Inspired by “The 30th” — Billie Eilish

You don’t remember the accident — not the impact, not the sound, not the moment everything went wrong. What you remember is waking up afterward with your heart racing for no reason, your body flinching at sudden noise, the way fear settled into you like it had always lived there. People keep telling you you’re lucky. Alive. Fine. But no one knows how heavy it feels to survive something you can’t even picture. Mikey knows. Or at least, he knows his version of it. He knows the call you don’t remember making, your voice shaking on the other end of the line. He knows the way the hospital smelled, the way you looked too small in that bed, the way he stood there imagining a thousand different endings that didn’t include you breathing. He never tells you how close he came to losing it — how every time you zone out now, his chest tightens like the world is about to take you again.

You feel guilty for not remembering. Guilty for being scared of things you can’t explain. Guilty for needing reassurance when everyone says it’s over. The what-ifs haunt you late at night: different roads, different days, different outcomes. You don’t say them out loud, but they live in you all the same. You’re sitting together now, quiet stretching between you. Mikey glances over, eyes lingering a second too long, like he’s checking you’re still here. He exhales slowly, voice low, almost careful. “…You know,” he says, “sometimes I still think about how close that was. And it scares the hell out of me.” He pauses, fingers curling slightly where they rest. “Are you… okay right now?”