Traffic

Allen was sweating even though the air conditioner was on high. He already hated traffic, but this day it was heavier than usual. The summer heat stifling and made everything worse. Allen had been sitting on the on-ramp for close to an hour, but the highway was jammed and no one was letting anybody merge. Allen grew increasingly angry. He fidgeted to unstick himself from the car seat while cursing at the cars ahead of him. He voiced his frustration through long, drawn-out honks of his horn. He even talked to himself about how miserable he was.

All Allen wanted to do was to get home. It had been a long day and he was looking forward to cooling down and relaxing. To Allen, it seemed as if fate was conspiring against him. Then, as he was beginning to think he would never get home, one of the cars stopped and let Allen merge.

“Finally,” Allen thought to himself and he joined the parade of never ending traffic. He began to drive aggressively to make up for the lost time. He cut off several cars as he changed lanes with reckless abandon. He weaved between cars trying to get just a little bit further along the crowed highway. Allen was playing a game of chicken. More than once, he was close to hitting another car. More than once, he almost was hit himself. Allen didn’t care though; he was finally making progress and that was good enough.

At one point while switching lanes, Allen caught a glimpse of the driver that had let him merge. The driver looked as if had not moved at all. Allen chuckled when he saw how far back the poor guy was.

“That’s what you get for being patient in this city,” Allen said aloud while whipping his car into a small space in the next lane. He was becoming more aggressive, but at least he was moving.

By now, the traffic had started moving at a quicker, steadier pace. Before long, Allen approached another on-ramp. He saw that there was a line of cars waiting to merge. Allen was not about to let any of them in, so he decided close the space between himself and the car ahead of him. As he began to pull up, one of the drivers from the on-ramp sped toward the narrowing space in front. Allen saw this and stepped on the gas in an attempt to cut the other driver off. The other driver did not see Allen until it was too late. The driver slammed on his breaks, but he was going too fast. Allen stepped on his breaks and instinctively swerved to avoid him. However, when he swerved, it was into the center lane of the highway. He never saw the truck that would smash into him.

The accident caused the highway to be closed off for several hours. As all of the cars merged into a single lane and crawled passed, they looked at the collision and cursed at Allen for causing the delay. Allen didn’t care though. He had died instantly in the crash. He would never see that he was now the cause of the traffic that he tried so hard to escape.

Eventually the emergency crew was able to clean up the wreck and take Allen’s body away. With consent from his family, several of Allen organs were harvested. In an ironic twist of fate, one of Allen’s kidneys was transplanted into the driver that let him merge on to the highway. The man had been dialysis and was on the waiting list for a transplant. It turned out that letting Allen merge was the best decision he ever made.