“I love this song,” my sister Mary Beth said wistfully, as she navigated the snowy drive through the Chuckanut mountains to Bellingham, Washington. It was 1978, and the hit love song, “Sometimes When We Touch,” played through the speakers of our yellow Ford station wagon. Christmas break was over, and my thirteen-year-old brother, David, and I were accompanying Mary Beth back to college, then making the two-hour drive back home to Bellevue without her. I was seventeen, and the prospect of my driving such a long stretch back thrilled me but scared me, too. Though there was still plenty of daylight left, it had begun snowing shortly after we left home almost two hours prior, and the roads up in the foothills were covered in an inch of snow.
“Yeah—I like this song, too,” I said. We all started singing along, crunched together in the front seat, David sandwiched between Mary Beth and me. “I want to hold you till I die, till we both break down and cry. I want to hold you till the fear in me subsides,” we bellowed at the top of our lungs.
We were creeping along at about thirty-five miles an hour with the rest of the cars, forming a serpentine as we wove through the hills.
“Oh no!” Mary Beth suddenly shouted. A white semitruck was in the left lane, and its right turn signal flicked on. It began to merge into our lane. The giant smiling face of a child eating a piece of buttered bread leered at me from the side of the semi, getting larger by the second. Mary Beth tapped gently on the brakes, but our car started to fishtail, like when I slam on my bike brakes on a bed of gravel. I threw my arm across David’s stomach, like my mother would do. As the car started spinning out of control, I had this crazy memory of the teacup ride at Disneyland. My stomach dropped, and I flattened my feet against the floorboard. Though I was scared, I was also aware of how pretty the snowflakes were as they swished past the windshield. I felt like I was inside a snow globe. Then we slammed into the guardrail so hard my teeth vibrated. Our station wagon came to a stop on the left shoulder of the freeway, facing traffic. Not one of us spoke. The windshield wipers continued their lazy swiping, the radio droned on, and everything fell quiet.
The cars in the right lane kept streaming by. We sat there for what felt like ten minutes, but was probably just a minute. We all felt shaken as we watched the snow and the traffic. Obviously we needed to do something, but what?
“I’ll get out and check the damage,” I finally said, my voice sounding calmer than I felt. I slipped out the door and took a few steps to the front of the car, my legs trembling and my breathing shallow, to see if the tire and bumper were damaged. I felt light, like I could float away, but also relieved to get a fresh breath of cold air. Unconquerable. We’re okay! I thought. And so was the car. I scurried back inside and made my report. We needed someone to stop traffic so we could make a U-turn. Why isn’t anyone helping? I thought. Perhaps it was because the road conditions were dangerous enough that others didn’t want to risk getting stuck. Then I wondered, What would Kevin do? My older brother, Kevin, was the problem-solver in the family, and since Dad’s death four years ago, I always looked to him for answers. As if channeling my brother, I suddenly knew what to do. “I’ll get out and flag down some help,” I said. The idea made me feel proactive and smart.
I got out of the car again and walked carefully around the side and up to Mary Beth’s window. She unrolled it and handed me her gloves. “Be careful,” she said. David opened the passenger-side door and started to get out. “David!” she yelled. “Stay in the car!” David quickly slipped his legs back in the car and shut the door.
As soon as I was on the shoulder of the freeway, I felt foolish instead of in control. How do I get someone to stop and help us? I waved my arms feebly, knowing I looked stupid. Shouldn’t a seventeen-year-old girl standing next to a spun-out car be an obvious call for help? What am I, invisible?
Just as I was about to try making eye contact with someone in a slow-moving car, I noticed a green Pacer in the left lane coming right at me. He was driving faster than the rest of the cars, too fast for how slippery I knew the road was. You jerk, I thought. You’re gonna spin out!
I blinked and saw the Pacer start to skid.
There are moments in our lives that we don’t—no, we shouldn’t—remember. This was one of those moments. My world turned mercifully black. No memory was formed, at least in my conscious mind, of this one moment when the green Pacer hit my body.
Just seconds before, I was watching the car speed toward me. Then I found myself lying on the ground, my body feeling like a slab of concrete.
Mary Beth erupted out of the car. I heard her screaming. Her words were shrill and incoherent, except for, “Her leg … her leg … her leg!”
What? What about my leg? I thought. Why is she pointing away from me? I turned my head toward where Mary Beth was pointing, which required so much effort it surprised me, like when you’re trying to run in dreams. And then I saw it. My leg. I was confused. But yes, it was my leg—far away from me, lying upside down near my waist, which didn’t make sense. It was still clad in jeans and a sock. I wondered where my clog was. I looked around, but couldn’t see it. Where’s my clog? I loved my clogs. I wanted my clog. My body started shaking uncontrollably. Okay, I thought, we need an ambulance. I took a deep breath.
Mary Beth ran by me. Why isn’t she checking on me? I thought. I wanted to get her attention, but it felt impossible to talk. Instead, I heard her yelling at the man who was driving the green Pacer. His car was a few hundred yards beyond ours, and he was standing dumbly beside it. It, too, had crashed against the guardrail. “You took off her leg! Her leg came off! Look what you did!” she screeched hysterically. She kept screaming, but her words became fuzzy, as though I was hearing them from underwater. I heard another man gently coaxing her farther away from me in low mumbles, like when people talk in church. I heard David crying, and the man was taking David away, too. He was keeping them away from me, and I didn’t know why. I wanted to scream at somebody to call an ambulance, but I didn’t have the strength.
My right leg ached with a sharp intensity. It lay at a funny angle, so I tried to reposition it, but it didn’t seem to obey my brain’s signals, and it felt creepy to move a part of myself that felt as detached from my body as my left leg. The new position felt much worse, so I shifted it back to where it was, with effort. I was exhausted. Where is the ambulance?
I became distracted by my freezing crotch; it felt as though my pants were ripped open. As much as I didn’t want to see the damage to my legs, I was more concerned about my crotch being exposed to the world. I summoned the courage and energy to look down, allowing my gaze to fall only as far as my crotch and no farther. I was completely covered. Thank God.
A young man ran up to me. His hand grasped my shoulder, firm and sure. He looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m Byron. An ambulance is on its way.” I looked up into his deep-brown eyes, noticed his shock of wavy brown hair, and figured he was no older than twenty-five. My pain and fear notwithstanding, I was still a seventeen-year-old girl, and I felt a flutter of excitement being this close to such a cute guy. I later learned he was an off-duty paramedic. He started asking questions, just like they did in the TV show Emergency.
“What’s your name?”
“Colleen.”
“Seventeen.”
“Who is the president of the United States?”
“Ford.”
I made the decision to stay conscious so I could continue answering his questions. I knew from Emergency that a conscious person makes everything easier. What I didn’t know was that staying conscious would mean I’d forever remember every moment of this day and would spend decades assimilating what had happened to me.
Byron tied a tourniquet on what was left of my left leg. I moaned as it burned like a wildfire. The bottom half of my body felt inflated, huge, bloated, tight.
“Colleen, since your jacket is a pullover, I need to cut it off, so I can take your blood pressure.”
My new down jacket from Eddie Bauer. I had wanted that jacket for months. It was Mom’s Christmas gift to me. Knowing it was expensive made it even more special. I had owned it only nine days, and now I was watching it being cut away from my body. The small, white, downy feathers from the jacket floated lazily among the dainty little snowflakes that were falling softly from the sky. I looked at these snowflakes the way I had as a kid, when I would throw my head back to the heavens to allow them to fall onto my outstretched tongue. I was embarrassed these snowflakes were making my mascara run as they hit my eyelashes. I worried about having black mascara streaks in front of Byron.
God, I’m ugly. The thought came to me with such force that it felt physical. I had no idea how the ugliness I felt in that moment would become a central refrain in my life. All I knew was that I was ashamed. I turned away from Byron to try to pull myself together.
I craned my neck, looked behind me, and saw cars slowing down, faces pressed against windows in shocked fascination. A Greyhound bus crept by. I wanted someone to stop the bus and ask the driver to radio the hospital for an ambulance. One hadn’t arrived yet, so maybe they should call again. The passengers had an aerial view of my wracked body. I knew they were trying to catch a glimpse of the person who was hit so they could tell the whole busload, with an air of superiority, what they alone had seen. My five siblings and I had done this often: creeping by the scene of an accident, we’d all stretch our necks, often our whole bodies, hoping to catch a glimpse. The lucky one could tell everyone else about the gruesome details, embellishing to his or her heart’s content, until Mom’s admonishment quickly stopped the narrative.
I knew they were all looking at me equally detached. I wanted to shout at them to stop staring, to leave me alone. I had never felt so exposed in my life. I looked at my chilly crotch again to be sure it was covered. It was. Good.
The need to urinate was intense. I was tempted to let my bladder loose, but I couldn’t mortify myself any further by peeing on the side of the road while I lay in a bloody heap next to our car with a part of my body “over there,” and a cute guy by my side.
The sound of cars driving through the crunchy snow just a few yards away couldn’t drown out my sister’s continued screaming. She and David were both standing about fifty feet away in the median along with the man who was taking care of them and the man who’d hit me. I must’ve looked pretty horrible if Mary Beth and David weren’t allowed to be near me. Mary Beth slammed the driver of the Pacer with her words. “Goddamn you! You took off her leg.” I saw him wrap his arms around himself, but I didn’t think he was protecting himself from the cold. I wanted her to shut up. I needed quiet, but I couldn’t muster the energy to tell Byron to ask her to calm down.
My thoughts start to swirl out of control. Now Mom wouldn’t be able to go to Europe this spring. Now I wouldn’t be in the school production of Funny Girl. Now Rob wouldn’t like me, and we’d never get together. Now I wouldn’t be able to go to college …
I wanted to hold on to something. I reached for Byron’s hand. My legs hurt so much, like they were on fire. I wanted to break down and cry, but I couldn’t. I knew that if I started to cry, all that emotion would get caught in my throat and my head would explode from my body, just like my leg had. So I couldn’t break down. I had to hold on until the ambulance got there. I squeezed Byron’s hand, but then I realized I was squeezing too hard. I loosened my grip, but still, I held on. I held on. He squeezed my hand back.
The faint sounds of the siren gradually increased as the ambulance finally approached. It’s coming, I thought. I’ll be okay. I became confused when the sound started to recede. Don’t they know where I am? Is it for someone else? My eyes reached Byron’s and asked the question.
“The ambulance has to go south on the freeway, exit, then come north to where we are. But because of the snowy conditions, it has to go slow,” Byron explained. “Hang in there, Colleen.”
I knew getting to the hospital was vital. In Emergency, the ambulance always arrives at the scene quickly—but this was taking so long. I fought off sleep while I waited, knowing it was important to stay awake to answer any questions the ambulance drivers would have.
When the ambulance finally arrived, the paramedics scurried out carrying their portable phone—just like on Emergency. This, I thought, was a story to tell my younger brothers, who liked watching the show as much as I did. I started to relax as I heard Byron talking to one of the paramedics. I looked to my left and saw the other paramedic pick up and cradle the remains of my leg. I was surprised and touched by how gently he held it, as if he were holding a baby. Is he going to throw it away in an ordinary garbage can, or do they have special garbage cans for dismembered body parts? I wanted to say good-bye to my leg, but I didn’t want to appear stupid.
“Hi, Colleen, we’re going to get you to the hospital. We need to get you in the ambulance, so we’ll slide you onto our bed,” the paramedic explained. Though they slid me effortlessly onto the ambulance bed on the count of three, every inch of my body from the stomach down joined my voice in painful screams. They rolled me into the truck. I looked around, amazed at how lifelike the show really was. I’d seen the inside of this ambulance on TV every week. Its chrome walls were so clean they looked like a mirror. All the supplies were neatly stacked against the walls, and the bed fit on the left side of the bay. There was room next to the bed for one of the paramedics to sit next to me. I knew he would need to monitor my vitals.
I glimpsed my sister as she ran to our car and fetched my book bag, another Christmas gift. Then I heard her voice in the front seat of the ambulance next to the driver. David tentatively stepped up into the back of the ambulance next to me. I attempted to smile at him, but he wasn’t looking at me—he was looking for a place to sit. The other paramedic, the one taking care of me, cleared a spot for David.
The paramedic poked a needle into my arm while the driver called us in over the radio, “St. Luke’s, we’re coming in.”
I knew I could let go and sleep. I shut my eyes, but they snapped open as I realized I hadn’t yet prayed. How can I have gone this long without a prayer? I had been attending mass every day before school. My relationship with God was intact and strong, wasn’t it? Guiltily, I wondered why prayer wasn’t my first act.
The ambulance doors banged shut, and I began: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.