The Broken Crockpot
I hadn’t heard the crash, but somehow as I turned the corner of the street, I knew something was wrong. It’s a feeling that I can’t quite describe, but I hope I never feel it again. The accident in front of me was of pure chaos. A truck was stopped in the middle of the street of the mobile home park where I live. The bed of the truck was filled with decorations, food, chairs, and tables. The remains of my bridal shower. On the street, just a couple of feet away from the truck, my dad cradles his friend in his arms. I almost laugh as I take in the scene in front of me, the hopeful part of me was thinking it was an innocent joke. Then I see the blood.
My eyes travel along to the gash on the unconscious man’s forehead. From his pale open lips, I hear small gurgling mixed with soft painful moans. There are other men around him, with fresh cuts and scrapes as well, they had been sitting next to him on the truck bed. My dad looks up and sees me across the street, in his eyes I can see his desperation, his friend is still passed out in his arms.
I run despite the clumsiness of my feet in heels, just barely missing the glass. Shimmering pieces are scattered all across this side of the street, the sparkling shards in stark contrast to the cold blackness of the asphalt. I feel some crunch underneath my feet as a woman I don’t know calls 911. I look at my dad, “Is he breathing?”
“Yes… yes,” is his simple reply.
My dad’s friend continues to moan, the same haunting noise as before. I feel a chill run down my spine, and someone screams at the other side of the street, “¿Que paso? ¿Que paso?”
My dad and the other men tell me to leave but I can’t, I seem to be glued to ground while the same thought echoes in my mind, I could have stopped this. I could have stopped this. My best friend and maid of honor has caught up, her face is pale, “Oh my God, what the fuck happened?”
It was only minutes ago. It was only minutes ago that I saw the three men sitting in the back of the truck. My bridal shower had ended a while ago in the small banquet space of the mobile home park and the men that had been at my parents’ house had come to help clean up. There was so much to take back to the house and they had decided to use the truck. I saw the three of them, Gustavo in the middle holding a large crockpot with the leftover broccoli cheddar soup in it. I had laughed with them as they drove away and somehow, I knew that something bad would happen. But I was worried about my mother-in-law’s crockpot, not the man carrying it. I remember waving as they sped down the street a too little fast, when I should have stopped them. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would be one of the last people to see him conscious.
The street is in chaos now. A child is screaming and crying, and the others in our group have caught up. Someone tries to pull me away and they tell me that my mom is coming, but I can barely hear them. The sirens are deafening. An arsenal of first responders pull up on the small street. Suddenly EMTs are taking him away from my dad’s arms. They lay Gustavo gently on the ground while a fire truck pulls in. Several police cars squish into the other side of the road. People I don’t know are around the corner, some of them recording this with their phones, I glare at their ignorance for privacy and as I start towards them, my friend, Priscilla squeezes my hand to stop me.
The truck bed is a mess. Soup and iced tea are pouring down all over it, and all the sandwiches, all the pastries that were so carefully handmade are mostly crushed. Only moments ago, we were laughing as we cleaned up after the party. It seems like a distant memory now. The man who was driving the truck is talking to the police as the EMTs take Gustavo into the ambulance. He still hasn’t gained his consciousness back. His wife seems to be the only calm person within this whole mess. She has a stoic expression on her face and her eyes almost lazily scan the scene. She gets into the back of the ambulance while one of my mom’s friends asks her, “Gabby, what hospital are they taking him to? We’ll meet you there!”
“UCI emergency!” is the answer we get back as they shut the doors to the ambulance.
The police keep questioning the man who was driving. They ask for his information and they ask me if I saw anything happen. I shake my head and Priscilla tries to reassure me, “He will be fine, Florencia. Don’t worry.”
I try not to worry. I really do. The rest of the day goes by so quickly; before I know it, the sun is setting behind ominous dark grey clouds. My parents and the others are still at the hospital while Priscilla and I eat a quiet dinner. When she leaves, I call my fiancé who is finishing up school in Hawaii. He tells me the same thing, he will be fine, don’t worry. My brother shows up from work later into the night. I cry as I tell him what happened and as hot tears run down my face, he says, he will be fine, don’t worry.
My fiancé video chats with me from Hawaii again. We mostly sit there in silence until I got to sleep, and he hangs up. The next day I go to my place of work, ironically, it’s a church. By now everyone has heard of what happened and I feel them watch me as I go about doing my job. Are they thinking the same thing I am? That it’s my fault? If he hadn’t come to help clean up my bridal shower, then perhaps he would still be alive? If I would have said something when I saw them leave, sitting at the back of the truck, then he would be here, at church on Sunday morning with the rest of us.
I pray. More than I have ever prayed before. The whole church prays. Not just the Spanish speaking ministry, the English one too. Hundreds of people pray for him and I hope, and I try to act like everything will okay but it’s not. My mind goes in circles, from the men leaving my mobile home’s event center to the right turn before my house. My dad is quiet, and he doesn’t like to talk about it. All my life we have had a running joke in my family about his antisocialness. He doesn’t make friends easily. Gustavo was his friend, probably his best friend and he’s gone, just like that. Will he ever have another friend like him?
I don’t see my parents much in the next few days. They go to work and then straight to the hospital. They barely eat. We keep praying. Some would say that God ignored us, that he abandoned us in this moment, but I don’t believe that. Even if I can’t understand why God decided to take him away. He never wakes up. His family decides to let him go. The doctors are still confused about what happened, but they say something about blunt force head trauma. We are told he went peacefully; he probably didn’t feel any pain, even when he hit his head.
Life is fragile. One second you are alive and the next you can be dead. I was at church when my parents let me know that he had passed. In movies, when people die, it usually rains. It wasn’t raining that day, but I remember it was cold. His family visits the man who was driving and they tell him they won’t press charges. They pray for him. They forgive him. I wonder if I could have done that.
In the next few weeks leading up to my wedding, I don’t find myself worrying over whether my dress will fit, if the DJ will play music that I like, or if the cake will be just how I like it. I think of what I could have, should have done. I knew it was a bad idea, why didn’t I tell him to get down? When I saw him carrying the crock pot, my only thought was please God, don’t let the crock pot break. My mother-in-law can be quite the handful, we get along well enough, but I really didn’t want to give her an excuse to be mad. When I first saw the accident, all I thought was I’m going to have to buy my mother-in-law a new crockpot. Now I can only wish that the crock pot would’ve been the only thing broken that day.
