The Man I Hit On My Wedding Day

I hit a man with my car at 10:41 on the morning of my wedding, nineteen minutes before I was supposed to walk down the aisle, and when my fiancé told me to leave him lying in the road, I set the phone face down on the asphalt and rode to the hospital in my dress.

That is the whole story in one sentence. The rest of it took eleven months.

I was twenty-nine years old. I was driving my grandfather’s 1960 Cadillac, cream colored, with a white satin ribbon tied across the hood by my mother at seven that morning. I had both hands on a steering wheel as thin as a broom handle, a lace sleeve on each arm, and my phone lying face up on the bench seat beside me, where I could see it.

That last part is the part I have to own.

Main Street in Harlow, Kansas is four blocks long. There is one painted crosswalk, in front of the hardware store, and I have driven through it maybe ten thousand times in my life. I knew it was there. I was going about fifteen miles an hour. And I looked down.

I looked down because the phone lit up, and it was Preston, and the message said, You’re late. Do not embarrass me today.

I read it twice. That is how long I looked away. Two readings of ten words.

When I looked up, there was a man in the crosswalk. He was jogging, in a gray T-shirt and black shorts, with white earbuds in and his head turned the other way, toward the grain elevator. He was close enough that I could see the sweat on the back of his neck.

I stood on the brake with both feet. The old Cadillac dipped its nose like a horse refusing a fence. The tires made a short, ugly sound.

It was not enough.

The bumper caught him at the hip. His legs went out from under him, and he went down hard on his back across the crosswalk, right in front of my grille and my mother’s ribbon. I heard one dull thump, and then I heard nothing at all. No engine. No radio. A bird somewhere. The car rocked back on its springs and sat still.

I had both hands over my mouth. I remember that, because I remember the lace scratching my lips.

Then I was out of the car.