BLAM.
My Dance With a Drunk Driver - BEGINS HERE.
If Only.
If only I wasn’t such a social butterfly, a hostess-with-the-mostess, a proud, doting teacher—I would have made it to the back room and had my costumes packed before ten o’clock after our holiday dance recital.
If only I had let someone else drive a friend home after her truck broke down, I would have made it to Walmart twenty minutes earlier.
If I had just braved some holiday crowds and finished my shopping earlier in the week instead of waiting until three days before Christmas, I wouldn’t have gone to Walmart at all.
If I had arrived a few seconds earlier at the checkout and beaten the man in the tweed overcoat and clomping boots, I wouldn’t have had to wait four minutes until the single cashier was through with her midnight closeout.
If I would have been a creature of habit, I would have taken my sneaky-route home through the back streets.
If I would have been a speeder, I would have been home already.
I wasn’t and I hadn’t and I didn’t, so I passed the Bijou Exit on I-25 at 12:13 a.m. on December 21, 2000.
I used to love driving at night. All summer, I drove with the sunroof of my little Mazda open, turning my face into the night air to enjoy the hush beneath the stars. That night, it had just snowed. Typical for Colorado Springs in winter, so my car was sealed tight with the heater on full blast when I veered onto the entrance ramp in a last-minute decision.
Such a tiny thing.
Another road. Five minutes. The word ‘yes’. Change any one of them and I wouldn’t be writing this story today. That’s neither good nor bad. It simply is.
Am I stalling?
Probably. This is one of the most violent memories of my life.
Do I need to tell you about it?
I do.
This year when the holiday season rolls around, maybe in exchange for laughing in satisfied mischief as you hop onto social media to post the location of that DUI checkpoint you passed on the way home, you might be inspired to share my story instead.
And you, over there—maybe you’ll think twice and hand over your keys on your birthday.
Or you—maybe you’ll wrestle the keys from your boyfriend when he slurs about how he’s “just fine” and isn’t too drunk to drive when you know better, and maybe you won’t give a spluck of Christmas figgy pudding that he’s mad at you the whole way home.
Maybe you’ll save a life.
His. Yours. Somebody’s grandma. Maybe it’ll be a five-year-old child like the one that was killed by her drunk father on that very highway a few months after my wreck. He survived, you know. So did her twin sister. Maybe yours won’t.
So let’s have done with it, shall we?
The Freeway
Midwinter 2000
28 years old
For once, the freeway isn’t jammed with traffic so I relish in a sigh. Ahhh, the blissful solitude of an unencumbered thoroughfare. A rare treat for I-25.
ZaZa croons from the CD player, further lulling the atmosphere after such a hectic night.
“We came like water…
And like wind we go…”
As I approach the long-standing construction zone, I slow in case of black ice. Thankfully, the pavement is dry. I flash a triumphant grin at the mileage sign, glad that I’ll no longer have to take the Uintah exit with its infestation of orange cones and narrowed lanes now that I’ve moved.
My new apartment is off Fillmore, two exits down. I moved in three weeks ago—my reward for landing a better paying job at a local internet company. I’m their new office manager, whipping the barely organized chaos into shape, already part of The Team.
I’ve never had a two-bedroom apartment before. So much space is a luxury for this former denizen of college dormitories, teensy apartments, and one converted porch that was little more than a sublet closet for my bed and dresser. Now I have a kitchen big enough to fit an actual kitchen table, and a living room that moonlights as a dance studio. To top it off, I even have an office/writing room, complete with costume closet.
I can’t wait to get home, take a bath in my nice big tub, and slather myself like pre-warmed butter all across my nice big bed.
Isn’t that when they cue the spooky music?
As I drive, I take a reflexive glance in my rear-view mirror—take a startled breath when I catch sight of headlights that weren’t there a moment ago. Their reflection fills my mirror, growing larger by the second. My eyes go wide. That’s gotta be twice my speed! A cop on the chase? I check my speedometer: 52 in a 55. Hah! They’re not after me.
Besides, there are no flashing lights.
I glance back at the mirror, squint harder. No light bar at all. Yet this car is flying up the highway like its tailpipe is on fire!
“I hope the cops get you,” I grumble, glaring at the two swelling orbs.
Zaza’s voice nudges into my thoughts.
“Words of wise men ring in my head…
Words that will haunt me until the end.”
Maintaining speed, I huff disgruntlement and wait for the car to pass. But the lights stay on course, straight behind me in the right-hand lane. I aim a glare into the mirror. Oh, I hate that, when hot-head punks wait until the last second to zoom past.
The car speeds on.
My gaze darts from road to mirror.
Road.
Mirror.
My heart thumps. “Pass me. Now.”
“Where lies the answer?
Who holds the key?”
I flash my break lights. “Pass me, damn you!”
“What of our soul…
Once it’s set free?”
The orbs overwhelm the mirror.
I can’t make the exit!
Should I ditch my car? Left lane—safer? No? Will I swerve left just as they do?
I hit the breaks, clench my teeth, hope the slope of the ravine won’t flip the—
BLAM!
Jaw-slamming impact. Me—thrown at the steering wheel. My car—a stone skipped on water. It lands and lurches sideways. Skids across the centerline. Foot smashing break pedal. Already on the floor. Horrific screech. The seatbelt digs ruts in my chest and hips.
Construction median looms on the left shoulder. It hunkers down. Glares at me. Gray hunk of unyielding concrete. Headlights flare in the southbound lane. Will the median hold? Will I blast through it into oncoming traffic?
I strain against the steering wheel. Battle to correct course. Bellow through gritted TEEEETH! The dashboard shudders. Convulses my arms. Rattles my skull. Knuckles—white. Tire-screech—deafening. Another crunching BOOM as my car rams the median. The bumper crumples like foil. Then ZWING! The whole left side pops up in the air. The world goes sideways. My body whips with it.
SNAP! My head on its neck.
Black road. Black sky. White lines. Pinpoint stars, all whirling.
A random thought strikes me in that moment, drawing my eyes upward toward that beautiful dotted firmament.
Humph, so this is what a rollover really looks like from the inside.
Fascinating.
Commander Spock taught me the eyebrow thing really young. I can actually lift either brow by itself. I can also roll them in a wave.
Talented, I know.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve had dreams like this. Rollovers, mortifying screeches, collisions, explosions. That last moment before death. That final farewell to life, earth, family, loved ones. That instantaneous, soul-accepting I’m-sorry-I-love-you-goodbye-okay-I’m-ready-take-me before the bolt upright in bed with a ragged gasp.
This time it’s for real.
I blink as if through water.
A glow shines down from above. Streetlamp. Soft and warm. Golden, compared to all the cool tones of a winter night. Quite lovely. More warmth surrounding me. A loving embrace as I wasn’t-quite-ready-to-go-yet-but-I-guess-it’s-time-okay...
Oh, no, darling. Not yet.
Because my hands are still torquing the shuddery steering wheel.
My voice still groans refusal.
My foot still grinds the break pedal into the floorboard and somebody must have done their job really well when they constructed that median because instead of a roll-over, my car careens around on its passenger-side wheels—check it, a miraculous stunt for video! It curves back across the road, dips, wavers, rights itself.
Another body-rocking BOOM! I bounce off the seat—arrested by the belt.
BLAM! My skull slams into the door frame.
Screeeeeeeeeeech! More shuddering.
Grooooan! Car lurching like Frankenstein.
Grrrrrrrowl! Burning rubber stench as it skids sideways, wants to flip up again. Doesn’t. Back across both lanes—please don’t let anybody else ram me!
Crunch of gravel and a final, jarring stop.
Silence.
Black sky.
Blackish grass in the ditch I’d been aiming for.
Never got that far.
ZaZa, mid-track.
“…caught in the storm day after day
Your arms are the only shelter that I see…”
Different song.
Dashboard lights glowing.
Hands still death-gripping the wheel.
Am I breathing? I think so.
Can I move? Dunno.
The Uintah exit is right there. So close. If only I was a speeder. Coulda squeaked off the freeway to safety. If only I hadn’t hit the brakes before heading for the ditch. They might have zoomed past me. If only I would have swerved into the left lane instead of trying to go right…
But I didn’t and I wasn’t and they did.
The Fool
As I sat there alone, I had no idea that the old trajectory of my life’s course had been obliterated in under a second. Neither did I think about the dance I had created two months before. It was about my desire to discover the Almighty Meaning of Life.
Hahahahahahahahah…
In a traditional tarot deck, the first card is The Fool, and she has no idea what she’s about to endure by taking that first step beyond her comfy home with its nice big bathtub and its butter-warm bed.
All we can hope for her is that she’ll meet the right people along the way, be guided by the right stars, and acquire the tools to finally set herself free.
(Spoiler alert: she will.)
The song playing on my car that night. Because my life is eerie like that:
© 2020 Hartebeast
Up Next - What happened when the police and paramedics showed up:
Ghost In the Broken Shell
A snarky poem about Dain Bramage caused by this car crash:
Mothers Against Drunk Driving - and other impaired driving
ZaZa - Nights One and a Thousand
The last dance I ever did in 2000 - a few hours before this car wreck.
Wow!
I’m sorry you went through that.
But I must say, your writing in this piece is fantastic. Especially, the descriptions in the moment of the crash — very evocative indeed.