn't bother to bring it with me."

Again there was a shifting in the rental car and he lifted his head toward it until it again settled and became still.

"Are…are you alright?"

"I'm not sure how much longer I can stand my legs being pinned like this. They're swelling, at least it feels like they are swelling and to make matters worse, my head is beginning to ache from being upside down."

Until that moment it had not even occurred to Stephen that she was upside down, in spite of the fact that he could plainly see the car was, he hadn't really put two and two together and came up with four, four being that Sam herself was still strapped into her seat, held there by the dash pinning her legs and hence keeping her from righting herself.

"How long can a person stay upside down before there head explodes from gathering blood?" Her question was no doubt meant to be somewhat of a joke, but he heard very little humor in her voice, in fact, if he had to pick apart, and with nothing else to do this is precisely what he did, he would have to say what he heard was more panic than anything else.

"I think you're safe, for the time being," he responded, wishing he could have sounded more reassuring and less frightened.

"So you have a child too huh?'

For a moment Stephen lifted his head and looked toward the shadowed space separating him from her place of captivity.

"Did I tell you that?" He questioned genuinely confused as to whether or not he had voiced his thoughts about his son or not.

"You didn't have to. I just…I don't know kind of got that feeling. Woman's intuition."

"I didn't know it was so bloody accurate," he teased, pressing his cheek against the grass once more.

"Not gonna tell me about it," she stated and he realized he had fallen silent for a time, might have even drifted off a bit, he was no longer certain. The lines between sleep and wake had begun to blur a little for him and slow he lifted a hand to his wounded head touching it gingerly, enough to feel the blood thickening into goo, enough to spark a flare of pain that shook him out of his reverie and forced him to realize he was indeed awake.

"It's a long story, a little on the complicated side," he told her finally hearing her sigh a little in response to these words.

"Yeah, better not to tell it then, I've got an appointment at the hairdresser in about an hour, I would hate to miss the end of it."

"How can you do that?" He questioned, saying the words without fully meaning to give them voice.

"Do what?"

"Make jokes, even bad ones, at a time like this?"

"I'm a trooper, or at least that's what my mother always used to tell me when I was growing up"

"A trooper eh…what does that mean exactly?'

"I'm not really sure to be honest with you, as near as I can figure that makes me someone who can find a way to make it through any shit storm life throws her way, and believe me, I'm weathered my fair share of brown blizzards with nothing more than a quip."

"Eloquent," he found himself laughing at this however, a short lived chuckle that again ended with a mouth full of blood. Which he hastily spat out as much as he could.

"Yeah, that's me, elegance and sophistication personified."

Stephen had nothing to say to this, the bitter taste in his mouth robbed him of his ability to speak. He hadn't thought much about internal injuries, the external ones were enough for him to deal with at the time of his awakening, but now he did. The fact that he was coughing up blood alone told him something was definitely wrong inside of him, something had been punctured, or crushed or both for that matter. He assumed it was a lung, though his breathing felt as normal as possible under the circumstances, a little shallow, but he had assumed this was to be expected considering the fear that was constantly gnawing at him. He wandered about it now though, wondered if it was indeed normal.

"Don't leave me Stephen," he wasn't certain at first if Sam had said this or if they were echoed words from his past as they were so similar to ones he had heard before, spoken in the same low voice, gently pleading. "Stephen, did you hear me?"

He lifted his head and looked toward the blue car.

"Don't leave me Stephen, stay with me."

He wanted to tell her he wasn't going anywhere, make some sort of joke, the type she herself was made, but it wasn't in him at that moment, humor had died for the time being as too quickly he realized precisely in what way she meant these words. She knew some how, perhaps the same way she had known about his son, that he was thinking about death, dying, the great unknown; though he hadn't really given his notions focus enough to come up with these analogies.

"We're in this together Stephen, you and me, and we're gonna come out of it the same way, together, got it."

"Is that you being a trooper?' he questioned, brushing at his eyes where tears had formed without his notice. Up until that night, he had never been much of a crier, in fact finding the ability to weep had kept him from landing many a movie role in his illustrious career.

"He just isn't believable; his emotions are too stiff, too forced."

What they didn't know, what he had never bothered to share with any of them, was that he could cry if he wanted to, cry so hard and with so much emotion it would have no doubt forced anyone around him to do the same. The trick to it was tapping into your own pain, finding that one memory that would set off the waterworks. He had a thousand of them; vivid, raw images that made him ache from the very depths of his wounded soul. He chose to leave them alone however, not because they didn't demand his attention at times. Simply because using them, feeding on them in sense would have cheapened them somehow, and that was something he could not and would not do, cheapen her memory or the memory of her loss.

"I was sixteen when I met Sabrina's father,' Again her voice drew him back, but this time the yawing maw he had been teetering on was far less welcome then that of oblivion and he turned his back and attention away from it gratefully embracing her intrusion into his thoughts.

"We went to high school together."

"Please, go on." he whispered to her, laying his head against the grass and closing his eyes, letting himself drift a, little as he listened to her tale woven almost musical by her soft voice.