Til Death Do Us Part

35

I run until I make it to the edge of the road, an actual tarmac and straight road, that I fall and kiss with utter gratitude. Tears are welling up to blurriness. A gritty, cold, rough surface that hurts my parched lips, but I’ve never been so happy to see something manufactured in all my life. I can’t describe the elation and aching chest pain it gives me.

 The truck is long gone, and I stare off in the direction it went, along a long road that curves off out of sight, and I gaze both ways, trying to figure out which would be the shortest route to a town. One might be close; one might not. Or maybe I’m being too hopeful, and it stretches for miles either way with nothing at all. If I have any chance of being rescued, I have to stick to the tarmac and not stray. Roads mean people, and people mean being saved. I am not going to give up. I get to my feet and follow the truck's route, hoping it’s the right choice.

I watch the sun all day as I walk in the direction that symbol of hope went grow high and warm me a tiny amount, but then when it starts to drag down, my footsteps slowed, and I lose the will once more. Endlessly walking south, step after agonizing step, until I don’t think my legs can go any further, and I haven’t seen a single road sign or car in hours. Nothing! I’ve depleted everything my body has. It’s like this is a deserted nomad’s land and I know I might not get through another cold night at this rate.

I’m shaking so much it’s adding to my physical weariness, just the effort of shivering. I’m hungry, so it causes severe cramping and dehydrated to the point my mind’s candyfloss. I’ve vomited twice along the way. Losing hope, losing purpose, and losing what strength I have.

I keep thinking of my family. Of Jyeon, and Yoonah, of mother…. even the ones I see only at OLO. Like the Park uncles and aunts, and Grandfather, Jonah Park. None of my Kim family are alive anymore, so I have seen them as the closest thing for a decade. The distant people of my life who still add to the broader circle. The board of directors. My job.

 I wonder what they are all doing now. Do they know what happened to me? Do they know I’m missing and hurt? Did the nature reserve park wardens find the destroyed railings and realize a car went over? Did they start looking for its remains in the water below? Did Jyeon get pissed at my lack of presence with his stolen car that he checked his GPS tracker to see where I might have left his baby?

Does anyone notice I’m gone or care? I don’t even know what day it is at all or how long I’ve been out here. The accident feels like it was weeks ago already and a flickering traumatic memory that keeps hitting me in flashing three D. I only know that it’s getting dark now, and I can’t see signs of life ahead, or street lights, or even the glow of a city. All I can do is walk. Like a dead woman, held up on strings, dragging herself onwards.

I must look like hell, in a slip of a dress and high-end lingerie, a torn, blood-covered, ragged mess, who was dragged through a bush backward. Filthy and damp, and I can’t even imagine how my face looks if my makeup smeared everywhere or entirely washed off. My hair is probably like a bird’s nest, my expensive cut and color ruined. Most of my acrylic nails are snapped or scuffed up on my shredded hands. I’m probably facially blood-covered, crusted, and gritty in the same way my arms and legs are.

My chin drops to my chest, and I collapse. I’ve done it several times, and with each setback, I give myself a moment and pull up again, but not this time. I sit here in a rumpled mess, kneeling but bent forward, without the ability to even raise my head or take one more step. I’m done, I’m spent. There’s nothing left to give. My energy levels are in the negative. My limbs no longer listen.

Panting loudly and hurting to the point I no longer feel it. My eyes are heavy and sleepy, and I start to cry. Hopeless despair from somewhere deep inside because I feel like I’m giving up and I shouldn’t, but I really can’t fight it. If surviving the water was hard, this is somehow worse. A flicker of hope being given with the miracle of surviving the sea, only to have it slowly dwindle over hours and hours of this. I feel so alone and insignificant.

I close my eyes and sink within my limbs, knowing it will be pitch dark soon and I should find somewhere to rest that’s close to the road. It’s all I can do. The only thing to extend my ability to survive this. Find dry leaves to keep me warm, even if my flimsy covering is still damp and inefficient as outerwear. If I can remember the old camping lessons of years ago, I could try making a fire, but I don’t know if my fingers will even respond. I blow out my hair heavily, and even the tears rolling down my face are delivered with no effort from me. My posture is of a curled up and deflated child, sitting W-legged on the road with sunken shoulders.

A slow rumble from behind me pulls me out of my misery, coming from absolutely nowhere and so suddenly, and I hold still while I listen. Sure I imagined it for a second, and I’m starting to full-on hallucinate with desperation.

It’s distant at first, like a growl, a vibration. I hold my breath and c**k my head; about the only thing I can and strain to really hear. Holding still, inwardly praying to a God I don’t believe in that this is real. After a long minute, it starts to sound like an engine, an old struggling engine of something much smaller than a truck. My eyes flash open, gulping in, and I turn, finding renewed ability and struggle to my feet.

That’s when I spot them. Lights in the distance, coming this way, two of them. Headlights.

I start to pant in excited despair and move towards it, raising my arms over my head and waving wildly, desperate for them to close the gap and keep coming this way. Fighting my own body that’s trying to tell me I’m powered on sheer will, and I can’t maintain this.

“Help…. help me,” I call out, tears stinging my eyes, seeing only hope, discarding my physical inability, but my voice is raspy and practically non-existent, and it hurts like hell to make a sound. More like a whooshing of failed words.

It trundles closer, and although I’m already shivering uncontrollably, I start to violently shake with the sheer adrenalin of seeing my chance at being found. The loneliness and despair of the last hours melting away.

“Please.” I gasp out loud, eyes blurring with my tears as it gets so close I can make out the hood and shape behind the blinding lights of a small pickup truck. My elation soaring, my emotions crashing into one another painfully as mild hysteria rises inside of me with the urgency to be seen. It’s like I convince myself that unless I wave and make it obvious I’m here, then they’ll drive right over the top of me.

Closer, closer, swerving slightly because they seem to see me, and then they’re within ten feet in a millisecond.

Because of my enthusiasm, I trip over my own uncoordinated feet, falling into a crumbling mess onto the harsh, hard tarmac, and let out a yelp. Sobbing with the effort of fighting to be seen and try crawling towards them because the inner fight won’t die, and I can’t rest until I know I’m safe. Knowing if I can just get to them, I can live.

“Please.”

I beg and collapse again as the crunch of tires comes to a sudden emergency stop and rings my way. The skid, the cloud of dust kicked up, and the dulling of the engine as it goes from running to idle.

They stopped for me.

They see me. They really stopped. It’s people…. it’s a person.

“Oh my god, baby girl…. where the hell did you come from?” A woman’s voice filters my way, a pure and soft and angelic voice that I think I may etch into my soul for the rest of my life. I lift my head, tears streaming down my face and bubbling like a baby, just enough to see two rugged boots running at me from the front of the stopped, steaming vehicle. It’s eery in the dim light, and she’s cast in shadow with the way she moves in front of the headlights. Her body heat is coming off her like steam because it’s so cold out here.

“What happened to you? What the hell?” She sounds shocked that she can’t comprehend finding some half-naked woman in the middle of this endless road. I can barely hold myself together for the relief I feel, for this angel falling out of the sky to come get me. To me, her voice is like velvet, a harmonious songlike lullaby.

“Help me…” I whisper in urgency, sounding like a wounded child with barely any sound over my breathlessness. Begging and pleading, so sure I need to and manage to pull enough of my body up that I can catch hold of her with one hand. My hand is on her arm, and I grip on with weak fingers.

“You’re freezing and half dead, baby girl.” She shifts to beside me and starts pulling me upright, helping me with warm hands and a soft but firm touch. Sliding me back to my knees while stopping to haul off her thick flannel shirt and starts pulling it around me. Her entire focus is on rubbing my arms and legs and tending to what she deems the first port of call, my complete lack of warmth. All I can do is sob as this stranger wraps me up in strong arms and tries to cover my naked blue skin with any of the clothing she can pull off her own body at speed. Her scarf, leg warmers, even her under jumper she uses over my legs.

“Don’t leave me….” I beg of her, unable to feel any effect of what she’s doing and only desperately clinging to her leg as she pulls a hat on over my damp hair and tugs it down so it comes to my eyelashes. Frowning at me, eye to eye, she scans me all over and seems to be having a hard time keeping her own shock in check. She’s about my age, a little more of a rough and ready tomboy, but pretty.

“Sweetheart, not only am I not going to leave you, but I’m not leaving you out here another second longer. Come on… It’s almost in the negative right now. My truck is warm. How are you still alive?”

She single handily hauls me up with her, taking the entirety of my bodyweight even though she isn’t that much bigger than me, and I sink against this woman as she takes control of my entire body.