It was snowing outside. Snow isn’t very unusual mid January in Wyoming, or anywhere for that matter. This wasn’t your typical winter flurry, it was one of the worst snow storms Wyoming had ever seen. Most people were sitting inside with their families by the fireplace, staying warm and safe, away from all the danger the storm had brought. I was not as fortunate as everyone else.
My shift at the local bar, The Glass Bottle, had just ended. It was a slow night, only regular customers, Billy, James, and Scott, had come in while everyone else was preparing for the storm. Billy, James, and Scott were your typical “town drunks” and the bar was like their second home. It was closing time, so I locked the doors and headed for my car. At this point, there were 9 inches of snow on the ground and the storm had knocked out all of the power, leaving the streets as dark as the midnight sky. The plow trucks had come through, but the snow was coming down too quickly and too heavily to keep the roads cleared. Shivering from the single digit temperature, I scraped the snow and ice off the windows of my car, cranked up the heat, and started to head home.
The roads were worse than I had thought, my car was sliding all over the place. “Only 5 more miles until I’m home…” I kept thinking to myself, trying to be optimistic about driving in this horrendous weather. I only saw two cars on the road in the ten miles I drove from the bar to my home town of Cheyenne. “Almost home, almost home!” I exclaimed, ready to get into my warm house and bury myself in a mound of pillows and blankets. My apartment complex was up ahead, one more intersection, one more right turn. The upcoming traffic light turned yellow, and I lightly pressed on my breaks, but the unexpected had happened. My car was fishtailing side to side, I was breaking, but the car wasn’t. I slid across the ice on the ground as my tires lost traction, gliding through the intersection and the red light. I heard a loud crash and pain overcame my body, then everything went black.
When I awoke, I was blinded by red white and blue flashing lights, and deafened by sirens. I felt a strange combination of warm and cold liquids covering my body. “Where am I?” I thought as I tried to get up, but something was paralyzing me. My windshield and the side window had been shattered. I felt the cold snowflakes delicately landing on my face. I glanced down to see that I was covered in blood and glass. The car door had been pushed in so far, it pinned down my legs. The pain was so terrible that my body was almost numb. A policeman walked over to where I was and started talking to me. My hearing was too muffled to understand what he was saying. I started to lose consciousness again.
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Fluorescent lights were beating down on me when I regained consciousness. There were people surrounding me, making me claustrophobic.
“You’ve been in a terrible accident, but it’s okay, we’re doctors and we’re here to help you!” One of the strangers screamed.
I tried to talk but no sound would come out. I felt a pressure in my throat.
“There is a tube in your throat to help you breathe, one of your lungs collapsed in the accident. Just relax and don’t talk! We’re rushing you into surgery right now.” said the doctor.
I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but it was impossible. The doctors were jerking me around, trying to get me to surgery, and the pain had overcome every inch of my body. It took all I had to not let go, but before I knew it, I saw nothing but black and the pain had ceased.
I had been in and out of consciousness so much, I didn’t even know what day it was. “Had I been in a coma? What year is it? Where am I?” I thought to myself. I opened my eyes and saw my parents sitting across the room, crying. The doctor was filling them in on what had happened to me. I listened carefully, as I wasn’t even sure what happened. “Your daughter was hit from the drivers side when her car slid through a red light. Her door was caved in, pinning her down and collapsing her left lung. Luckily, our rescue team got to her quickly enough to free her before there was too much damage to her leg and organs. She will need to be on bed rest for six weeks, and she will have a full cast on her leg for four months. Your daughter is very lucky to be alive.” My parents thanked him for saving me. I tried to speak and was surprised when words came out, “Mom? Dad?” There wasn’t a tightness in my throat anymore. My parents looked up at me, their tears turned to smiles. They ran over hugging me as tight as they could without hurting me, although the morphine had made me numb to everything.
“I am so happy to see those beautiful eyes of yours, sweetie!” exclaimed my mother as she repeatedly kissed my cheeks and forehead.
My father simply looked at me with a slight grin, he knew that I was a fighter and would pull through. He always said my mother worried too much, and she probably did. She always used to embarrass me, telling me to look both ways before crossing the street at age 15, and to always wear sun block, even in December. But as the morphine carried the pain away from my body, I dozed off and realized the importance of the little things.