“If you weren’t wearing your seatbelt, you would have died today.”
Those words were spoken to me by a police state trooper while I was sitting up on a stretcher at Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New Hampshire.
“That was a good piece of driving you did too. If you hadn’t swerved right, the woman who hit you would have gone through her windshield and landed on your hood. She’s going to be ok, but she’s 84 and she was NOT wearing a seatbelt. You saved two lives today. Your car looks like no one should have walked away. If you’re up to it, I can take your statement now.”
I blinked a few times to shake off the shock I was in. I knew I had been in an accident, but I never about brushing death. I was 20, and about to move into my college apartment for my senior year at U. Mass Lowell where I was also about to attend marching band camp. Suddenly I had no car, but I wasn’t dead, so that was good. How could I die on a warm, sunny August day? I had a rare Saturday off from my summer job at a local amusement park, and my buddy Pete and I were driving up to his dad’s place near Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in the state. Pete and I were meeting a few friends up there for an afternoon of boating, tubing, and general shenanigans shared by young men.
That morning, I had picked up my car at the mechanic who had just done my rear brakes. This was my first car, and although it was a silver square box of a thing, it was mine and I loved it. It was a 1987 Nissan Sentra, and my college friends had dubbed it ‘The Baatmobile.’ One of my professors had trouble saying my name (Pat) and it came out like BAT….so my room was the Bat Cave, I drummed with Bat Speed….and my POS was the Batmobile. Although now it resembled a crushed can of tuna. Shit, I almost died before I even hit 21 years of age on a gorgeous summer day. Now that would have sucked.
In those days, I drove with both feet. That’s how I took the test for my license at age 16 and I had no problems using my right foot for the gas, and left for the brake.
Pete and I were cruising along with the windows down and the radio on at about 50 mph on a double yellow two lane state road called 125. We were in the town of Barrington, NH when about 50 yards ahead of me on the left, someone pulled out of a shopping plaza and turned south. There was already a car in the southbound lane….
Those two cars hit and suddenly the south bound car was heading across the double yellow line directly towards us. I steered right to try to avoid the crash head on and just before impact I saw Pete put his right hand up to the roof as if to brace himself. I distinctly remember hearing him say ‘oooooh……shit.’
In a blink, the southbound car hit us directly on my driver side door. My Sentra began to skid right and my only thought was ‘I have absolutely no control over this car or what is going to happen next…..and….oh wow, we are going over.’
I saw the horizon flip and a bunch of sand went shooting past the windshield and into the car. I heard glass shatter and realized that the car was skidding on its roof. Pete and I were hanging upside down by our seatbelts. The whole sequence took about 5 seconds.
I looked out the window on my side and saw broken glass and plastic as well as a bunch of cassette tapes that had flown out when we flipped. (It was 1994….tape decks in cars were still a thing.) My entire dashboard was red and orange lights. The engine was off, but the radio was on. I reached out and turned it off. Pete asked me if I was ok, and I asked him the same thing. Before I could protest, he was climbing out of the passenger window. He stood up and looked at the car.
Someone was on their hands and knees outside my window and told me to stay still and that someone had already called an ambulance. I was completely conscious and realized that I smelled gasoline. THAT was when the panic came.
I began yelling and telling anyone nearby that they needed to pull me out. Pete was on his knees on my side of the car by then and was trying to calm me down. He smartly realized that I might be injured and even if I wasn’t, with the muscular dystrophy, no one but professionals should extract me from the car. I thought I was going to blow up. That’s what happens on T.V. right?
I hear sirens and in moments, emergency personnel was at my window telling me that the car had a safety feature to cut off gas flow if it leaves the ground. Nothing was leaking and I wasn’t going to blow up. My head was pinned to my chest and the roof of the car was at the bottom. I now wondered if the roof was going to cave in, snap my neck, and goodnight. The medical team told me that wasn’t going to happen either, but they were going to need to pop my back window out, cut my seatbelt and pull me out head first and belly down over the back seat and through the back window. The trunk would be above my head and would also be braced so it didn’t somehow open and smack me in the face.
Like every other breathing moment in my life, the muscular dystrophy was going to be a factor as I was not strong enough to crawl, and certainly not able to crawl over the back of the front seat of my car. The medics broke the seat and pulled it out, and there was someone on each side of me as they cut the seatbelt, held on to my sides, supported my head and placed me on a board that they had shimmied in through the trunk. I was stomach down on the board but was able to raise my head to see them pulling me out. Once extracted, I saw a man on a small dirt hill next to the accident taking photos. I gave him the bird and yelled ‘Can’t you see this is an accident scene you asshole? What the hell are you doing?’ I learned later that he sold his photos to a local paper. Don’t bother, I couldn’t find them online.
Once safely out of the car, I was rolled onto my back, strapped properly to the board and given a neck brace. I was asked who I was, where I was, and what year it was. A penlight was flashed into my eyes and a new woman was kneeling at my feet. She asked me to pull up my toes.
When I told her that I couldn’t do it, she quickly rose and started yelling “subject cannot pull up his toes, possible spinal or lower body injury.”
I told her that I could feel my toes and feet just fine, but lying flat on a board she had no way of knowing that I lived with MD. I told her, and another crisis was averted.
Pete and I were loaded into the ambulance, he walking, and me boarding, and off we went. I was told that my car was being loaded on to a flatbed and that I could pick up my personal items at some point at a garage where there was a wrecking yard out back.
I jokingly asked Pete if that meant my Sentra. He was pale and told me it might be better if I didn’t see the car again.
Hospital. Tests. X-Rays, Tests. Police statement. I was fine except for a sore neck. I walked out a couple hours later with Pete. A friend had come to pick us up and take us home. I asked to go and visit my car. They argued. I won.
The entire driver side was peeled open like a sardine can. All the windows were broken, the windshield was spiderwebbed and the roof was crushed down like a dinosaur had stepped on the top. I shuddered and wondered how the hell I was not only alive, but not even hurt. I grabbed whatever I could from the trunk and didn’t bother with any of the remaining cassettes. I didn’t even want to reach in. I went home.
Someone told me that the best thing I could do would be to drive again as soon as possible. I went to work the next day, but someone must have picked me up. I think I rented a car the following Monday. For several months, when anyone was turning out of a parking lot, plaza or street that was on my left, I unconsciously drifted my car just bit to the right side of the road near the shoulder.
I later learned that upon impact, my car skidded at 50 mph off the right side of the road and spun a complete 360 degrees. When the back wheels came around off the shoulder of the pavement, a back axle snapped, collapsed and caused the car to flip over and come to rest on its roof. It all happened too quickly for me to tense up. I am pretty sure that I never let go of the steering wheel.
For a few precious seconds, I had absolutely no control over anything. That was the first time in my life that I had that feeling. I hoped I would never know that sensation again.
Happy Anniversary to the day that I first understood that none of us are absolutely in control of any of it. Keep that in mind the next time you’re sitting in traffic bitching in your head about something that doesn’t matter.
Stay safe, stay awesome, and wear your seatbelt.
Moeschen! 