A Light in the Dark - Part V

The summer I was fifteen, I fell in love for the first time. The bliss of that experience was short lived and what followed was a dreary emotional desert that left me wondering what was the point of living when we are all just going to die.

THIS IS PART 5 of a SIX-PART STORY

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

At Christmas vacation that year, I went skiing in Stowe, Vermont with a girlfriend. Instead of staying at a lodge with a nice big fireplace in the lobby, we stayed with a local ski instructor who let out rooms. My governess, Suzanne (yes, I had a governess!) was our chaperone. I was still in a state of despair, still asking the same age-old, worn-out question: what was the point of life if we were going to die anyway?

One night toward the end of our stay, my girlfriend and I asked Suzanne to drive us to a local tavern where a lot of younger people hung out, and where, we told her, we were going to meet some friends. This was a lie. We just wanted to get out and have a little fun. Obligingly she dropped us at the steps of the tavern, but we didn’t see anyone we knew, so we headed back out into the cold. Our plan was to hitchhike up the road to another tavern. We stuck out our thumbs and a harmless-looking, middle-aged man in a small sedan stopped for us. My friend got in first, next to the driver; I climbed into the passenger seat. I don’t remember any conversation. It was a freezing night and the roads were icy. We’d been in the car less than a minute when I spotted a car stalled on the side of the road a few yards ahead. We were headed straight for it.

This was in the era before seatbelts and I didn’t have time to brace myself. As our car plunged into the one on the side of the road, I was thrown through the windshield and back again, landing on the floor where I blinked my eyes to make sure I could see (thank god I was wearing contact lenses). I spat out teeth, but wasn’t feeling any pain.

When someone opened the passenger door and pulled me out, I saw blood on the snow and asked if someone had been hurt. I didn’t realize that “someone” was me.

I was taken to a hotel just there, near the scene of the accident. Aside from the broken teeth, I had no idea I’d been hurt. Suzanne was called (I could hear her screaming in the background) along with the ski instructor, but by then I was growing fuzzy and my eyes didn’t seem to be working properly. A hotel guest who was a physician had been summoned to the lobby, but he didn’t dare touch me for fear of malpractice. He sat next to me as we waited for the ambulance, saying “There, there,” over and over again. I must have looked pretty gory with my ripped-open face. They’d cordoned off the lobby, but what no one knew at that point was that a major vein at my temple had been severed and I was bleeding out.

Cover photo: Louis

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