Brian's Last Ride

by Marianne Curtis

would bleed and a healthy dose of peroxide was applied. I think I eventually passed out from the pain. Although I am sure I was also in shock.

  Finally around two o’clock in the morning I was rolled into recovery for “observation”. This was my first night in a hospital since my tonsillectomy at seven. Content that I would be fine, my foster family eventually went home. I soon fell into a drug induced sleep, only to stir when the nurses checked on me every few hours.

  Around mid-morning, the doctor gave me the okay to go home. My foster family arrived, and after a hurried lesson with crutches, I was sent on my way. I was happy to be on my way home and looking forward to crawl into my own bed. On the way back, the car was quiet - almost too quiet.

  “I am sorry about last night,” I muttered. Once the words were spilled, it was easy to repeat them. “I don’t know what happened – but I am sorry for all this trouble.”

  I genuinely felt bad. No matter how my foster family tried to make me feel like I fit in, I still felt like a nuisance. I was well aware that I was not family - I was a temporary house quest. I tried to be low maintenance and I obeyed their rules. I learned a long time ago that rules had to be followed or there were dire consequences. I had finally found a home; I didn’t want to lose it. And here I was, on one of my few weekends home, and I end up in an accident with a bunch of boys during a harmless church event. I had broke their trust, and to me that was unforgiveable.

  “What do you remember?” My foster mother asked hesitantly. I was trying to apologize and they wanted more information. I was not sure what this meant.

  I repeated my story, trying to remember things I didn’t mention the previous night due to my physical circumstances. I tried not to leave out a single detail. It helped to talk about it, it helped me remember. I still couldn’t believe I was okay. Silence followed my reflections. The vehicle’s speed had also decreased during my recollection.

  “We need to tell you something,” my foster father started to speak. I could see him watching me in the rear view mirror. I could tell that something was bothering him and he was trying to find the right words. I waited in silence.

  After a pregnant pause, my foster mother piped in. “You need to know the police will be at the house when we get there. They want a statement from you about the accident.”

  “The police?”

  I wasn’t surprised that I would have to give a statement. I didn’t know who reported the accident, and just assumed the hospital had notified the RCMP when I was admitted. It was not urgent so they wouldn’t have bothered to come see me in the hospital. Believing it was a hit-and-run, this made sense to me. They would want information to find out who did it, just in case.

  “Yes, the police want to talk to you. There is something you need to know though, before we go in. You need to hear this from us, not the police.” My foster mother’s voice failed. I could tell she was having a hard time, searching for the right words. When she finally found them, I was dumbfounded. “Someone died last night.” I was confused. I was here, and the last time I saw Henry he didn’t have a scratch on him. Who could have died?

  “Someone died? But we were both fine.”

  “No, you don’t understand – there was someone else in the accident.”

  Once again, I was confused. Now that was an idea I had not even considered. This entire time, I had just assumed we were struck by a car, and it sped off into the night. The thought of someone else there, just did not make sense. I would have noticed something – anything.

  “Did you see anything, anything at all?” My foster father pressed. I was positive I did not see anything. I remember standing on the yellow line, peering westward but not seeing anything in the distance. There should have been a set of tail lights. Someone should have stopped – but no one was there.

  Too stunned to do anything other than sob I shook my head no. I was positive on that point. From my vantage, there had been nothing around us, but dark night and distant houselights.

  By this time, we were pulling into the driveway and two police cars were already waiting. I was suddenly terrified. I didn’t know what to expect, I just knew I had to tell the truth. I was hustled into the house and sat down in the kitchen. Once I was comfortable an officer entered the room and began his questioning.

  For the second time that morning, I repeated everything that happened the night before while the officer scribbled on some forms. We had to pause a few times to get the details right. I didn’t know why, but I knew it was important. When we were done, he handed them over to me to re-read and then sign. My sworn statement on the matter, I was told.

  The last page signed, I mustering up courage to ask the officer for details on what they thought happened that night. I was told my statement was the missing piece of the puzzle, and with all the statements (I am assuming Henry’s and other witnesses at the church) taken I felt safe in asking the officers to tell me what they found.

  The officer relayed brief but concise details of the accident and I started sobbing. I tuned out his exact words, desperately hoping they were not real. My sixteen-year-old already wounded mind could not comprehend the guilt over my seemingly selfish actions.

  As I suspected, according to the officer, we were hit by another motor-vehicle. While I was looking for duel taillights, we were actually hit from behind by another dirt bike. This was Brian. He had just left the church and was heading for home, where his mother, father and brothers were waiting. Four more miles and he would have been safe in his bed.

  While we felt our way along the highway through the darkness without a headlight or taillight, Brian was creeping up behind us. He had a headlight on the front of his bike. That was the light I saw before I was flying through the air. Based on the skid-marks at the scene, he must have caught us in the beam of his headlight just before his front tire hit our back tire. He didn’t have enough time to react. The impact sent us into a skid, while he was vaulted over his handlebars; crashing hard onto the shoulder of the highway.

  Slowly, the pieces of the puzzle began to fit. It hit me that while I was sobbing, shoeless along the yellow centerline, Brian was lying broken and dying along the side of the road.

  “I swear I didn’t know,” I silently bawled. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” It became a chant inside my head. Echoing, tuning out everything around me. Eventually I tuned back into the conversation to hear more details.

  The officer further confirmed the car that passed us in such a hurry was carrying Brian’s dying body to the Steinbach hospital miles away. The driver was on his way home from work when he spotted something on the side of the road. Stopping his vehicle, he went to investigate and found both Brian along the side of the road. His broken dirt bike lie a few feet away. It was the sudden movement by the Good Samaritan that probably killed Brian, added the officer. When I became a paramedic later in life, I learned the importance of stabilization when a neck injury is suspected. A patient is immobilized and even the slightest movement can sever the spinal cord. A broken neck could have left him disabled, but not dead - if he had not been moved.

  As the officer’s words sank in, the impact of responsibility settled on me like a ton of bricks. If these boys had not been showing off, they would not have been so reckless. Scores of “what-ifs” flowed from my lips like tears. My face was soaked from the downpour originating from my eyes and ultimately my soul. I mourned for a life lost so young. My young heart was broken.

  Based on my statement, Henry was never charged for the accident. Legally, I think that was a good decision. After further investigation and talking to the immediate families on both sides, the RCMP ruled the accident as a “tragedy”. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t pay the price. You would think an incident such as this would draw two people together. For us, we avoided the topic. I ran into him over the years; he was always a wreck. I cannot imagine the horror he felt. I also forgot he was only fifteen at the time too. We were all young and reckless.

&n
bsp; While I have carried this burden in my heart for decades, very few people actually know I was there that night. Publicly, I was the unknown female youth. Henry’s burden was worse. Small towns are cruel and I know many people suspected he may have deliberately walked away from the scene. The local rumor mill speculated that was the reason he headed behind the church, instead of to the front door.

  I choose to believe that he didn’t know. I would never ask. That is between him and God. We were young, panicked and in a situation that could have cost us our lives. For me, the hardest part was that Henry lost his best friend that night. The two boys were neighbors and inseparable. I cannot imagine his pain, even without the other drama.

  As for me, I wore my remorse like a thick blanket. My physical wounds would eventually heal, but my heart remained heavy with guilt. It would be decades before I climbed onto a motorcycle too. The one thing that made it worse was being raised to believe that I was an abomination. My mother was vicious sometimes and she had me believing that bad things happened to people around me which is why people avoided me. In my messed up state of mind, I genuinely believed I caused the accident, and to avoid other such incidents, I had to avoid people at all costs. Eliminate the problem and the