My girlfriend's dead, and it's my fault.
My birthday was last month. The night before, she asked me what color she should paint her nails. I chose dark burgundy. She looked through her polishes and discovered she didn't have it.
We live five minutes from the store. She said "I'll run and grab some. It'll take 15 minutes." I told her not to worry. It was late. We were getting ready to go to bed.
But she said "If it's burgundy you want, it's burgundy you'll get!" She grabbed the keys, said "Love you" and left.
I got worried when she'd been gone for half an hour and I didn't hear anything from her. I texted her a couple of times and she didn't write back.
I called twice. No answer.
I decided to take our second car and drive to the store. I pulled onto the main road from the street we live on and immediately saw flashing lights at the 4-way intersection that we go through to get to the store.
I saw my girlfriend's car as I pulled up to the intersection. The driver's side was destroyed. There were cops directing traffic. I got out of the car and told them it was my girlfriend's car. They said she'd been involved in the accident, that she'd been transported to the hospital. That was all they could tell me.
The hospital was straight down the road from the intersection. I drove there as fast as I could.
I told the nurse at the front desk. She told me to stay in the waiting area and someone would be out to get me. About 5 minutes later, a doctor came out and led me to a room in the back. He told me that my girlfriend was initially alive at the scene, but her heart stopped in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They tried resuscitating her, but they couldn't.
We'd been together for 8 years. I was planning on proposing to her at my birthday dinner.
I can't stop thinking that if I'd picked any other color, any other fucking color - red, blue, black, silver... she'd still be alive.
My girlfriend's dead, and it's my fault.