Time in the room listening to the other stories, talking through their pain/loss/grief etc.… Tobias saw himself in so many of these people, these hapless victims. He saw them blame everyone and everything before themselves. He saw them lash out in despair and anger at what had happened to them.
He saw selfish.
He saw pain.
He saw himself - so much clearer now.
Perhaps, for him, that was the deliverance he would receive in this room for VRTs - Victims of Road Trauma.
The word “salvation” flashed in front of him.
His reverie was cut short as he noticed the monotonous murmur of the voice to his left suddenly stop. Silence crashed into the room as Harry Higham stopped talking - the drone-like speech ceasing suddenly as he broke down in tears, cupping his face in his oversized hands. His loose-fitting cardigan bunched up at the waist, a flabby belly hung low above the baggy trousers – his flesh heading south on his frame as he aged. Harry’s shoulders bobbed up and down with the sobs and Tobias could hear him struggle to get in enough air to breath in between wails. He had been talking, again, about his wife who was killed by a drunk driver two years ago.
For some people, time did not heal the wounds.
For some people, time exacerbated the wounds.
It opened them up, poured salt on them and then washed it away with vinegar.
Harry was one such soul. Each month that went by, he felt the loss of Teresa more and more. Harry had told them, between blubbering and sobs, that each day/week/month was harder than the last because he was further away from her. He felt Teresa fading in his memory, her face slightly more blurry than it was last week.
“It’s like I need glasses for my heart,” he had once said. “Terri gets blurrier and more distant - like my eyesight is failing me. I feel like I just need to put on a stronger set of spectacles and she would be back in focus again. But I can’t. Her smile is fading and I don’t want to let her go.”
“Maybe she wants you to,” replied Carlton, the facilitator of the group. “Maybe this is her way of saying that it’s time you went on with your life - the next phase of your life that is.”
The facilitator – this guy was the key. I stopped writing and shook the cramp out of the muscles in my hand. I waved over the waiter and ordered another coffee and a bottle of water – Adrian’s generosity shouting me an extra drink.
Adrian – my friend, confidant and parasite. He had just entered the story.
Carlton’s bald head reflected the cold harsh light of the fluorescent tubes above, his thick-rimmed designer glasses perched on his nose and angled down, needing constant adjustment. His ubiquitous waist-coast – his shtick, his personal chutzpah – was tightly fastened revealing the lean waist, the broad chest, defined shoulders.
Okay, so technically NOT an accurate description of Adrian, but I was using literary license.
Today Carlton had several Band-Aids on his right hand, congealed blood darkening the central pad on the plastic strips. His left eye was blood-shot, dried blood slowly fading behind the cornea, masked by the puffiness that betrayed the previous injury. Tobias noticed Carlton’s limp when he entered earlier, saw how conscious Carlton was trying to hide it.
“But I don’t want to forget her,” bleated Harry. “I still love her.”
“And you always will,” said Carlton, leaning forward towards the middle of the circle they made. “Theresa knows that - and she also knows that you need to move on with your life and create a new chapter. One that doesn’t have her in your life, but one that will always have her in your heart.”
Tobias could see that Harry would never get over the loss of his wife - and the time in here was only making it worse. Yet, every week, he came back with the hang-dog look on his face. Tobias did feel sorry for Harry, a guy who was certainly an innocent victim of road trauma. There weren’t too many of those in here.
Their group varied from four or five in some weeks, to twelve in other weeks. Some people only came once or twice, but others were there each week - the hard-core group of Harry, Colby and Tobias were constant. Some weeks, people would show up, say nothing, sit on the edge of the circle and then, halfway through, get up and leave.
There were a variety of responses he saw with newcomers.
Some would cry the moment they said their names. Some would yell and scream - all anger and vitriol. Some said nothing and never returned.
The term “awkward silence” took on a new meaning in this room.
Tobias had come to terms with pain and suffering. He knew that he had been lucky to survive that wreck with as little damage as he had. He was now at the stage in his recovery where he felt he didn’t have a right to be there, in therapy, anymore. These people had things a hell of a lot worse than he did. Theirs were scars that ran so deep they’d never heal. No amount of bleating, or sobbing, or lashing out would ever be enough to return them to their former glories.
His time here was limited, he knew that. And, apparently, so too did Carlton.
On this night, Carlton looked at Tobias as if to say: “Why are you still here?”
Tobias knew that his time was up - he was just about over this. If he stayed too much longer, he feared Carlton might think he was only attending because he had some sick fetish about car accidents and their victims.
He planned to tell Carlton, at the end of this night, that it was his last night here.
And then she walked in.
Who would “she” be?
That was already determined…I just didn’t know it yet.
My coffee…cold.
And the old man…gone.