Connected
About four hours after I kissed my father’s cold cheek goodbye at the funeral home, I was hanging upside down by my seat belt. A black and white blur scrambled over my lap and rocketed out the window. So, Nikki the dog was alive, apparently. A moonscape of pebbles, dust and windshield glass covered the seat under my head. I sure was awake now. The soothing drone of the audio book playing had stilled, after accomplishing its most important task: putting me asleep at the wheel.
The view of the cliff was excellent from only two feet away. Although being suspended in space above the dashboard felt oddly comfy, I thought I better go herd dog out of the highway. Bracing a hand on the wheel, I lifted my weight off seatbelt and got it unbuckled. Plop into that sharp-edged debris pile. Luckily, the side window was mostly down, making it easy to crawl out underneath the jagged peaks of the fractured side glass.
Dad, was he calling me from above to say farewell: the goodbye that I could not give him? Did his spirit guide mom’s Mazda 6, gently back to earth after climbing the cliff and flipping? Him up there, me down here, but still connected.
Several good Samaritans pulled over. An off-duty EMS guy wrapped my neck in a towel and held my head stable. Meanwhile, another nurse on his way home from work examined Nikki’s entire body, pronouncing her uninjured. Snapping a leash on her, a third lady promised to deliver the dog to Jennifer, my niece, and sent herself text and photos from my phone. Someone else excavated my backpack from the debris to send in ambulance with me.
The state trooper admired my superb packing job on the trunk: the Windsor chair remained firmly tied in, with nary a slice in the upholstery. A box of framed art stayed put, wedged in a corner. Even the photos under glass wrapped in blankets in the footwell of the back seat survived. “Doesn’t look like you braked much when you slid 100 feet on the roof,” he said. Right, I was sleeping, so did not brake at all.
The intrepid Jennifer who can charm her way through any situation, persuaded the hospital intake desk that Nikki was an emotional support animal, and thus had the right to visit me on the stretcher. The very springy springer spaniel knew just what she wanted and immediately vaulted up on the high bed to snuggle. She stuck her front paw under the straps attaching me to bed, as if to hold hands.
The nurse’s aid refused my many appeals to go pee, since I was to remain immobile until the doctor took a look. Jennifer sent her for a bedpan. The very belated bedpan arrived after I soaked the sheets. Of course, changing them required vastly more heaving and twisting than any trip to toilet would have entailed. Nikki panted patiently on the floor, longing to get up next to me.
A prickly sensation on my head woke me the next morning from my niece’s couch. No, not burrs transferred from Nikki to my hair. Rather, fragments of shattered glass were still embedded in my scalp. Jeez, three hours in the ER and they did not even pick the glass out of my head. As I shook my head over the sink to the tune of tinkling glass shards, I noticed a satisfying trickle of blood on my T-shirt, along with violent purple bruises at the shoulder.
Visited the auto carcass at the wrecking yard and extracted important family artifacts and a quite irrelevant collection of doodads from the glove box. And, of course, that passport to modern life, the EZ pass device. Renting a car was easy, so I was soon able to drive three hours back to Connecticut without flinching myself off the road. Went to cookout that night, where friends marveled at my blobby pattern of bruising and the souvenir windshield fragments still shedding from my hair. Dazed, thinking about what death leaves behind. The turbulent currents that Dad’s passage had sent swirling about my life. He was large in my head, but thoroughly gone from this earth.
A thoughtful friend sent me a gift to commemorate the incident: a seat belt cutter tool. I could untie myself from car next time, although I will never untether myself from Dad.