Drt by Eric Thomas Page B

 
    It was not the images of the truck, turned over and gutted like some great beast. It was not the shocked faces of the emergency workers at the scene of the crash.  
    It was the man, the man who up until now had no name. Jerry. Jerry Morris was the name of the man whom I had neglected to tell about the car. Jerry was also the man this morning that had demanded to know why I had failed him. I fell into a chair at the round table.
    The news showed pictures of Jerry and his family. There was Jerry in a suit with a blue background. He was there with his extremely pretty wife, joined by his son and daughter. The children were in the middle of the frame at the bottom, the parents above them. The daughter looked small and innocent with blue eyes and a mop of curly blond hair carefully gathered into neat pigtails. Normal kids, normal family, orphaned and widowed because I was too busy looking at Craig’s List.
    Be Well. Be Well. All you have to do is get through tonight and then you can Be Well. Just make it through tonight and then everything will be okay.

9
    The clock crept toward 2AM and I moved without much thought. I found it best to go through the motions. Read a list of road construction on the air, get up and update the other computers, read another list on the air, rinse and repeat. Thinking was poisonous. Keeping my mind off Jerry Morris and his family was the best way to go. The image would poke through occasionally, like a blanket thrown over something large.  
    I kept the words: Be Well.   The words themselves seemed to help in some way. I imagined going to the group would be almost a panacea, but that night, I just worked. I kept my mind’s thumb on those two words. They served as a phylactery to ward off the thoughts of falling into the abyss.  
    The little hand oiled past the two on the clock on the wall and I waited to go on the air. I was listening to the anchor for my cue. “It's 2:06,” she said and the commercial started. I heard about the rug cleaning service, I heard about the Nissan dealer, as I had so many times before.  
    “It’s 2:08.” They played the prompt.  
    “Well everything is all quiet on the Beltway. You are enjoying light volume all around the nation's capital. There is some road construction, if you traveling through the College Park area the Outer Loop has the right lane taken away. In the District, there is some construction on South Capital St in the right lane just before you get to the ramp for the 3rd St tunnel. Elsewhere the roads are quiet. I am Greg Harris for Washington's News leader.”  
    I pushed the microphone off and sat. There was something about the overnight shift that made it almost impossible to keep my thoughts tuned to Be Well. Between 11PM when Amy left and the end of my shift at 5AM it was absolute solitude. Combine this with fighting against the body’s natural biorhythms and you have a hellish cocktail guaranteed to produce panting madness by 3AM.  
    I closed my eyes. Be Well, Be Well…but the thoughts of last night crept in anyway. It was like trying to fight an addiction and making the irrational decision to test yourself. I thought of the truck, coming out of the darkness and the sparks that rained down on the road. I saw the beast of metal and glass, swerving to avoid the car, turning and twisting into the trees.  
    I opened my eyes. The traffic center was gone, all of it. The lights from above, the microphones, the wall of monitors, the desk, everything, gone. I realized that I wasn't even in a building anymore. I was sitting in a chair outside, the familiar office surroundings replaced by a thick wooded area. The trees towered close together and there was no light except the stars that glowed above.  
    I rubbed my eyes hard enough to see spots float in front of me.
    I was still outside, sitting in the chair. I covered my eyes with my hands and then took them away. Nothing changed. I slapped myself, hard. Nothing changed. I pulled my knees to