Friday Night's Adventure

A lot of people have been asking what happened, so I thought I'd take a minute to write it all out here, which is a lot easier than writing it out a whole bunch of separate times.

Friday night, Jenni James and I were on our way up to Logan to participate in Midnight Madness at the Book Table. The weather was gorgeous all the way up there until Willard, where it started to lightly snow. That wasn't a problem - it was actually really pretty and sparkly. The sun started to go down, but visibility was still pretty good, and we were enjoying the drive. We had just entered Sardine Canyon and were heading toward Logan when we hit some black ice. Jenni, who was driving, managed to get the car back under control, but it slipped again. She battled it for a couple of seconds, and I thought we were okay, but then we hit another patch and the car went into a big U-turn right into oncoming traffic. The main thing that was oncoming was a semi-truck.

After we stopped sliding, Jenni was able to move the car a little bit, and I honestly thank God that she did. The semi hit us from behind, because we were backwards at this point, we spun around, and impacted with the semi on my side. I hit my head, the side of my face, my right shoulder, right hip - pretty much everything on the right side of my body - into the door. The next thing I know, Jenni's checking my pulse, pupils, etc. and begging me not to die. I almost blacked out again, but didn't.

Then I heard a man's voice. "What were you doing, making a U-turn in the middle of traffic?" It was the truck driver, who thought that's what Jenni had been doing. She explained about the black ice, but he wasn't really in the most listening mood right then.

Next thing I know, another girl is in the driver's seat, talking to me. She was a first responder, and asked me a bunch of questions about how I was hit and where I was hurt. Then we had firemen and the police gathered around, and they went right to work.

The engine of the car had been smoking, and I'd made a feeble attempt to get my door open, but I couldn't. Because it took the brunt of the impact with the semi, it was smashed shut. So the firemen went to work clipping wires in the car and removing the battery while another fireman started talking to me. He held my neck in position while they removed the battery from the car. Lo and behold, he was the husband of one of my good author friends, Lori Nawyn, and it was great to have that familiarity there. The firemen then took hold of my door and pulled it back and practically off its hinges, put a neck brace on me, put me on a back board, and I was treated to my very first ambulance ride. I also got my very first CT scan.

Funny, the stuff you think about at times like that. I told the EMT that it was his lucky day - I'd just lost 60 pounds, so he and the other guys had a lot less to lift. They all congratulated me, and I'm sure there's a note in my chart somewhere, "Patient is talking about really random things."

Jenni and I had both been able to talk to our husbands briefly before we were taken to the hospital, which is a miracle right there because they told us that part of the canyon doesn't get cell reception. After we got to the hospital, Jenni called my sisters, and they came to see me there in the ER.

Today, two days after it happened, Jenni and I are both in a lot of pain. We're stiff, we're sore, but we are overwhelmed with gratitude for the outcome. By all rights, we should be dead. Hyundais don't crash into semis and come out with live passengers. And not only are we alive, but we have no broken bones, and more amazingly, no bruises. The right side of my face is swollen and it feels like I should have a black eye, but I don't. We're both sore from the seat belts, but there are no marks on us. My glasses had flown off my face, but Jenni found them neatly folded and resting on the back seat like someone had lovingly placed them there just for me. And from the way everything went, if Jenni had not been able to move the car like she did, the semi would have smashed us into the bridge supporting the overpass. We are blessed that we hit the way we did.

Angels are real, Heavenly Father does send them, and there were a ton of them in Sardine Canyon on Friday night.

*Update 12/8: Jenni and I have both been to see the chiropractor and are receiving excellent care. It will be a long process of recovery, but we have a lot of optimism and know we'll come through this well.