She Slept

One. My hands gripped tight the wheel and my body flexed into a single mass of determined muscle that would not let go until five. “Stop!” my mind screamed again, but again the machine was indifferent to my will. She was asleep for this I would realize later.

It was early February, and we were going back for a birthday party. After picking her up from school, we headed west on the highway. The Kansas Sun was low in the sky. The raucous radio crew, among their talk of politics, culture, and society, warned of inclement weather for the area. The gray clouds similarly warned of their eminent deluge. Accordingly, I lowered my speed and counted on my two thousand two chevy trailblazer to get us through. The trailblazer and I had been through worst together, and despite everything, we will always have Tulsa.

Two. We gained speed. Gravity and momentum drove us down and down. I can’t say what happened to her during this. Any focus in vision I might have had was gone. I might have tried to reach over to her, or I imagined doing so, or I invented the idea. I don’t know. I know that we gained speed.

The first slip of the tires occurred quite some time before the last. It was that kind of slip on the ice in the car that makes your stomach drop. That kind of slip that focuses your attention. A moment later the trailblazer recovered. Perhaps there is where the evening should have ended, instead of me sobbing in a hospital bed. Perhaps I should have turned the trailblazer around. Perhaps I should have stopped to wait out the storm. Perhaps I should have done anything differently. I lowered my speed further and trusted my trailblazer, the car that had saved me before.

Three. Four. The trailblazer might have jumped. I thought I felt it. The unfocused world turned over and crashed into us again. She was asleep.

She had fallen asleep about thirty minutes before we reached the bridge. I glanced over and smiled, as I often do when she sleeps in the car. I thought the thoughts of any father pridefully imagining a full life for his daughter. A long full life of experiences that bring happiness and love. That bring sadness and heartache. That bring wonder and beauty. The raucous radio crew continued their conversation, the topic of which escapes me. They had become a distant accompaniment to my internal soliloquy. Her headphones kept their cacophony at bay. Despite my focus and keen awareness of other drivers around me, the black patch escaped my notice. I would not have seen it anyway. We entered the east side of the bridge at Mission Creek in a wholly different state of being than we exited on the west. I smiled, she slept, and the trailblazer slipped.

The bridge was like any other. Just a bridge. On my right was a hill going down, meeting its counterpart and forming a creek one hundred feet from the road. My new front tires let go first, leading the nose of the trailblazer away from the drop. I gripped the wheel while my mind screamed “STOP!” But this was not like before. Not like the first slip. Not like Tulsa. This time, the trailblazer was indifferent to my will. I hope the car will stop. I hope the car will go left, away from the hill, into the relative safety of the grassy median. I hope my daughter will be ok. My mind raced for an impossible solution where there was none. She slept, the tail fished bringing us almost perpendicular to the road, the passenger side leading. She slept, the back tire caught the edge of the shoulder on the right, and we flipped, rolling down the hill.

Five. We crashed to a stop. As suddenly as it began, it ended. Eternity in a few seconds. My life did not flash before my eyes. Only Her’s. She awoke and looked left, which was now down. Disoriented and confused she asked, “what happened?”. I have never felt anything like the relief I felt in that moment. Before she spoke, I felt fear which gripped me as I did the wheel. Tight with every ounce of strength I had. Fear that tasted of death. It released as she spoke. My child was ok, and nothing else mattered.

The trailblazer, as it had done before, saved us. It lay on the driver’s side in a dry creek bed. I finally released the wheel and the rest of my body followed. Looking around, I realized my glasses were nowhere to be found. I groped for my seatbelt and unbuckled from my well-worn leather seat.  I climbed in front of her to get to her window, which had shattered at some point. I unbuckled her from her well-worn seat and pulled her out after me. After a short futile search for my glasses, it was time to go. We were on the wrong side of the creek, but as it was dry, we crossed and climbed our way up to the road.  As we huddled together against the cold, she began to cry. I held her close. Someone must have seen the crash. As I spoke with the dispatcher (She had spotted my phone down by the creek) the first emergency vehicle arrived. An old beat-up ambulance we climbed into to get warm. As she cried, I repeated “we are ok”, choking out the words, and held her close. I held her with everything I had.

After a night of MRIs, CT scans and nightmares about what could have gone wrong, we went home. She wasn’t scared, she slept, and we were ok. I haven’t shown her pictures of the dead trailblazer. I haven’t pointed out the crash site on the later trips back. Those burdens are a fathers to bear. She is often asleep by that point anyway.