Merging

We were on the road to Lily's mother's house for Easter weekend when it happened.

Black SUV going 90. Drifted into our lane.

“Honey!” Lily had gasped.

I turned to her just in time to see the other driver's red fingernails claw at the steering wheel. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

She sent us hurtling sideways, tumbling over the highway, Lily's limbs lurching like a marionette's —

Until we landed in a crash of metal and glass against cement.

I tried to reach for where Lily lay; but my arms wouldn't obey — tried to call for her, but it seemed I couldn’t speak. Acrid smoke from burning metal and pavement filled my lungs.

I watched Lily’s eyes slowly close until my vision faded to black too.

And then, like waking out of a nightmare, I was back at the wheel.

Lily's eyes were open and animated as she discussed in detail what to expect after her Uncle Stan's fourth or fifth shot of rakija. The smoke that had choked the breath from my lungs was gone; in its place, the aroma of the coffee she picked up at the gas station before we left, and a trace of coconut from her shampoo.

“— He’s going to offer you a drink, but honestly? Just stick to beer.”

The car was whole, sound, and facing the right way up.

“In two miles, merge on to State Route 40 east,” said the GPS.

The road ahead of us stretched into the horizon, empty but for a couple semis lazily climbing the slope.

No black SUV in sight.

Still, my knees shook as I accelerated. The thundering of my still-alive heart claimed it must have been a nightmare.

“Are you okay?” Lily's voice cut through my thoughts.

“I'm sorry. I must have drifted off,” I heard myself say, dazed and distant.

“Really?” she said. “Maybe we should pull off at the next exit.”

“I'm okay now,” I said. The sunset behind the storm clouds was beginning to cast the road in shadow. “We're almost there.”

I could tell that she wanted to argue. In the newness of our relationship, she bit her tongue a lot when I stayed up too late to play video games, or had one more beer than I said I would.

But I had seen her nose-to-nose with patients who wouldn’t follow their doctors’ orders, with men at the bar who couldn’t take a hint.

I reached for her hand.

“I won't do it again.”

Her face relaxed into a wry smile.

“You can't get out of meeting my family that easy.”

I let the black asphalt ahead smooth over the bad dream, whose tendrils seemed to be loosening their grip on my mind.

“Honey!” Lily gasped. The same sharp inhale from my nightmare.

My head snapped to her to find a black SUV, the same black SUV, inches from the passenger side door. The same driver’s red nails gripped the wheel.

The world went sideways, again, a rolling kaleidoscope of spring sky and dark road. We hung suspended from our seats in a pantomime of falling.

Lily's eyes closed, then mine.

And when they opened again, I was back at the wheel, with Lily chattering about her Uncle Stan, her Aunty Mar, the ham on the table.

State Route 40 still two miles ahead.

“We have to stop. We have to pull over,” I said, craning my neck to check for black SUVs.

“Why? Are you alright?”

“We keep — we need to pull over.”

I could feel Lily silently evaluating me like she did some of her patients.

“Exit 199 ahead has a rest stop,” she said.

Did that come before or after the crash? I couldn’t remember. Whatever was happening to us, I couldn't remember the details of the sequence that led to our death.

But no time to hesitate. I began to merge.

“You have to signal!” Lily called. “Honey!”

The black SUV was at our back fender.

I jerked the steering wheel left, not knowing a semi had pulled up on that side.

And the result was the same — flying, crashing —

Waking up at the wheel again with my heart racing.

“I need to pull over,” I said. I didn't wait till the signs for the exit. We wouldn't make it.

We sat under the swaying branches of a willow tree until we couldn't see it in the dark. I told Lily I just needed a rest. But I didn't explain why I kept watching the road.

Surely it had been enough time. Surely whoever was in the black SUV had passed by now.

But if it wasn't the SUV, it was a semi. If I slammed on the brakes, the two of them would collide and we couldn't escape the wreckage anyway. If I stopped altogether in the middle of the highway —

I couldn't prevent it, couldn't remember enough to plan our escape.

Again and again. Same endless road. Same gasp. Same end.

“We should get back on the road,” Lily said once, as we sat pulled over before the exit. “There's an ER by my mom's. We could stop there.”

She laid a soft hand across my forehead and peered into my face. I breathed in coconut. I tried to memorize the shape of her nose, and fill my mind with the exact shade of green of her eyes.

How many times? How many times now had I seen them close for the last time?

I willed her to stay, just stay here with me.

But that's never what happened.

“Switch me. I'll drive,” she said.

If I refused, she'd roll me to the passenger side herself as if my entire adult frame weighed as much as a child's.

She'd take my keys. Call her mom as she started the car.

“Something's wrong with Henry,” she'd say in a panic. “Meet us at Fairview.”

But it would be dark already. She would merge onto the highway too slowly. Another car — the black SUV? — would slam into us. She'd die apologizing to me.

And I'd be back behind the wheel, and she'd be chattering away again.

Uncle Stan, his shots of rakija. Two miles to the 40. An empty road. A beautiful evening.

Until: “Honey!”

“Shut UP,” I snapped at her.

This time, I didn't turn to her, couldn't bear to see the trust she had in me, her eyes wide open in panic one last time.

So I didn't.

Even without looking, I knew it was there — the black SUV on my right. Then I saw the semi on my left. No slowing down. No pulling off.

I pressed the gas pedal to the floor, my shoulders scrunched against the roar of the engine, the sound of Lily screaming at me to stop, stop, stop!

Jaw clenched and pulse pounding, I gunned past the semi, past the point in the road where we died. At last.

The rest of the road unfolded and I thought for a moment that I could cheer, I could kiss her!

But Lily hissed, “You ass.”

And I couldn't remember why she was angry. As we drove, black asphalt smoothed over the memory of our deaths until all that was left was a tense silence in the car that I couldn't quite explain.

The universe where I would always choose to turn to Lily now just a shimmer in the air, a crimping of light in the rearview mirror, like a mirage.