Unhindered

At 10:56 p.m., the night editor comes barrelling through the newsroom. There's a dead body on Tomoka Farms Road and we need to know how it got there.

"He hasn't called me back yet," I say.

"Well, keep posted, will ya?"

I nod as he strides away. On the desk, my phone vibrates.

"There we go," I say to no one in particular as I pick up.

There's not much the PIO can tell me other than their response time to the crash, agencies at the scene, address, gender and time pronounced. It's probably not Bike Week-related, he says. But they're investigating.

I'm done with the brief and onto watching TV news headlines by 11:05. First run's already made it through the press. It's been a while since I've had that deadline rush, even a mini one.

Funny that: a life in four column inches, unidentified. Funny that it's nothing more than a deadline rush to someone he never knew, someone who would've never even known him unless he died that way. The things we do to survive.

Tomorrow someone else will write a longer piece with his name. And his family will crumple in grief.

On the way home on I-95, I think about a 35-year-old woman who died last week not far from my exit after a drunk driver rear-ended the car in which she was traveling. It's like a roll of the dice. Some make it; some don't. I did.

I think about her every time I pass the mile marker now. Just as I think of every other death. The roads in these counties are littered with tragedy to the ones who remember, the ones who were there. The ones who erected road blocks and drove ambulances and wrote a brief about it.

I collect my mail and make two loaded trips up the stairs with my bags and papers and newly-arrived books. I change into PJs, replace a garbage bag, read a chapter, foolishly make plans for tomorrow.

I'm walking unhindered on two legs. On mornings, I peer wearily into the mirror at a face lovely and intact despite the jarring impact it suffered. It seems wonderful and unfair all at once.