Five years after they broke up, the man still listened to her on the radio every day. Her voice filled his ears from ten to noon. Beyond those two hours, her opinions seeped into every corner of his existence. When he didn't hear her on the radio, he was thinking about the things she'd said. At night, asleep, he would dream about her. He felt like she owed him everything. After all, she was alive because of him. 

On a Thursday in late August, the man punched the off-button in the middle of her broadcast. Why would she say something so horrendous about him? He sat, wondering about this for a while and finally decided it was time to part with the radio. Throwing it in the trash wouldn't be enough, so he stuffed it in his bag and got on the road. 

Two hours later he pulled into the empty parking lot. It wasn't exactly beach season in Alaska anymore. As soon as he opened the door, the salty air stung his nostrils and the roaring of the waves in the distance made his heart beat faster. Her words came rushing back at him and hit even harder than before. This was the right thing to do. After grabbing his bag and locking the car, he turned toward the beach. Facing it, he knew that losing the radio meant he would have no one. She had been his companion at a distance for so long, someone he could count on being there day after day. But no matter. It was time.

The parking lot was finally out of view. The farther onto the beach he got, the harder it was to push. He sank deeper and deeper into the sand. His arms began to ache. His breathing became labored, but the water still seemed within reach. He leaned forward against the wind and tugged on the rims with everything he got. It was no use. The sand was too soft. He had no traction. His wheels were hopelessly stuck. Though he could feel the cool mist from the ocean on his sweaty face, he was much too far from the water to be able to throw the radio in. He leaned back in his wheelchair, defeated. 

The waves violently crashed against an outcropping of rocks but landed more smoothly on the sand. Where he was sitting there was nothing shielding him from the incoming tide. At some point the water would sweep him up and carry him out to sea along with his radio. Pulling at the rims once again, he tried if backing out was still possible. It wasn't. He panicked. How had he let himself get into this situation? It was her words. Just that single sentence had set him off. It couldn't be possible that this beach would get him once again. It was all her fault. Her recklessness and his willingness to risk his life for her had put him in this wheelchair. It had taken a single wave to sever his spinal cord. Now the man hoisted up his body and threw himself out of the wheelchair to land in the sand. The sun had already disappeared in a bank of clouds and the beach was slowly getting dark. He couldn't face the humiliation of crawling back to his car, so he found a dip in the sand where he could hide from view and was safe from the water.

It was pitch black. The waves had calmed, but it was too dark to tell how close they were. He lay there staring into the night sky. Though he had never really left her, she'd left him right after he became paralyzed and he finally knew why. She said it on her broadcast: "If I were paralyzed, I would want to die." After the accident he had grieved the end of his potential. Any plans for his future had to be adjusted. His life felt pointless. But hers wasn't, and so he clung on. He became her. That's why, if his radio was still around in the morning, he would turn on her ten o'clock show - the dial was always set to it - and throw it into the wild sea as she talked. Her voice would drown.

There was a shuffling in the dark, something struggling to move in the sand. It was a sea turtle almost his own size. They stared at each other. Neither moving nor afraid. 

You are what I am, he said to the turtle. 

He touched its shell and smiled. 

In the morning he pushed himself up and saw that the tide had left a flat expanse of wet sand around his wheelchair. He made his way over, climbed back on and took his radio out of the bag. He turned the dial to look for another channel.