The Accidental Construction Superhero

Chapter 3: Aftershock

Dave wakes up in a motel, as he is not living with Eva anymore. He feels normal. He goes downstairs and greets an employee he knows from work and moves toward his working site. As he continues to move, he feels everything is at normal speed again. The cat is running at normal speed; the dog chasing it is also as fast; and the cyclists and the delivery people are both working at their own normal pace. Dave got a little shocked and let down, thinking his newfound superpowers were just a dream or he was too hungover, as he imagined things yesterday. He walks toward a 4-way crossing, and suddenly a house cat jumps into the street and starts running towards the other end. A little girl, probably her owner, runs off behind it, chasing it through the main road. Dave notices the incident, and his body couldn't help but run to them as a truck with a high speed, honking, came at them.

The cat had already crossed the road, but the girl was still in the path of the truck. He ran towards the girl as fast as possible, pushing her out of the way to the sidewalk and saving her from certain death. But he himself could not escape the truck and got hit by it with tremendous force. The truck threw him off several feet, and he hit the windshield of another car, breaking it, and fainted on the spot. His blood splattered and then slowly spread through the whole hood and the windshield of the car.

Several days later Dave wakes up in a nearby hospital, not knowing how he is even alive. A nurse comes to his room, and he asks the nurse, "What date is it today?" The nurse couldn't even believe he was awake and could even talk normally because his injury was absolutely horrific. She answers that it is the 24th of December. So it has only been 2 days, Dave whispers. The nurse calls the doctors immediately, and the doctors can't believe their own eyes. They did every test possible on Dave that day, from x-ray to MRI, and found all of his internal organs to be intact, leaving only a few cracks in his elbow bone and a minor scratch left on his right arm. Nobody believed him to survive this accident, but eventually he did. Dave left the hospital with a plastered arm and some bandages upon his bruises while every staff member of that hospital looked at him like they had seen something miraculous. Dave felt a little dizzy, and his head was still spinning from the injuries. He notices some changes again, but this time, from within. He now could walk a little faster than normal people; now the actual heavy things seemed lighter to him. This time, while everything around him seemed normal, he has now gotten stronger than an average person. Not only that, but he could hear things now from a little far just like in the comics or a superhero movie. For some reason he was now seeing reddish spots in a few buildings, roads, and other structures. He did not understand and mumbled, “Were these red marks always on this building, or is it some new marketing strategy from some big company?” He tries to lay low and be unnoticeable from the crowd, so he walks slowly towards his workplace to evaluate how much things have changed since he left. As soon as he reached the site, people were shocked to look at him, and his boss almost fainted as all of them heard of him going into a coma 2 days back. They were watching him like they had seen a living ghost. His boss asked him how he could even walk after such an accident. He replied they must have heard lies about the accident; it was not as bad. He quickly picked up his gear and started working and started moving things. He was given the task to break a concrete wall along with 4 other members. As he picks up the hammer and slams it into the wall, the whole wall shatters into pieces. Everyone, now being more suspicious than ever, looks at him while he explains, “This wall must have been weak since the demolition work has been going on for so long.” Everybody continued to work again as Dave promised himself to control his newly found powers this time and be out of everyone's notice until he figures out what the hell has been happening with him for the past few weeks.

On the way back to his motel, he discovers a piece of paper in his shirt’s pocket which turns out to be a letter from Eva. SHe wrote in the letter—

“Hi, Dave,

I know things must have been hardest for you for the past couple of days. The hospital sent me the news of your accident. It was all my fault. I don’t know how to say this, or if I even should say this. But I owe you an explanation, a mere confession. This is maybe a last chance to say what I never could when I walked away from you.

I left you because I was really scared. Not of you, but of me. Of what I was becoming slowly. I thought I was protecting you from my own self, my own mess, my insecurities, and my fears. Those are things I couldn’t fix for so many years. I didn't want to be a burden on you. I thought I was doing the right thing by leaving. But now I see that running away was just another way of abandoning you.

I betrayed you. Not just by leaving, but by letting you believe I didn’t care. The truth is I never stopped loving you, and I never will. I never stopped thinking about you after I left. But I was too proud, too broken, to admit that I needed you. I pushed you away because I was afraid of being vulnerable or being hurt. And in doing so, I think, I hurt you more than I ever imagined.

I don’t expect forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. But I hope, someday, you can understand why I did what I did. I hope you can see that it wasn’t about you. It was about me and my own demons. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me, not for my sake, but for yours.

You were my everything, Dave. And I ruined it. I can’t undo the past, but I can learn from it. But you do not forgive me; I’ll carry the weight of my mistakes with me, always.

With all my love,

Eva”