A Fortuitous Near Death Accident
[After the coot doesn't just try to kill my creative babies, but tries to kill me and my partner! Accident/near-death trigger alert.]
We left Blackheath for Bromyard late, to avoid holiday traffic. Twenty minutes to go, Chris – a Class A Driver – always took it steady, let alone when he was towing his beloved trailer (circus word for a caravan).
The road was wet. Mizzle fell hypnotically. I said little, lost in thought, wondering whether our relationship was set to blossom or not and whether my tea-related adventures ought to be terminated.
The driver round the other side of the bend was tired. Too tired to think. Too tired to stop her eyelids dropping. Too tired to notice that her car was driving itself on the wrong side of the road.
We rounded a corner to face blazing headlights.
‘Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!’
I heard a scream which might have come from my guardian angel, but I later learned came from me.
BANG. BANG. The airbags exploded.
Hiss. Silence. We were entangled in a write off. The Volvo’s days’ were over but it had probably saved our lives.
It was being held back from the edge of a twenty-foot near vertical fall by an old fence post which was just rotten enough to penetrate the windscreen. How Chris had turned the wheel in that split second was beyond imagination. The other car? I shuddered. It was unrecognisable. No one, surely, could get out of that alive?
Then that thing occurred.
Time got all skewed. Actions happened very fast but all in slow motion. For a few moments we sat. Then I smelled and thought I saw smoke [spoiler and tip, don't be fooled, it's what comes out popped airbags].
‘Smoke! Get Out!’
‘The trailer, I must go to the trailer…’ Chris was right. Where was it? Was it matchwood or waiting for the next vehicle to plough into it?
‘Are you OK?’ he added quickly. Nodding, I began to ask him the same, but he was already out and heading down the road. I crawled out of the driver’s door, mine was an unidentifiable mish mash of buckled metal.
You have questions. Were we injured? Did the other driver survive? What about the beloved trailer?
WAIT.
To encounter death – and live – is a privilege worth savouring. I became as invisible as a coot, hidden in what I learned is intasy (inner ecstasy). The sheer bloody miracle of life held the scene of devastation in suspense. My heart cracked wide with gratitude, throbbing in time with my right hand.
It was then that I heard a voice as crisp and as cool as the night air I was drinking.
‘The Tea Party is Over.’
My mind couldn’t process its meaning, but the feeling was one of indescribable relief.
Yes, we suffered cracked ribs and whiplash. I had had whacked my hand and had to take a useful forced break from writing for a few weeks. For a couple of years I had flashbacks if we drove anywhere at night. And I still avoid driving in the dark…
The sleeping body of the driver probably saved her life and she sustained only minor injuries. Chris’s trailer miraculously defied its mechanics and unhitched itself. It parked itself without rolling back to hit a Very Cautious Driver behind. A paramedic ‘happened’ to be the next car passing in the other direction.
And in the strangest of ways the accident also delivered other gifts.
The insurance pay-out covered the maintenance bill for my static and gave me a little financial window of calm. Chris and I rediscovered a tenderness as we cared for each other’s bruised bodies, confirming that, for now, our relationship was intent on staying alive.
By October 2014 I was able to write a narrative poetic entitled ‘Smash Hit’.
It concludes, ‘I do not understand how order manages so adroitly to look like chaos and it may sound insane but although this is a smash hit we will never forget it’s also one I can’t regret.’
However, the phrase ‘the tea party is over’ kept echoing like a refrain while I healed…
My respect for coots has increased, although they are not my favourite fowl - they are too brutal with their children.
We are about to move and take our place in ‘The Aviary’, although the first creature we’ll meet there lives just outside its bounds… it, like the coot, needs a river.
#miracle #accident #coot