REM

Logan

My heart broke the first time I saw Logan after the accident. Since my doctor hadn't cleared me to drive yet, my dad drove me to the craft workshop. There was a long table set up for children with disabilities. I peered around the room until I found her sitting alone.

First at the table was a girl who looked to have nothing seriously amiss, her father – I presumed – leaning over her with both arms as they twisted long coloured balloons into different shapes. Second was a girl with down syndrome, smiling as she copied what the father-daughter team was doing. In between her and Logan was a girl with circular blue glasses, staring down at the balloons, seemingly unable to do much with them. Then finally came Logan, her beautiful blonde hair and face the only things visible over the table's edge.

I didn't know what had happened to her after the accident. The only thing I could find out was where she would be during her rehabilitation before being put into the foster care system.

Crouching down to place my arms on the wooden table, I peered at the girl I had taken under my wing as part of the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Her left eye stared blankly at me while her right pointed inward.

"Logan," I whispered. "It's me, Bryan. Do you remember me?"

A smile began to creep across my face as I waited in anticipation of a response from her. I didn't know what she was capable of, but I had faith I would catch a glimmer of life in her eyes at least.

Just before I thought about leaving, a big, bright smile spread across her face. She remembered me. I clasped both my hands over my nose and mouth in the shape of a triangle, trying to muffle the sound of me on the verge of crying. My heart was breaking in two, making me wish I could wail like a baby, but I was also happy that she remembered who I was.

"That's the first time I've seen her smile since she got here," commented a middle-aged lady.

She was a bit overweight with brown hair and glasses, carrying a clipboard in her left hand. I was now leaning on my elbows as I calmed my emotions. My dad was still standing by the entrance to the room as I glanced in his direction.

Exhaling as I stood up, the woman could see I was visibly upset. Since there was no mirror, I assumed my eyes were puffy and my face had gone completely red. She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

There were no words spoken for a while as I thought about what to do before I left. I knew Logan was going into foster care at some point, but I didn't want her to. She was like a little sister to me, a daughter even. Her mother and I had grown close over the several months we spent together. So close in fact, that it was because of that newly formed friendship that her mother died and she was left with physical disabilities.

The night of the crash wasn't my fault, yet guilt still resided within me. Logan's mom – Jessica – had asked me to run them around for some errands. She needed to go to the bank, do some shopping, and eventually get dinner. We were on our way back to their place with dinner when the crash occurred.

We were stopped at an intersection, waiting to turn left. There were two cars stopped across from us, one going straight through, the other turning left in the opposite direction. When the light turned green, I quickly checked both ways, noticing a car's headlights in the distance to my right. The two cars across from us proceeded through the intersection. As I turned through the clear intersection, the car I had noticed some twenty seconds prior, blew through the red light, smashing into the rear of my car. The impact spun us three-hundred and sixty degrees, wrapping the passenger side of the vehicle around a light pole at the corner of the intersection.

The impact caused my neck to snap to the right, then back, smacking hard into the window. I was knocked out right away and didn't regain consciousness until a while later when emergency responders were on site. Someone was holding my neck as they inspected the rest of the vehicle.

"Are they okay?" I muttered, unable to see how badly damaged the right side of the vehicle was.

Jessica was apparently killed instantly. Logan had suffered whiplash and some other internal injuries causing the changes I witnessed at the workshop. No one ever asked me why she wasn't in a baby seat or booster. She had just turned eight and seemed to fit well in the middle seat. It was actually tighter fitting than the side ones, but the crash was just too violent to have prevented her injuries.

A side impact is the worst. I knew that from videos I had watched online. I would never wish an accident upon anyone after the things I saw. But when someone runs a red light because they're drunk and distracted, there's no going back in time. What happened, happened, and now everyone involved had to live with the outcome.

Since Jessica was a single mom and had no legal guardians, the closest thing to family that Logan had was me. The only issue was that adopting her as a single male wouldn't be easy. Not many men applied for the process, but I felt like I owed it to not only Jessica, but Logan too. Seeing her without her mom was a brutal reality for me to digest. Seeing her smile when she remembered me though... that's what made me realize I had to fight for her. I needed to give her that chance at happiness, even if it meant no mother.

Logan had been my responsibility from the day I signed up at Big Brothers Big Sisters. There was no way I was giving up on that now after what we had both been through. We each had different roads to recovery, but I was determined we would do it together, no matter what.