It was supposed to be an end.
There was no wind when I let the car go. No screech of tires, no moment of cinematic grandeur. Just the roar of the engine, the blur of ravine and sky—and then the earth rose to meet me with teeth.
Metal tore, glass bloomed outward in glittering petals. The world tilted sideways, then again, then again. Something cracked—bones, I thought.
Mine
Or the frame. I couldn't tell the difference.
Everything slowed.
And in that strange stillness, just before the dark, something shifted.
---
—Flashbacks—
I was eight years old.
The air smelled like lilac and tobacco. My grandfather's vineyard shimmered under the late spring sun, vines snaking up the crooked wooden posts with unhurried elegance. Bees hummed, my shoes were scuffed with dry dirt. I remembered the taste of plum on my tongue, stolen from a cracked wooden bowl by the window.
"Elève les coudes, Sylvain," my grandfather called from the far end of the row. "You'll spill the whole basket."
I was carrying grapes, my arms ached with the effort. The wicker handles cut into my palms, but I didn't complain, not to him. He had survived the war. He never said which one.
The air shimmered with heat, and the leaves clung to my arms like green tongues. A droplet of sweat slid down my spine. And yet, I was smiling. There was no reason to, except that it was summer and the world had not yet taught me how to grieve.
I brought the basket to the press. My grandfather didn't thank me. He simply nodded—just once—and passed me a metal cup of water so cold it made my teeth hurt.
"You'll take over this place one day," he said, not looking at me.
I didn't know what I wanted then. But I knew I wanted to be good. I wanted to be kind. I wanted to fix broken things.
The memory flickered.
---
Now I was twelve, and it was winter. My mother had locked herself in the bathroom again.
The hall light buzzed, flickering with each passing second. I sat on the floor, knees pulled to my chest, tracing shapes on the wood grain with my thumb. I had stopped knocking two hours ago.
The old house creaked with age, as if reluctant to keep the secrets it was being asked to hold.
When she finally opened the door, she didn't speak. Her eyes were rimmed red, but her smile was too wide.
"I'm alright," she said, stepping past me. "I just needed a little time."
I didn't believe her, but I followed her anyway.
That night, I slept on the floor beside her bed.
I told her about the vineyard, about summer. About how I wanted to become a psychologist, like the man who helped Uncle Henri after the war. I said I wanted to help people come back from wherever they went when the world got too loud.
She touched my hair. "That's a beautiful dream."
The house exhaled around us.
---
And then I was in Paris. Twenty-two. Coffee-stained, overworked, arrogant in the way only young men who think reading Lacan makes them bulletproof can be. I was in a lecture hall, or maybe a stairwell—faces blurred past me like rain on glass.
I couldn't remember their names.
Only hers.
Elodie.
She had sat in the front row and argued with every professor. She used silence like a scalpel. A girl with grief braided into her spine.
She called me "Doctor" long before I earned it, and I let her.
---
There were other flashes, snapshots.
My first patient, my last...
Elodie's fingers clutching a notebook in my office, her voice so thin I had to lean forward to catch the edges of it. Her absence, the empty chair, the ink she left behind.
Tell him I danced.
A thousand versions of myself, each one believing he could fix something.
But they all slipped away like mist.
---
I opened my eyes.
And realized I hadn't.
The world was still dim, still unreal—but no longer the fractured clarity of death or sleep. I stood now in a room I recognized but hadn't visited in decades. My childhood bedroom, perfectly preserved: the faded posters on the wall, the chipped desk under the window, the dent in the bedframe I'd made falling during a thunderstorm.
It couldn't be real.
But I could feel the grain of the floor beneath my feet. Smell the dry lavender in the drawer. Hear the wind outside rattle the old shutters.
I touched the window.
Beyond the glass: the vineyard. Summer again.
It struck me then—not gently, but like a sudden slap of cold water—that this wasn't the afterlife.
It was a memory,
I was inside a memory.
Something—or someone—had caught me before I could break completely.
But I hadn't woken yet.
The crash had happened.
I was no longer where I had been.
And somewhere, in the quiet between the now and the after, something was waiting for me to understand.