“One more drink,” I muttered to myself. The bar that I had become so familiar with in the past six months was spinning all around me. I slammed the last shot and paid my tab before stumbling into the bathroom. I got to the sink and splashed water on my face in an attempt to sober up before heading out on the streets to drive home. I glanced up in the mirror only long enough to see my light brown eyes contrasting with my dark, Hispanic skin, and my scruffy beard that hadn’t been trimmed in roughly a week. My forehead was wrinkled and my breath reeked of alcohol. Hoping that I didn’t look like the low-life drunk who was recently divorced and had lost all custody of his five year old son that I was, I sauntered out of the bar.

I stumbled into the almost empty parking lot to find my shining, royal blue Dodge Challenger waiting for me. Only second to my son, my car was my pride and joy. The car never had a dent or a scratch, and I parked it in between two parking spaces to be sure of that. The black racing stripe down the middle made me feel invincible. From the outside, the car was everything I wanted my life to seem like. But on the inside, I was reminded with the constant torment of the past. The passenger seat had a lingering scent of rose perfume that my now ex-wife, Rose, used to wear every day. I saw the old car seat in the back and chuckled, remembering how much of a struggle it was to get Chandler in and out of that seat. I saw the spills from juice and milk that I never got around to cleaning up. And finally, I saw the picture on the dashboard of Rose, Chandler and I during our first Christmas as a family. Inside of my car, I couldn’t escape the thoughts of the family that I was no longer a part of.
The downtown lights shone all around me, making me feel like I was in a wonderland. Everything I saw made me think of Chandler. The toy store to the left where I bought him his first teddy bear, the ice cream shop past the stoplight where I used to take him to after I picked him up from daycare, and the McDonalds PlayPlace up ahead that he begged me to take him to every time we drove passed it. My car was controlled by my wandering mind whose last priority was watching the road. My thoughts were already a confused wasteland after the alcohol began to be absorbed into my system, so the roads were not the best place for me to be, yet I chose to drive anyway.

Everything was going fine. I had an upcoming turn off the interstate, and then I was three rights and a left from my driveway. It wasn’t my first time making the decision to drive under the influence, so I thought I knew what I was doing. I was crossing a four way intersection and decided to hit the gas pedal after the light had already turned red. After I saw the cars hurdling their way towards me, it was too late to yank my foot off of what felt like a tar covered gas pedal. I tried so hard to swerve out of the way, only to hit another car directly on the right-hand side. I could hear the screams of a confused child and the cry of a terrified mother before feeling my head bounce off the steering wheel, and then my world went black.
******

I woke up in a sterile, white hospital room. My head throbbed, and I could feel the pounding of my heart echoing through my ears. I sat up and looked outside. The sun was shining, and the world around me seemed eerily quiet. Just then, the nurse walked in.

“Oh, you’re awake!” She exclaimed in an over-excited manner. “We were beginning to worry after you spent the last two days in a coma. Let me go grab Dr. Hope.”

Coma? How did this happen? I thought to myself. I tried to recall my most recent memory. I remembered going to the bar around 8:00 p.m. and everything after that was a blur. I closed my eyes and began to drift back to sleep when I heard the nurse return with the doctor.

“The good news is that you seem to only have a concussion along with the few scrapes and bruises, which is a given in any car wreck. The bad news is that your car is totaled. You better hope to God that you have a good lawyer and insurance. Do you have any recollection of what happened?”

“None at all. I remember going to the bar on Friday night around 8:00. Everything after that is a jumbled mess.” I told her.

“You were drunk. Drunker than anyone I’ve seen in a long time. Your BAC was 0.32%. You’re lucky to be alive due to the amount of alcohol in your system and the wreck you caused. You hit a woman and child. The woman recognized your car. She was able to give us very little information before she went into emotional shock. Her son didn’t survive the crash.” Dr. Hope explained to me.

Killed? I killed someone? The doctor was talking so fast and I was having a hard time processing any of it because of my concussion. She continued explaining my condition and hospital fees, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I killed someone.

“May I ask who the people I hit were?” I asked the doctor.

“Rose, I think. Her son was named Chandler. I can’t remember their last na-“

“No. No. That can’t be true. Not Chandler. No.” I began to repeat over and over. I did not kill Chandler. It couldn’t be true, could it? There was no way I could have killed my own son. Suddenly, all my walls came crashing down. The realization of my actions was sinking in. I killed my own child. My son, my baby, my pride and joy. I cried and cried for hours until I couldn’t cry anymore. Then, I stood up. It was dark outside, and I figured that the doctor probably left hours ago. I looked around and stood up, determined to find Chandler and Rose. I knew that they would be together. They always were.

I walked down the hallway, passing rooms and popping my head into each of them, listening for the sounds of a child playing. I finally saw Rose’s unmistakably blonde hair draping over the edge of a bed. I walked in and sat down. She was sleeping peacefully with a pink cast on her arm and a bandage wrapped around her forehead. She had a large scrape down the side of her face and a burn on her leg. Other than that, she looked like the beautiful women I fell in love with six years prior. I wanted to wake her up, ask her to help me find Chandler, but I couldn’t bear to disturb her deep sleep. So instead, I sat and watched her sleep until I saw the sun beginning to shine over the tall skyscrapers of the windy city of Chicago. Then, I got up and walked calmly back to my room, while the realization of what happened three nights ago slowly sank into my bones.

My doctor came back into my room to check on me right as I sank back down into the hard, uncomfortable hospital bed.

“We noticed you weren’t in your room a few hours ago. Rough night?” she asked. I just nodded, unable to speak.

“Do you need to talk about it? Get some of those feelings off your chest? I’m almost positive that Rose is awake. Would you like to go talk to her?” the doctor asked me. I wanted to say no. I was too ashamed to talk to her. But without thinking, I nodded again. I stood up and walked back down the hallway to her room, with Dr. Hope following behind me.

“Rose?” Dr. Hope knocked on the door. “Are you awake? Davis is here. He wants to talk to you.”

Rose sat up. She looked at the doctor, looked at me, and I watched her eyes fill with pools of tears. I can’t do this. I thought to myself. It had been almost a year since I had talked to her. Dr. Hope gave me a nudge and I walked into the room. I sat on the bed and Rose curled up next to me, out of habit I guess. I held her and we cried together. I repeated the words “I’m sorry” over and over again, and Rose didn’t say a word. When we were both finally out of tears, we started talking. There wasn’t much to say, so we sat in silence for a while. Then I got up and went back to my room.

The doctor came in the next morning and told me I was being released later in the afternoon. She told me to get lots of rest and said my court case was on August 27th. That was supposed to be Chandler’s first day of kindergarten. She also told me to plan on attending weekly AA meetings for a while, until I could get my life back together.

The next years were easily the hardest years of my life. I was sentenced with five years in prison and my license was revoked for a very long time. I attended every AA meeting and I have been sober for eleven years and four months now. Rose moved away because she couldn’t bear living in a town where she was constantly reminded of everything that had happened. We occasionally talk, but it’s not often. Every day I think about the choices I made and the consequences that resulted. And of course, I think about Chandler thousands of times a day. I know my heart will never be completely whole until I am reunited with the grinning, freckle faced boy whose life was tragically cut short by me, his father…my son’s murderer.