I Should Be Dead

It was just a drive home from work—just like any other day that ends in 'y'. I was tired. Not the kind of tired that yawns and stretches. The kind that sits in your bones like concrete. Covered in filth, reeking of steam and fat and burnt motor oil, all I wanted was a shower that hit like a waterfall and a bed that felt like forgiveness.

I don’t remember much. Just the sound of the rumble strips tearing me out of whatever sleep-dead daze I’d slipped into, and the image of a cattle trailer growing far too fast in the windshield. After that, it all bleeds together—metal, motion, silence, pain. The sort of blur that rewrites your calendar and carves a new scar into the calendar of your life.

Now it's two months later. I’m sat on the edge of a guest bed in my parent’s house. Legs too weak to stand without planning. Wheelchair sitting in reach like a shadow that doesn't leave. I count days now. Days since the crash. Days till I might walk again. Days till I might feel like me again, whoever that ends up being.

That accident did something I never thought a single moment could do—it rattled me. Deep. Past the skin and the bone. Past the work-hard, fight-harder shell I’d built around myself. I’ve survived things—steam burns, caustic exposure, heartbreak, abuse, betrayals that still echo—but this? This was different.

When I sit in silence now, thinking back, all I feel is a strange, twisted brew of fear and anger.

Fear that I wasn’t strong enough to survive, even though I’m still here breathing. Fear of what my sons’ lives might have looked like if I hadn’t made it home. Fear that some part of me knew I was that close to the edge and did nothing.

And then the anger.

Anger that I let myself get that tired. That I poured so much of myself into the clock, into the damn grind, while letting my own needs starve in the background. Anger that I didn’t feel the edge until I was already tumbling over it. Anger that my strength didn’t save me before the steel and impact had their say.

I want to call it a wake-up call, but that feels like branding a scar with a damn greeting card. This wasn’t some life-lesson dressed up in wisdom and hindsight. This was a reckoning. A full-body sermon screamed in twisted steel and adrenaline.

One I barely crawled out of.

Hell—I didn’t crawl at all.

They had to cut me out of the wreckage, piece by jagged piece. Took over an hour just to free what was left of me from the cab of that mangled metal beast. Every minute, every spark of the tools grinding against my truck, felt like it echoed off my bones. And then, the whir of a helicopter. Not a siren. A rotor. They don’t bring out the bird unless they think you might not make it by road.

Trauma center—two hours away by air. Time collapsed into fragments.

I remember flashes. Judging the ambulance driver for hitting a pothole like I was still clocked in and critiquing delivery schedules. The ER nurse asking if I could wiggle my toes. Me, trying. Failing. Then her voice again, asking who to call.

And then the loop started.

“Call Mom. Call Kell. Call Kell. Call Mom. Call—”

Over and over, like my voice was the only thing trying to keep me tethered to this side of the veil.

Call my mother.
Call my best friend.
Call the two people who might give a damn enough to sit beside a hospital bed and wait.

Fear.
I don’t want to die alone.

Anger.
Why the hell am I so ready to go?

But anger won. It always does.

At the trauma center, same damn checklist.
Can I move my toes? Barely.
Where does it hurt? Everywhere.
Do I know what happened? Yeah. I fell asleep behind the wheel. I woke up with a cattle trailer coming at me like judgment day.

Then they told me—my mother was here. My stepfather too.

And for the first time since the crash, I felt like I could breathe.

Broken, bleeding, strapped to every wire and tube they had... and finally, finally, good news.
Lucid. Present. Talking. I didn’t need them to call anyone. Someone had come.

Then the wave hit again.

Anger.
My mother is going to see me like this.
She’s going to see her son—her strong, stubborn, always-working son—laid out like scrap metal.

How dare I be broken.

Fear crept back in.
Is this it? Is this where I stop?

And then that old furnace kicked back on.

Anger.

No.

I refuse.
I refuse to go out like this.
I refuse to let this be the end of me.
I will not be this weak.

Not today. Not ever again.

The blur came back after that. Memories shattered, scattered across a few bloodstained sheets and half-conscious hours. A nurse's voice. Beeping monitors. My own voice, hoarse and cracked, begging someone to take the collar off my neck.

The panic in my chest wasn’t about pain—it was about control. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn. Couldn’t see what was real and what was just nightmare steam in my skull.

I remember looking down at my leg.

Torn. Broken. Split open like meat on the rendering floor.

And I admired it.

Not for the damage, but because… I still had it.

My leg was still there.

It was mine.

Next thing I know, they’re telling me surgery’s done. That I’ve got bolts in my pelvis and hip now. That the leg I remember seeing raw and exposed is just bandages and gauze now, tucked away like it never screamed at me.

When the hell did that happen?

How much time did I lose?

And now…

Now I sit here. Behind a screen. In a borrowed room. On a bed that isn’t mine.

Still breathing. Still fighting. But beating myself up over the one thing I can’t do yet—work.

I should be grateful. I should be proud. But instead, I’ve been chewing on guilt like it’s jerky. Wondering when I’ll be useful again. Wondering if I ever was.

It’s taken me two months to get to this point. Two months of silence. Pain. Quiet rage. Quiet prayers.

Two months before I could finally write it all down.

But this right here—this is where it changes.

This is where the pages begin.

My name is Vaughn.

And these are the pages of my Iron Journal.