A work of creative nonfiction where an unlikely connection to the past is recalled as troubling thoughts of the inevitable blow in…
by: Emma McCoy
The streetlights pass in a blur. I’m thinking about a car slamming me into the guardrail. I find myself thinking about this a lot lately. Steel folding in on itself. Plastic shredding like wheat on the pavement, threshing into shards instantly. I’d flip over. Screech to a halt. Get mangled a bit, nothing I can’t handle, but serious enough for lots of flashing lights, a stretcher, and the cutting away of my clothes with shears in an ambulance.
It hits me — if I’m in an ambulance, it’ll have to take me to the nearest hospital. The one I went to a few years ago. And I haven’t updated my emergency contact. It’s still him, even though he’s moved away. Will he get the call, all those hours away? Will he answer? Wonder why such an old friend didn’t change the record? Who would he call, then? This line of questioning only takes me to a rubbing-alcohol cleansed hospital room, and an IV going in so slowly I can feel my veins being injected. Him, waiting with me. Falling asleep in a chair. Him, waiting, when every test came back normal. When I hurt so bad I couldn’t cry. When I was chewing on my loneliness and never able to swallow.
I should update my emergency contact. Call up the hospital. Add someone who’s in town, any one of the other friends I’ve made despite myself. I think I fantasize about a car, an ambulance — I think I think about taillights and scissors and breaking bones — I think I think about thinking about car crashes because that kind of pain is undeniable.
I don’t call the hospital. I keep him on that call sheet. A fixed point in time and pain management. A reminder of the endless coming and going.
The streetlights flick flick flick by. Two hands on the wheel. The guardrail inching ever closer.
Emma McCoy (M.A) has two poetry books: This Voice Has an Echo (2024) and In Case I Live Forever (2022), as well as two nominations for Best of the Net. She’s been published in places like Stirring Literary and Thimble Mag, and reads for Chestnut Review. She’s probably working on her novel right now. Catch her on Twitter/X: @poetrybyemma
