On December 19th, 6 days after I took my Praxis test, I was supposed to leave the country to go back to France (where I'm from) to visit family and friends and show my husband around (his first time to Europe). We were stressed out and excited at the same time. So much time and money and planning was going into this, and we juggled it all despite having barely survived our busiest semester to date.
Everything was looking fine and dandy until a day or two before the day we were supposed to leave, there was a forecast for some snow which evolved over a few hours to a storm watch for freezing rain and snow. My family, husband, and I thought it would be wiser to drive up to a city closer to the airport the night before the storm was supposed to set in, that way we could minimize risk for any delays or accidents...
At 1:50 AM on December 19th, 2013 my husband and I were calmly and carefully making our way up the highway to the airport. When we left our town it was raining and 41 degrees Fahrenheit, we thought we were traveling safely. By the time we arrived a little past the halfway point in our journey it was still raining, but we were about to find out that the temperature had dropped drastically at this new location. We were driving up a slight incline (a bridge/overpass of the highway), when out of nowhere (through very low visibility) we see a black car, parked horizontally across three lanes of the highway, about 200 yards ahead of us. We were far enough away to react in a timely manner and think we could maneuver and slow down to avoid it. Once my husband tried to do just that, he said "Oh crap" and I froze. We slid on what we now understood was the slush created by freezing rain, and hit the black car full speed laterally on the passenger side of our car. We were both screaming and I shut my eyes before impact. Apparently we flipped our car over the black one and landed on the roof of ours. It took my brain a while to process this information as I opened my eyes and noticed I was hanging upside down staring at my car's totally shattered windshield laying on the road. Shaking and responding to my husband's calls of "Heidi, are you ok?" as I undid my seat belt and crawled out of my shattered window, I understood that although I was seemingly unharmed, I probably shouldn't have been. I looked at the car as I stepped out, and everything just spun around me. There were weird smells, hissing and ticking noises and the insulation from the car doors floated around me as I was pelted by more freezing rain. I grabbed my husband and buried my face in his chest as we both began answering the rushed questions of a witness who had just pulled over and called 911. The witness was kind of hysterical, thinking she would be walking onto a scene of mangled bodies; seeing us come out unscathed was both a shock and a relief. Our luggage we'd packed for the flight was strewn about haphazardly, miscellaneous items from the car had been ejected and were in different states of destruction strewn about the highway with bits of our car.
Police came within what seemed were seconds, the big mystery of the night at this point in time was the location of the driver of the other car (the one that was still chilling pretty much where we had hit it). Witnesses speculated the other driver might have abandoned the vehicle and taken off. Once the police arrived, it was revealed the driver had been sitting in another car on the side of the highway reportedly attempting to call a tow service...she only came out to defend herself and once the police had arrived. Not to check to see if we were alright. I tried to be understanding and I was very even-tempered at the scene but later I couldn't help thinking that it takes a special kind of...person (cough-idiot)...to just leave their car like that in the middle of the highway with no signals flares or attempts at moving it to the very close shoulder. Paramedics asked if they needed to take us to the hospital but with no real injuries my husband and I both declined treatment. The rest of the night was kind of a blur, we filled out reports and picked up what could be salvaged of our belongings (my iPhone with no case on it was miraculously unharmed), the troopers took us and our stuff to their station where we awaited family members to come get us. Our car was towed away and the chunks of stuff were swept off the road.
(still can't believe I walked away from this unscathed)
We were told the official police report put no one at fault.
The rest of the story is not quite so positive. The trip to France and back was an atrocious nightmare, our insurance company has been even worse...but through it all I am still grateful for all the good things I do have and all the love and support I have felt from friends and family. I can't express how blessed my husband and I are to have such wonderful people in our lives when we need it the most. It took me three different rounds to write out the story, I got too emotional the first few times. However, I think it's important for me to document this moment of my life.
