I don’t remember the crash itself. I remember the song on the radio. I remember thinking I should have left earlier. Then nothing.
I broke my left leg in two places, three ribs, my collarbone, and my wrist. I had a brain injury the doctors called a “traumatic optic neuropathy.” That’s a long way of saying the crash damaged the nerves that carry pictures from your eyes to your brain.
When I woke up in the hospital four days later, it was dark.
I thought it was night. I thought someone had turned off the lights.
“Can somebody turn on a light?” I whispered.
I heard a chair scrape. I felt a warm, familiar hand close around mine.
“Sutton?” Ashton’s voice. Cracking. “Sutton, honey, you’re awake. Oh God. You’re awake.”
“Ash, it’s so dark. Can you turn on a light?”
There was a long silence.
Then I heard him start to cry.
The doctors couldn’t promise I’d ever see again.
They said there was still some hope. Optic nerves sometimes heal on their own, partly or fully, over months or even years. Sometimes they don’t. There was no way to predict which would happen to me.
“You need to prepare yourself,” the neurologist said, sitting on the edge of my hospital bed. I couldn’t see her face. I only heard her voice, kind and careful. “For the possibility that this is permanent.”
I didn’t prepare myself. I didn’t know how.
I just lay there in the dark and listened to the machines beep. 