Black Jack With The Devil continues here…
In the moments following the accident a still quiet permeated the confines of the Jeep, and the simplest thoughts of my life floated through my mind providing clarity in the midst of a foggy shock. Life is about people…I worry about too many things….Life is a gift….This car has no real value to me…If I walked away from this accident with nothing more than my life and my brother’s life then I am an incredibly blessed individual. These are things that I was thinking as the reality of the situation became apparent. Jeff and I were trapped in the Jeep, which was laying on it’s driver’s side completely perpendicular to the ground.
Reflection put on pause, we searched for ways to extricate ourselves from the car. Given the angle of the car, our limited ability to move, and the fact that the car was filled to capacity with boxes, the outlook seemed impossible. My frame of my mind was a mashup of franticness, panic, claustrophobia, and determination. We were going to get out and I wasn’t going to let fear impinge upon our livelihood. My adrenaline was pumping so excessively that I’ve never felt more alive (even though I had been so close to death). I repeatedly tried opening the passenger side door, but my efforts were futile. Trying to push open a door that has been reconfigured and reshaped was a pointless exercise. Given that I was being held upright by my seatbelt, I had no support or strength to pull from and determination alone wasn’t going to do the trick (in fact even at the wrecking yard, upright, the passenger side door would not budge an inch).
As Jeff and I were trying to think our way out of the Jeep, we heard a voice outside the car yelling, “Can anyone hear me?” We yelled back, “Yes. Yes. We can hear you.” The voice again, “Can you hear me? Say something if you can hear me.” We both screamed, “Yes,” and this time the man behind the voice was able to ascertain that we could in fact hear him. He approached the back side of the car and asked if we could try and open or at least unlock the doors. I already knew the front passenger side door was not an option, so I propelled myself slightly backwards to try and unlock and open the back door. That too was a futile endeavor. After several tries the man outside the car, who now seemed to have a few other voices along side him, managed to climb on top of the car and wrench open the back door. He then proceeded to remove several of the books that were in between me and the back door. After a few minutes, with my brother’s help, I was able to recline the front seat and use it as a stool to boost me high enough to try and climb out of the Jeep. Once I reentered the world beyond the Jeep I saw several men, truck drivers, who were standing there waiting to help pull me to safety, which they did. In the process, however, one of my black leather ballet flats slipped off my foot. By the time I made it back on solid ground I was standing jacket-less and one-legged in snow and ice-covored grass while my naked left foot started to freeze. Jeff followed suit shortly thereafter, although he managed to make it out with both shoes on.
Back on the ground we starred in awe at our surroundings: a completely destroyed Jeep, engine parts littered through out the median, truck drivers staring back at us, and another car that must have tried to avoid the flailing Jeep on it’s spiral out of control. After checking to make sure that we were alright, the men ran over to check on the other vehicle and Jeff and I were left with each other, our thoughts, and the silent Jeep. This is when I grasped, for the first time, the real magnitude of the situation. We had just flipped several times in the Jeep. We were rescued by truck drivers. The car was totaled. We were stranded somewhere in New Mexico. All of these things were very real to me, but nothing was more poignant then the fact that Jeff and I were alive. The tears streamed down my face and I kept repeating while bombarding with him scared and frightened hugs,”I love you so much. I don’t car about the car, all I care about is you.” But Jeff was in shock too. He seemed to be struggling with competing emotions, happiness to be alive, guilt because he was the driver, and compassion for the people in the other car. But he did manage to give me one of his shoes so that I wouldn’t have to walk around with one foot in the snow. One of the truck drivers also lent me his nice warm jacket, which was much appreciated as the adrenaline was starting to wear off and the cold was starting to pierce my tough, but only slightly clad, exterior.
We never learned the whole story about the other vehicle so I have no idea what happened or how they ended up on the side of the road with us, but I do know they are all okay too.
When the police and the ambulances showed up, Jeff and I were directed to get checked out by the paramedics and give our account of what had happened. The woman who then proceeded to check for injuries quickly became our friend in a crisis. She was amazing. Her eyes were kind, her voice was calm and soothing, her demeanor was motherly, and her heart was pure gold. She was/is everything that you could ever need in scary situations. She didn’t offer false promises or harsh lecture, she simply made herself available to us as a friend and a paramedic. We told her our story about traveling across country and about having all of our stuff in the car and no where to go or no way to get home. We told her everything because she was person we knew we could trust. She informed us of the typical procedure – a wrecking/towing company would be called, they would secure our stuff and tow the car, and we could call them in the morning. She also offered to have her and her partner drive us (at not expense to us) to a hotel in the town near the wrecking/towing company, Tucumcari, New Mexico. To think that an ambulance would, free of charge, drive us 20 miles to the nearest town…well it meant the world to me because I know that in this day and age that a free trip in an ambulance is a borderline miracle.
There are many more acts of kindness to share and I will do so shortly, but for now I will leave you with Jeff and I checking in to the Holiday Inn Express in Tucumcari, New Mexico with no clothes, no luggage, no cell phone, no nothing.
And in case you were wondering…
