Down the block

The sound of squealing tires, then a thud. Silence follows in the early morning.

I can no longer sleep. I transfer out of bed into my wheelchair and wonder at how different a car accident seems from the outside than from the inside. No sound of metal upon metal, no pain, no blood. Sanitized, a duller version.

If it's a "bad one", you can avert your eyes and drive by.

We do this because we are told so often when we are young that the monster under the bed is not real, no matter what we may hear or see, to go to sleep and be brave, that it is wrong to feel afraid. Avoidance is inevitable after years of bravely shutting our eyes and shutting out the noises of the night.

I roll onto the porch and peer down the block. The accident is a fender bender. A woman cries over her crinkled Mercedes. The other driver, a man, shouts at her, his cell phone to his ear. His SUV looks unscathed.

"Need anything?" I yell over. "Are you alright?"

The man puts his cell phone down. "We're fine," he says. "No one's hurt. Don't cry," the man says to the woman.

"My car-" she says.

"It's a car. It's just a car," he says. "It can be fixed." He puts his arm around her shoulder and looks at me. "Do you have a bottle of water for her?"