A man gets into a car accident on his way to work.

(from Do Not Deny Me)

I wondered if the woman who hit me was At Fault, in the way these things are reckoned, hitting from behind being one of the criteria of Fault. I knew she had been worried about the looming possibilities, including my own injuries. If I had been damaged, or even inconvenienced, if I was some unpleasant and litigious type–and I very well might be, I couldn’t yet say–there could be a lot of trouble.

Jean Thompson is amazing. This is a pretty short short story, maybe 2,500 or 3,000 words, and yet Thompson is able to perfectly capture the after-effects of a traumatic event. The man loses the ability to speak, forgets who he is. And then we see him come back to himself. In this brief story, we feel  we know him, his life, even though so little has been told to us.

Today on my way to the post office, I saw a young man riding his scooter. He abruptly changed lanes and I thought something along the lines of, ‘He is being very careless.’ About three minutes later, the car in front of him stopped suddenly and the man didn’t have time to brake. He slid onto the pavement, hitting his head. He was able to walk away but he was stunned and possibly badly injured. I don’t know. Anyhow, this story feels appropriate for today. You can read some of it here.