We were cast adrift like two lost vessels. The motorway, our sea. The sky, illuminated brightly by the lamp posts that hung in the night. When I tried to catalogue the damage, you looked up at me. Your eyes, dull, grey, as lifeless as your pale complexion. I wonder, during your final moments of consciousness, did you even recognise me?

The driver maintains that he was not drunk, but tired. Am I even in a position to make the distinction any more? We both met, him an I. The air had an uneasy permanence to it. Minutes dragged on for hours. We filled the silence with idle chatter; it seems both of us had a way of avoiding the matter at hand.

We came to visit you at the hospital. I watched as your outline blurred. The continuous beat of the heart-rate monitor became a becalming melody; a sign that there was still hope.

And then, your figure became opaque, and you were pulled from the ocean.