So—let’s imagine a four door sedan going forty ‘neath a darkly cloudy, starless sky, cruising along a rain-soaked thoroughfare, placing us at the scene of the accident just seconds before a head-on collision will drastically alter the course of my life and that of my family, over the next two years.
While sitting buckled safely in the back seat of this sedan, a full-sized Cadillac to be exact, I can be heard airing my disbelief over the fact that well educated people worship a god believed to be so merciful as to reward the good while punishing the bad. I cited examples of Nazis with hearts of stone who, having torn Jewish babies out of the protective arms of their terror-struck mothers, tossed screaming infants high into the air so as to shoot these beloved children for sport before their parents’ horrified eyes as I’d read had been true. Next, I’d offered up Anne Frank’s diary for consideration, surmising that a god, thought to protect the innocent from evil, would certainly have saved such a positively focused, good hearted soul from experiencing the unconscionable brutalities perpetrated upon her emaciated, disease ravaged body and waining strength of spirit in a concentration camp, where she, her sister and mother failed to survive after their secret hiding place had been betrayed by a Nazi sympathizer. I’d begun to relate the tragic demise of my baby sister until—lo and behold—our discussion was rudely interrupted when my Grandma Ella’s version of a wrathful god must have cast such a furious glance in my direction as to have swerved the steering wheel of a truck, driven by a drunken driver who’d passed out, over the double yellow lines on the major thoroughfare, which, proving slick with rain, saw a tank-like vehicle smash head on into ours, creating an accordion of our hood before any of us had so much as a conscious clue of what in tarnation had hit us with the impact of a concrete wall on wheels, stopping windshield wipers dead in their tracks as if inanimate objects could wonder where the windshield, which had just been there, had gone.
With immediacy, my survival instinct usurping control over my processor, releases my defense system to react in such a self protective manner as to guide my fingers toward unbuckling my seatbelt thus freeing my body to curl itself into the fetal position on the back seat of the car while my toes curling reflexively against the severity of the onslaught of abdominal pain that hits like a vengeance, compells me to kick off my shoes.
At the moment of impact, Will—who’d been dozing next to me unbelted had awakened to find himself slipping naturally off the seat toward the floor where, having smacked his back against the hump in the center of the floor board, his professional training kicks in so as to correctly diagnose that the crunch he’d experienced indicates a broken back as is later confirmed by the hospital radiologist. Being an orthopedic surgeon, my husband’s first thought is to wiggle his toes, relieving his mind of concern over any possibility of spinal paralysis.
At the moment of impact, Will—who’d been dozing next to me unbelted had awakened to find himself slipping naturally off the seat toward the floor where, having smacked his back against the hump in the center of the floor board, his professional training kicks in so as to correctly diagnose that the crunch he’d experienced indicates a broken back as is later confirmed by the hospital radiologist. Being an orthopedic surgeon, my husband’s first thought is to wiggle his toes, relieving his mind of concern over any possibility of spinal paralysis.
Our neighbor’s wife, who can be seen slumped against the backrest of the front seat on the passenger’s side of her husband’s car, remains unconscious after the momentum of the crash had cast her head forward, face first, against the windshield. Ominously, she offers no reply when her husband, feeling undizzied enough to lift his head off the steering wheel, turns toward her motionless body, calling out her name to no avail—and though my friend’s silence exacerbates a bone chilling fear for her life to shudder through my body, my first, conscious, all consuming thought concentrates my mind primarily upon the welfare of three little boys, who are fast asleep in their beds, safe from harm under the wing of our babysitter, who, living across the street from our home, happens to be the teen-aged son of our wounded friends in the front seat of their shiny brand new car, which has clearly been totaled on that rain soaked, major thoroughfare, located several blocks from our neighborhood—because, our collision, as is statistically true of most auto accidents, has occurred less than a mile from our homes.
While curled in the fetal position on the back seat of that accordianed gold Cadillac, my conscious state of mind wills my dizzied spirit to summon the inner strength of courage to endure searing waves of abdominal pain, rivaling that which I’d experienced while laboring to give birth to each of my sons. Rather than worrying over my survival, my mind focuses solely on this train of thought: “Many will love my boys if I die, but no one I know can raise my children with the knowledge that I’ve chosen to absorb.”
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