The Visit

Corrine lowered the radio to keep from disturbing her sleeping five-year-old daughter. The morning sun was shining bright through the driver side window and the roads were bare as she traveled along the two-lane road. The natural hum of the road, which soothed her daughter to sleep, was beginning to get to her. She took in a deep breath and focused her eyes on the road. She checked her watch and realizing she only had another twenty minutes to get her daughter to school she stepped on the gas.

The SUV shifted hard to the left, the tires squealing to hold the road. Corrine clutched the steering wheel and fought to keep control. A rush of emotion took her, as she knew in an instant that there was no way to keep the vehicle from rolling, a last second glance at her daughter just waking from the screeching sounds of the tires. The front driver’s side tire had blown out and at the rate of speed they were traveling it caused the SUV to lose its stability. The next few moments sped by but at the same time seemed to move slower then any time in Corrine’s life. The power of the air bags felt like a prizefighter punch to her cheek and chest. The deafening sound of the metal and glass compressing all around her with each roll of her SUV, this was a nightmare – it was worse it was really happening. Her body was being slammed from the side, then the top, and then the side again until finally it came to rest. She was being held by her seatbelt upside down the top of the car pressing her neck forward and to the side. One thought was in her mind through the entire event – Angie?

Corrine was distant from her body – she felt nothing. Her eyes opened – she was facing towards the empty two-lane road. She could see bits of glass spread all along the road, debris from the twisted SUV, and the deep black marks from the tires. A trickle of glass could be heard with the hiss of the engine. She cried out “Angie?” She gathered everything she had to scream for her. “Angie!” She fought back tears and made an effort to move, but nothing moved. She heard the sweet most comforting words she could ever imagine in what was turning out to be the darkest moment of her life – “Mom.” It was faint and distant but it was Angie’s voice. She welled up with tears and tried to ask if she was ok but couldn’t get past a tearful mutter.

“Your daughter will be fine,” a man’s soothing voice said just as she was praying to God that someone would find them. She heard the crunch of glass as he moved around the SUV. She had so many questions running through her head – all of them filled with concern for Angie. The assuring sound of his voice was enough to calm her for a moment. She saw his shoes and then his face. He was young and in full police uniform. His light eyes were gentle and he didn’t look panicked at all – it was if he had seen this happen a hundred times. “The ambulance is on its way…hang on”

She saw the ambulance as it arrived. And a moment later she could hear the scrapping of the passenger door behind her. She couldn’t hear her daughter but the next person she saw was the paramedic. He started asking her a lot of questions and she did her best to answer him – her mind was frozen on her daughter and until she saw Angie's face it wasn’t going to move. It was a matter of minutes and a firefighter had settled her on to a board. Her neck was strapped to the board and she slid along to an awaiting stretcher. “How’s my daughter?” she asked with concern evident in her voice.

The paramedic replied, “We are checking her now. It seems your side of the car got the brunt of the damage. You are lucky someone called, you both could have been in a lot of trouble if they hadn’t.”

A sense of relief caused her to tear up again. She wouldn’t want to live if her daughter had been seriously hurt or killed – the thought caused her tears of relief to change to tears of pain. Her own life would feel empty without her daughter. Her thoughts changed to herself for a moment – was she going to survive this crash. She still couldn’t move – was she paralyzed?

A few weeks later after the accident her daughter had recovered from a broken arm and some minor bumps and bruises. Corrine had regained almost all feeling in her body – swelling in her neck had pinched on a nerve and caused the paralysis. She started to wonder about the officer that had helped them – she wanted to thank him for all that he had done. She received a strange response from the police department. They told her no one was in that area during that time of the morning. How could that be? She knew it was a police officer she saw – the details of that uniform were one of the few memories she cherished. His calm demeanor and comforting words helped her to survive that day. The face in her mind seemed familiar. Where had she seen that man?

The next months were much harder on Corrine. She returned home but had scheduled visits at a rehabilitation center. The rehabilitation wasn’t as easy as she had hoped for – she had feeling but moving still wasn’t easy. She never liked exercise and this was ten times worse in her mind. Angie was back in school – it was hard the first few trips down that road and she would never sleep in a car again. The mysterious police officer was still just that a mystery but today she was going to find out who he was. The face was still clear in her mind and if she had to go through ever picture she owned she was going to find that face. It wasn’t long because she spotted it on the first page of her family album. She scrap booked it a few years back and the picture was set against an old looking dark background – the orange tinge covering the dark haired, bright-eyed young man staring at her in black and white, with an emotionless face of an old photograph. She sat shocked trying to process what she was seeing – that isn’t possible she kept telling herself over and over. But she was sure it was him. The memory of his story was very vague to Corrine. She had heard it when she was a child but over the years had forgotten about it. The main thing that stood out in her mind was that he died by a swerving car. His daughter, who became her grandmother, was around the same age as Angie and he had thrown her out of the way when he got hit – her great grandfather had saved them that day.