Hold Me Tight!

June 27, 2013, a swelteringly hot day in San Gabriel, California; a day filled with bittersweet emotions.  For the last seven months I had been staying with friends while I looked after my brother, Chris. He had spent over a month in a coma at the ICU at Verdugo Hills Hospital in Montrose, and then three months in a rehab facility in Burbank healing and learning how to use his legs again.

Then, once he had been released from rehab, it had been a crazy marathon of doctors’ appointments – trying to get him to his weekly visits with the various specialists he had to still see – the primary physician, the cardiologist, the neurologist, the infectious diseases specialist, the podiatrist, the endocrinologist, the rest…

At first this entailed renting a wheelchair-accessible van every time we had to go to the doctor.  But even then, the van ramp wasn’t quite wide enough for his extra wide wheel chair, so getting his chair in and out of the van was difficult at best.  Finally we had scrapped the van and decided if we could get him in and out of my Hyundai Sonata, we would just do that.  I just wasn’t sure, since he was so big, and the car was a little too low to the ground.  But we made it work.

Once I got him into the front seat, I would then have to heft his fifty-pound wheelchair either into the trunk or the back seat, and we’d be off.  Once wasn’t bad, but one visit to the doctor required me to lift it four times – six if we stopped off to eat lunch or dinner, which we most often did – real tax on my already bad back.  But again, you have to do what you have to do, so we made it work.

But slowly, week after week, month after month, Chris improved to the point that his wounds were now, finally, almost healed.  He could walk with a walker – though he was reluctant to, preferring to be pushed in his wheelchair, fearful of falling, I think.  He was now ready to start back to work part time, which meant it was time for me to push him out of the nest, so to speak, and let him fly on his own.  

He would start getting back to normal faster without anyone to rely on for everything.  And it was time for me to fly back south to Orange County to find an apartment and try to restart my own life – one that had been derailed seven months earlier by that tiny, unseen spider….

So here I was with the last load of hanging clothes in my arms, carrying them out to the car, which was already filled to the gills.  I had two plastic drawers filled with winter clothes, shoes, my sewing machine, my computer, a huge, fold-up wire crate for the cat.  Thank goodness I had already taken the cat down the day before.  There just wouldn’t have been room for him in here today.  Every nook and cranny was full.

I left the house key on the table, and with tears in my eyes – for I would dearly miss the family time spent with Alice and Tony and the girls - I locked the door behind me and hopped in my little olive green Hyundai. 

I headed down Rosemead toward the 60 freeway and fiddled with the AC – which still wasn’t working right, even after I’d spent $1,200 the week before to fix it.  I grumbled.  I was going to have to take it back in to have AAMCO look at it next time I had to come up to take Chris to the doctor.

But I wasn’t going to let even that dampen my optimism.  So what if I’d lost my job back in January to be by Chris’ bedside every waking moment until he came out of a coma.  So what if I’d been living on credit cards since then and they were nearly maxed out?  Chris was better!  Life was good!  I was free again…! God had answered so many of our prayers!

I turned up the radio and opened the chocolate that Alice had given me earlier that day.  It was melted and gooey, but finger licking good anyway.  I smiled at the goodness of life as I turned off the 60, southbound on the 605 in the golden light of dwindling day.  I was headed back home!

Traffic was moving along at a good clip – not super fast, because it was still post rush hour, but we were doing at least 50 mph.  I was still in the slow lane waiting for a chance to merge over, but just chilling – not letting anything bother me.  The window was down (thanks to the incompetence of AAMCO’s  AC repair), the radio was up, wind was blowing through my hair, my brother was on the road to recovery, and I’d just had some delicious (if somewhat melted) dark chocolate.  Life was good!

Suddenly I felt a tremendous bump!  I grabbed tightly onto the wheel in confusion.  What had happened?  What did I run over that I hadn’t noticed?   Why didn't I see it?!  In a heartbeat, my car started fishtailing out of control.

The brain is an amazing organ.  It is amazing how many thoughts can flash through it in an instant.  For I am sure the time that elapsed from that horrendous bump to the moment things came to a standstill was only a matter of seconds, but a whole slew of thoughts – clear, calm, coherent thoughts ran through my head:

First I wondered what I’d run over.  Then as the car began to fishtail, I realized the left rear tire must have blown out instead.  Now what is it that they say about fishtailing?  You are supposed to steer into the turn to correct it….  So I counter-intuitively turned the wheel to the left, into the turn.  But this just seemed to make the swerve worse.

Well, you know what that means.  If I keep going this way, I am going to take out all those cars to my left and kill people….  But if I turn the wheel to the right, away from the fishtail, I will roll the car….  But at least that way, I will only kill myself….  And one person would be far better than multiple people…including myself.

“So here goes, God.  Hold onto me!” I said aloud, and turned the wheel back to the right, knowing full well that meant I was going to roll my car.

And just as expected, the car turned back to the right, hit the curb on the side of the freeway, flipped and rolled tumbled and and spun around.  My cramped space - which quickly got smaller - was filled with loud cracking, crunching, smashing noises as dirt and glass and bits of ice plant and freeway debris whipped about in a whirlwind.  But I seemed to be suspended, weightlessly, carefreely in the midst of it all, surrounded in a bubble of serenity.

The car finally came to a stop and all was in darkness.  Not because it was night, but because I had landed upside-down, the windshield crushed in, knee-deep in ice plant that covered the windows.  And my tinted back windows and all the stuff packed in the back seat did the rest.

I hung there from my seat belt for several seconds, surprised that I was still so calm and aware, and took inventory.  My heart was still beating.....  I was still breathing....  I could wiggle my toes – so my back wasn’t broken....  

Let’s see….  They say the first thing you should do is turn off the engine...  Mine was surprisingly still running, so I quickly turned it off in case gas was leaking anywhere, and removed the key.  Then I took a deep breath to help calm my nerves, and wrestled with my seatbelt buckle until it gave loose and let me drop to the ground – or the roof of the car.  ....If the car was leaking gas, I really should get out...

By now people had gathered outside the car and were yelling, “Is anybody still alive...?” 

 “They’ve got to be dead…”

I kept shouting, “I’m okay!  I’m fine!” but nobody could hear my ice-plant-muffled shouts above the din of the freeway. 

Finally I managed to reach an arm out through the ice plant and wave it and people started clamoring excitedly about what to do next, saying someone should call 911, to which two voices said they already had and help was on the way.  

Several voices said maybe they should try to help whoever was trapped in there. I kept shouting, “I’m okay!  I’m fine!”  But nobody could hear me.

By then I had worked my way over onto my belly and dug my way out so that I could poke my head and shoulders out the crumpled window to let them know I was fine.  

Then the debate began.  One faction shouted, “Don’t move!”  The other camp argued, “Maybe she should get out.  The car might explode any minute!!”

I wiggled my toes one more time just to be safe, and then sided with the second faction.  Crawling commando style out of the window through the filthy freeway ice plant (right between the rear view mirror and the left post in the photo), I got to my feet and walked - to the complete amazement of all the startled onlookers - a good distance from my poor, beloved, crumpled Hyundai.

And to think that only three weeks earlier I had changed my insurance from comprehensive to liability in view of my mounting bills!  Sigh…

One young man came over and gave me his name and phone number and said he saw it all.  For all my total clarity with what went on inside the car from the instant of the bang, I was very confused now as to what he meant.  I didn’t know what happened.

“He ran right into you!” he said.  “The semi!  I was in your lane, about four car lengths behind you. And this semi just moved right into your lane.  He clipped your back wheel with his front wheel and spun you around!”

I was stunned.  I had been hit?

“I feel so bad.  He pulled over, so I didn’t think anything.  I was just worried about you.  If I’d known he'd run for it, I’d have taken off after him, but I wanted to see if you were all right.  Next thing I know, I looked up and he’d taken off again!”

"The guy plowed right into the back half of your car.  The huge lug nuts on his front wheels ripped into your car right in front of your rear wheel and snapped your axel!  It's amazing you aren't dead!  Man if I'd known he took off again, I'd have chased him down.  I am so mad at myself...! "

The paramedics arrived and even though I didn’t have a single scratch anywhere on my body, they put a neck brace on me because my neck and low back hurt.  They strapped me to a backboard and carted me off to the ER at the nearest hospital.  

Lying there for hours on that board in the ER hallway, I didn’t know what to do.  My purse was still locked in the trunk of my car.  My son, Nick, was in class studying for finals to get into Harvard.  My friend, Alice, with whom I had been staying, was teaching Vacation Bible School.  My daughter, Erin, lived clear down in San Diego.  

So I texted my dear friend, Al, who lived nearby in Whittier.  He and his daughter, Anais came and stayed with me until the wee hours. Al made sure the ER took good care of me, insisting that they take x-rays and a CT of my abdomen to look for internal bleeding when all they wanted to do was observe me.  After all, witnesses said my car had rolled over three times!

Nick came later that night when he got out of class and stayed all night with me.  The next morning, he took me first to the junk yard to retrieve my purse and what few things were salvageable, and then, exhausted and battered, back down to Orange County.  

(Here I am the next morning when they released me from the hospital in the same dirty, sweaty clothes I was wearing the day before at the time of the crash.) 

You can see the dented roof and the shattered windshield right where my pretty little face was - when the air bags didn't deploy! - and I didn't get as much as a single scratch.  
much a a scratch. 

Well, I take it back.  I did find one tiny bruise the size of an egg, but it is so pale, I am thinking it may have actually pre-existed the accident.  We'll never know for sure...

Okay, so not exactly the new start I had anticipated.  I was so sore I could hardly move for the next week, and now not only without a job and an apartment, but without wheels too...  

But I did have something much more amazing and valuable: the knowledge that God can indeed hold you in the palm of His hand in the worst maelstrom and bring you out unscratched.

*******

I do not hide your righteousness in my heart;
I speak of your faithfulness and your saving help.
I do not conceal your love and your faithfulness
from the great assembly.

Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord.
May your love and faithfulness always protect me.

                                                      - Psalms 40:10,11

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, 
I will fear no evil, for you are with me; 
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.    --  Psalm 23:3-5

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