Day

          It was just an ordinary day.

          I did the usual things.  I got up, showered and shaved, dressed for work.  I had breakfast while I listened to the news on the radio.  I rinsed my dish out and put it in the rack.  I made a coffee and drank it while I tied my tie and put on my shoes.  I rinsed the mug and put that in the rack, too.  I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth.  I took my sandwiches from the fridge and put them in my rucksack, plus an apple and orange from the fruit bowl.  I put on my jacket and slipped my keys in one pocket, my phone in the other.  I checked that I had my cash and cards.  I peeped into the lounge to make sure everything was in order.  Then I left.  I caught my bus at the usual stop and sat at the back.  During the journey, I stared out of the window at the passing streets - the people going about their ordinary days, like I was.  I got off at my stop and went into the Metro for a paper and a bottle of water.  I came out and walked along to the crossing.  I pushed the button and waited.  At the appropriate time, I stepped out to cross.

          Which is when the day stopped being ordinary.

          Which is when the day stopped altogether.

*

          We take so much for granted in life.  In the midst of it, getting on with what we have to get on with, we just expect it to keep happening.  Minute following minute.  Hour following hour.  Day following day.  All things being equal, we think, we'll live a certain number of years.  Then one day - way off in the distant future - we'll leave it behind.  Something will get us.  Some nasty disease.  It'll creep up on us too, we think.  We'll have warning.  We'll have time to prepare.  In the meantime, we just need to get on with the business of living.

*

          I didn't see the van - but I wasn't looking, anyway.  I didn't think I needed to.  The lights had changed.  They had to have done, because the traffic had stopped on the other side.  Leastways, the articulated lorry that had been approaching on that side had pulled up on the line.  It hadn't occurred to me that the driver might simply not have had enough room to get across in one go.  His stopping was my cue.  Out I stepped. 

          What happened next was so quick that all I have is an after-image - like a camera flash going off in a dark room.  I heard the tyre-skid at the same time as I saw the movement at the edge of my vision.  I didn't even have time to turn, or to step back.  I felt the impact just below my waist, and my upper body jerked sideways.  I saw the windscreen at the precise moment that my head hit it.  I had a glimpse of the driver's shocked face in still-frame.  Then that flash of brilliant white light.

          And then darkness and silence.

*

          ...and then light again.  Not as bright as the flash.  More like daylight on a cloudy spring day.  Empty, too - except for the sound.  A ringing, loud and intense, deep in my head.  This was the only sensory awareness I had.  The light and sound.  It was as if my thoughts and impulses were frozen - all time, suspended.  I didn't even know what had happened. 

          The ringing began to subside - coming gradually down and down to a gentle rush of static.  Then further still - until finally there was silence.  Or something like.  It was as if my head was under water - the push of it against my eardrums.

          And that's how all of it felt - like drifting just under the surface of the sea - weightless, but gently rising, my eyes fixed on the ever-approaching light from the sky.  Warm and calm, without thought or worry.  A beautiful experience - being in life, but at the same time detached from it.  Or being in the womb, even - not that I could ever remember such a thing.  It was how I'd imagined it, though.  A diffused light, a sense of being immersed... and not knowing anything, anything at all, except the experience of the moment.

          How long was I like it?  Minutes?  Hours?  It was impossible to tell.  There was no sense of future or past. 

          Then, something slowly began to materialise out of the light - like shapes emerging from fog.  Sound, too, began to rise.  A hum to begin with.  Then, as it got louder, a chattering noise - like birds in a tree, softened by distance.  The shapes - indistinct as shadows at first - gradually coalesced into dark, elongated forms.  The chattering birds became something else.  Voices.  I couldn't discern any words, but they were being spoken all around me.  The forms became darker and more delineated, like objects coming into focus through a camera lens.  More sounds came in.  A siren tailing off.  Beeps.  Engines running.  Shouts.  Someone - a woman, I think - softly crying...

*

          I was standing in a crowd of people, who were gathered near the edge of the road by the crossing.  The traffic all around was at a standstill.  There was an ambulance there - its lights flashing.  I was trying to see over everyone's heads, to see what they were looking at.  I reached to touch someone's arm - to ask them if I they would let me through.  It was then that I realised I couldn't see my hand, my arm - anything of myself at all.  I held my hands up in front of my face.  Nothing.  And yet, I could feel my hands.  I could feel my arms and legs.  I could touch my face.  It was all there - I just couldn't see it.  I couldn't feel anything else, either - any of those bodies, pressing around me.  And not just around me... overlapping with me.  It was as if I wasn't there at all.  A shadow.

          A ghost?

          I took a step forwards - through the person in front of me!

          What was this?  I was here.  I could see and hear things.  How was any of this possible?  I stepped again and again, through the crowd, until I finally came to the front.  I saw the van there - the dents on its engine cover, the spider-webbed windscreen.  The blood on it.   I saw the driver standing beside it, his hands over his mouth as if to prevent himself from ever speaking again.  On the opposite side of the road, more people were lined up, looking across.  Two police officers - a male and a female - were standing there, keeping them back.  The articulated lorry still stood where it had pulled up, on the line.  The driver was sitting up in his cab, window open, looking down into the road - at the same point where everyone else seemed to be looking. 

          I looked myself. 

          And then I saw...  

          Myself.

          A green-uniformed paramedic was crouching there over my body.  I was lying on my back, and he seemed to be attending to my head, though I couldn't see what he was doing.   My left shoe was still on my foot - the sock showing, and a narrow strip of pale skin beneath the trouser hem.  The other shoe was off, lying to one side, alone and abandoned and mouth-upwards, like it was simply waiting to be slipped back on.  The lace was still tied.

          I went closer and tried to see what the paramedic was doing.  My head was covered in blood, and he was holding some thick wadding up to it.  I could see blood there, too - soaking through.  He unwrapped a bandage and, gently lifting my head, began to wind it loosely around the wadding - covering my forehead and brow.  He was saying something to me.  Asking me something, though I couldn't hear what it was.  I saw my eyes flicker suddenly, my lips move...

          ...and then - I was there, looking up at him, trying to focus.  Beyond his head, I could see the sky - a plane flying over, leaving a feathery vapour trail.  I was there - back in my body.  I could feel my heartbeat.  The pain in my leg.  The throb in my head, like someone hammering in there.  I saw the paramedic's lips moving as he spoke, but all I could hear was the ringing again, drowning everything else.

          My eyes flickered briefly.  Closed...

          ...and I was back there again, at the edge, looking down, seeing me.  And the world was still there, as it was.  Time was moving.

          Another paramedic appeared with a stretcher.  He placed it by my side and opened it.  Then the two of them rolled me gently, slid the stretcher underneath me, and rolled me back so that I was lying in it.  They then put a blanket over me, from feet to neck, and carried me over and into the ambulance.  The second one jumped down again and came back to pick up my lonely shoe.  He took it with him as he climbed into the driver's seat.  The siren sounded.  Then the ambulance started to move away - away from the gathered crowds and along the road towards the inner parts of the city.

          I stood back then, as I watched it go.  I stood at the edge of the road, by the crossing.  I stood there and waited as the police moved the traffic on again, and the crowds began to disperse.  I watched the lorry move again, over the crossing, on it's way.  In the gutter beside me - my paper, spattered with blood.  And my bottle of water.

          I stood at the edge, watching the day return to normal.

          And I was alone with it.

          Unseen.

          Alone.