Curving Roads

The sun came up on July 1st to meet Bill standing proudly on his porch. It was finally time for the big trip. He was talking the family up to the cabin for four days of summer fun culminating in the massive fireworks show the national park put on every year. It was a long drive but he was ready.

The cooler and all the luggage had been packed the night before. All this morning’s outfits had been laid out and the back up ones were in the diaper bag. The van had a full tank of gas, fresh oil change, and properly inflated tires. The first aid kit and their second child’s epi-pen were in the center console.

Bill sipped his coffee with a smile as he ran through the check list in his head again. His watch alarm went off, signaling the need to wake the rest of the household.

He moved back into the house and went from room to room, gently waking the other five members of his family. They all arose with varying degrees of willingness and extra prompting.

His wife fell in next to him and started helping get the kids dressed and fed. The two did the morning dance of child care while also feeding themselves. 

After the morning rituals had been completed and the family piled into the van, it was time to begin the drive to the park.

Bill was still feeling good an hour and a half into the drive. The kids had only needed one bathroom break and the baby had only blown out of his diaper into his onesie so they didn’t have to clean the entire car seat.

His wife’s play list landed on Fast Car when he saw the truck coming at them on the mountain road a few turns ahead. It was going fast but still safe for the road. Once the song had gotten to the first chorus the two vehicles were on the same stretch and only about 50 feet apart when the truck’s tire blew. The sudden shift in the balance of the truck caused it to swerve into Bill’s van and push his family through the guard rail and down the steep hill that flanked the road.

The van rolled down the mountain, violently shaking the passengers. The screams of the children drowned out every time the van made contact with the ground.

An eternity later, the heap of metal came to a stop on its roof against two trees.

The sudden stop shocked everyone into a deafening silence for a moment as the last 30 seconds hit them again.

During this time Bill let go of the steering wheel and looked over at his wife. She was unconscious and bleeding from her head.

Then the kids started screaming again. They were scared and upside down and possibly hurt and it was not helping Bill get his head together. He had to focus. The first thing he had to do was get out of his seat. He looked down at his waist and saw his leg bending the wrong direction. When he laid eyes on it the pain then registered in his head and he let out his own scream.

The kids were getting louder and he wasn’t ready for it. He had never expected to be in a situation like this. He was supposed to live a normal boring life with nothing exciting happening, save for his kids’ milestones and the occasional vacation. This kind of shit happened to other people that drove drunk or recklessly. He didn’t deserve this.

Bill had all these thoughts as the screaming got louder. Finally he heard his youngest start to peter out. That baby was a crying machine. He had spent hours screaming at the top of his lungs the first few months of his life. There was no way he wouldn’t keep crying at full strength unless there was something wrong.

This change in volume flipped a switch in Bill’s head. The pain in his leg went away, the screaming died down to background noise. His family was in trouble and he had to save them.

He fished around his waist to find the seatbelt release and tried unbuckling. There was too much tension on the belt to allow it to let go. Bill stopped struggling with it after realizing the issue. He braced himself against the roof the van and pushed himself into his seat to let the belt finally come loose.

When it did, Bill fell to the ceiling and bumped his broken leg against the steering wheel, bringing a new wave of pain through him.

He gritted his teeth and started dragging himself to the back of the vehicle. His youngest had almost completely stopped making noise at this point, so Bill became frantic with his pulling to get to the child. Once he saw the baby, his frantic actions doubled.

The boy was turning blue from hanging upside down in his car harness. Bill’s hands moved without thought as he unbuckled the baby as fast as he could. He had the same issue with the harness as he had with his on seat belt and had to push the baby up before the seat would let him go. A soon as the straps slipped past the child’s arms he fell into Bill’s waiting hands. 

Bill hugged the child tightly to his chest and rubbed his back. He begged to hear his son make a sound to know he was okay. After another eternity, Bill felt a small hand start groping at his face. He pulled the baby away to see his color returning to normal and his face scrunching up to start crying again.

Bill let out a cry of joy. No one was dead yet. 

The cries of his other three children broke through his moment of triumph.

He moved next to his third youngest. He was also strapped into a car seat that had done its job well. Bill couldn’t see any marks on him and his screams for mommy and daddy to please help him were a stab in the heart but sounded strong and full of breath. 

Bill grabbed a blanket that hadn’t been thrown from the car and laid it down on the smoothest part of the roof he could find before putting the 11 month old down on it. He again went through the now familiar process of unhooking a person from an upside down position.

The little boy fell into his father’s arms still screaming to be let go and wanting to go home.

Bill spent a few moments reassuring his son that everything was going to be alright and they would go home as soon as they got out of the car. He gently laid the toddler next to his baby brother who had fortunately not decided to crawl through the broken window next to him. After stuffing another blanket in between the baby and the window to keep this from happening Bill moved to the final row of seats and his oldest two children. Both were bruised and screaming with a few superficial cuts visible on their faces but they didn’t look like they had any serious injuries.

He went to his daughter, who was the oldest, first. He got her to look him in the eye and explained what had happened to them. He explained that he was going to need her help to watch her siblings when he got her down. He told her that she was a super brave girl and he was so proud to have her as a daughter. She calmed down to sniffing and nodded when he asked if she was ready to be let down. He caught her and hugged her tightly to reassure both of them that they were there. He asked her to go crawl back to her younger brothers and watch them while daddy got her other brother out of his seat.

Bill tried to calm down his third oldest child for a few moments, but the boy was having none of it. He wanted mommy and he wanted her now and he hurt a lot on his front and he didn’t want to be touched.

Bill grimaced at this behavior but did not react in his normal way. The kid was, for once, totally justified to feel this way. So Bill took a deep breath before unbuckling and catching the boy. As soon as he was free, the boy clung to Bill with a death grip. 

With the child attached to him this way it was much more of a challenge to squeeze back to the busted open window.

By the time he was able to get back to the middle row and had all the kids together, his adrenaline had started to wear off and the pain in his leg was coming back in force.

He still had to get his wife out of the front seat and then everyone out of the car. He told his daughter to keep hold of her brothers while prying the second child off his chest and passing him to her.

He told them he had to help mommy now and that he wanted them all to stay put. 

Bill moved between the two front seats and looked at his wife again. She was still unconscious and the puddle of blood that had dripped from her was way bigger than he wanted it to be. He hesitantly checked her neck for a pulse, fearing he might not find anything. But after a few seconds of fear and doubt, he found a weak rhythm. 

He thanked god his life partner was still alive and moved his hands to her waist, trying to get at the buckle. The roll had pinched the door in over the buckle, blocking Bill’s access.

His started panicking again and pulled on the waist belt frantically. He had to be able to get her down. He had gotten the damn kids; he sure as hell wasn’t going to raise them alone. He needed this woman in his life.

His panic rose in waves that crescendoed with him slamming his fist on the side of the center console. This caused the door on it to fall open and the first aid kit to drop out. 

Bill stared at the red box for a second as he took in this new tool set.

It was a road side specific kit he had gotten from the automotive store. It came with things like foldable signal stands, bandages, and a combination window breaker/seatbelt knife.

Bill snatched the box up and ripped the locking mechanism open. There was the dull black hook that would help him save his wife. He pulled the tool out and started fishing it in between his wife and the belt.

When it finally got a latch, Bill pulled down hard and let his wife fall into the puddle she had been making. 

All of them were right side up again. All of them still had heart beats, and god damnit they were all going to get out of this alive.

Now Bill had to get everyone out of the van and then he needed to get help.

He used the hammer function to bust the rest of the glass out of the passenger side window and painfully pulled himself and then his wife out of it.

The section of the hill was level enough for Bill to not have to worry about his wife rolling away, so he laid her flat before moving and busting the rest of the glass out of the window between him and the children.

He instructed his daughter to pass the baby through and then he helped the other three out of the van. After double checking all four kids had no major injuries, he pulled the rest of the first aid kit from the van and started pulling out the bandages. He bent over his wife to check if she was still breathing before wrapping the gauze around her head to stop the bleeding.

After doing what he could to patch up his family and splinting his leg with a tree branch and medical tape, Bill reevaluated his situation. They were all alive. They were out of the van, and they were still half way down a mountain. 

Bill reached for his pocket but did not find his cell phone there. It had been on the mount giving directions before the crash, so now it could be anywhere. He went through his wife’s pockets before remembering she had been reading her book on it when they went down the hill.

A second wave of despair came over him. There was no way he could get up this mountain side on a broken leg. The first aid kit didn’t come with a flare gun to signal with.

As his mind raced for answers, his ears picked up on something. The noise had been going on and off for a while but only now was starting to register with Bill.

It was a person yelling. Specifically a person yelling hey are you okay.

Bill’s heart exploded with joy for the 6th time in the last 15 minutes.

 It was the driver of the truck. They were so sorry and so scared and had called 911 and were trying to tell the operator how the other people in the crash were.

Bill yelled back that all 6 of them were alive. He yelled that his wife was unconscious and that his leg was broken. He yelled back that the paramedics needed to hurry.

The driver shouted thank god and that he was so happy to hear they were alive. He was so sorry that any of this had happened and assured Bill that he didn’t mean for it to happen.

Bill was starting to crash mentally at this point. He tried to yell back that it was alright and he knew the guy hadn’t done it on purpose, but couldn’t summon the energy. He crawled back to his family and pulled his wife into his lap while he leaned up against a tree. He pulled his kids close to him and listened to them sniffle and cry and ask how mommy was and when could they please just go home. 

Bill listened and comforted them on auto pilot. His brain was swimming in the events of the last 15 minutes. His last thought before hearing a helicopter’s blades in the distance was that they probably wouldn’t be taking this trip next summer.