When we got in the car we saw that it was exactly 800k from our hotel. We hit the road and just drove, didn’t stop to eat (I made sandwiches in the car) and didn’t stop to pee. We just drove. Then, suddenly, we could see our hotel. We had driven 798k and our hotel was like a beacon in the night. We stopped at a stop light.
Joe screamed, “brace yourself” he had looked in the rear view mirror and saw that an 18 wheeler was bearing down on us at top speed. He took his foot off the break and pointed the wheels towards the other side of the road. Then we were hit. The wrenching, tearing sound of metal being ripped apart was accompanied by our jumping across three lanes of traffic and landing near the ditch on the other side. It was late, there was no traffic so we weren’t killed by a car coming the other way.
We sat in the car.
Silent.
I won’t get into the details of what happened next.
I don’t want to talk, here, about my wheelchair and the problems my disability seemed to cause.
Another time.
In the distant future.
But in the hotel room, when we finally got there, we were both really shaken. I found that I couldn’t settle easily into my own body. My hands, which never tremble, trembled. Joe was a mess. The stress of it all hit him.
We had no car.
No transportation.
No way to get to work.
No way to get home.
And no one wanted to help us.
