roadside serendipity

by Anne Dougherty

I never get out of work early.

Today is an extremely rare day: I can leave a full hour early. After six minutes of delays, I usher my dog from her kennel at work into my car and head home. Before anyone changes their mind and I have to stay the full shift.

Thanks to Spring Break, a bunch of our veterinarians took the week off. I text my best friend, Jessi, that I’ll be home sooner than expected. We're meeting for a walk tonight.

It’s been raining off and on all day, but we'll meet at a local mall and walk while we catch up. We’re heading into our 40s soon, and have both fully embraced old age. We’re mall walkers in cold and inclement weather. I keep caramel candies in my purse. We just need nice sweater collections to complete our transformation at this point.

As I near home, traffic begins to move from the right lane into mine on the left. I’m on a main road, the closest thing we have to a local highway: two lanes in each direction with a fifth turning lane in the middle. Strip malls with ample parking lots line both sides.

I’m a block and a half away when I see the issue: There’s a disabled car in the right lane.

Ugh.

I hate when people block traffic. It’s a pet peeve. Move your car out of the way! I’ll help you push it.

Everyone slows down, rubberneckers prolonging my commute. As I inch closer, I see the issue: the disabled car was obviously in an accident. Still wondering why this idiot hasn’t moved their car out of the way, I roll my eyes and inch along.

I make it a habit to not spend a lot of time staring at car accidents. I still have diagnosed PTSD symptoms from my own car accident thirteen years prior. There’s no joy to be found for me in someone else’s misfortune. I hyperfocus on my surroundings; I jump when cars come too close for my comfort.

I glance over when I reach the block where the gray car is still sitting, before returning my attention to the road.

Then back to the scene of the accident again.

My eyes focus on a man in the strip mall parking lot connected to the scene of this accident while waiting for the light to change. He’s wearing a black work hoodie. This idiot is someone I’d never miss in a crowded stadium.

I inspect the car blocking a lane of traffic: a gray Mazda 3.

Oh, that’s my car.

I register the idiot’s identity: my husband.

Pulling into the right lane, my husband, Jonathan, sees me. He’s in one piece. I know before he speaks: he’s livid. We just spent a lot of money on maintenance for this car. He picked up rubber tires to be mounted onto the current rims for the car. Our plan was to mount and balance the tires at his job and save a couple bucks.

As Jonathan wanders over to me, I raise my hands in the air, asking ‘what the hell?’ wordlessly. Ruby Tuesday, our twenty-pound fluffy white mutt, begins jumping with excitement in my backseat as she sees her favorite person.

Not the time, I tell Ruby as I roll down my window.

Seven years of working as a technician in a veterinary emergency room has prepared me well for emergencies. As I take in the accident, I focus on what needs to be done. “Have you called insurance yet?” I ask as Jonathan stands next to me.

“No, I just got off the phone with 911.”

“Wait, how long ago did this happen?” I’m confused, but I guess it makes sense, since emergency vehicles are missing. Our slice of suburbia is very small and boring. They respond quickly.

“Dunno, maybe five or ten minutes?”  If it had been longer, they’d have arrived.  “Park inside the lot.”

“Okay, I'll start the claim with insurance.” Pulling out my phone, I send a hurried text to my best friend. Nevermind. Family emergency. Everyone's fine, but a car isn’t. I don’t wait for confirmation that my text is sent before turning off my phone and focusing on driving. Already making a to-do list in my head.

 Carefully, I maneuver my Hyundai around our broken car, entering the parking lot that the front passenger side tire is currently occupying.

As I pass by, I don’t even have to think: the car is totaled. The back passenger door on the driver’s side is smashed in, window glass shimmers across the wet road. The front fender is smashed on both sides, as if the car was hit multiple times. I can tell at least three airbags went off. A cushion between injury and my husband.

I say a silent prayer of thanks that my husband appears in one piece. Then shake my head at the poorly written story of my life. Who actually drives into their spouse’s active accident scene?

No one will believe me when I recall this story.

I pass a red SUV in the entrance to the parking lot, with minimal damage to the front of the car. Anger builds in me. I do not know what even happened yet, past someone hit Jonathan’s car, but I know their car will be fine. They’ll drive it home in a bit.

Ours will never drive again.

I park, wary of more shattered glass on the ground, take a deep breath, and call our insurance company. I unlock my car doors as Jonathan loads a rubber tire inside my hatchback’s trunk, along with some engine machinery he just paid to have refurbished, before shutting it. Holding Ruby to the far side of my backseat, Jonathan loads three more tires into my backseat. My dog’s initial excitement at seeing her favorite person fades into confusion then acceptance as each tire is added to the stack. They barely fit.

Flashing lights arrive on the scene as I connect with an agent, explaining that I need to file a claim for our Mazda. I answer as many of the questions as I can while I watch Jonathan through the windshield. He chats with the police, an older woman, and a man.

I’m asked ‘what happened?’ by my claims adjustor.

“I don’t know.” I am in the middle of explaining as much as I do know as Jonathan wanders over to me. “Hold on, let me see if I can grab him,” I say, opening my door this time. “Babe,” I call, “Are you able to talk?”

He nods, taking my phone from me. I eavesdrop as he regales the agent with his tale. This car came out of nowhere and into his periphery. After an initial changing lane and braking, he sped up in a futile attempt to pass by unscathed.

Thought he was home free.

The slam came at the back driver’s side passenger door. His side curtain airbag went off. He felt another hit, but couldn’t understand what was going on as the airbag in his steering wheel cloaked him in dust and white. He lost seconds of time now, a normal trauma response when airbags deploy; this is a shared experience we now have. His next memory was being in one piece and contemplating climbing across the center console to get out - side curtain airbags are amazing, but not so helpful when you need to exit - when someone opened his door and made sure he was still alive. This good samaritan helped him get out; made sure he didn’t need immediate medical attention.

I take in the obvious damage to the frame on the front driver side fender. His shattered headlight.

I take a steadying breath to ground myself. I close my eyes and thank my God for those six minutes I was delayed. Tears try to brim at my eyes.

I could have watched this in real time.

My heart clenches as a tow-truck finally arrives on the scene. I’ve been here ten minutes. Still listening to Jonathan describe what occurred, I watch the tow driver speak with the two officers a few feet away before heading to my husband. They shake hands before Jonathan gives the stranger his keys and heads back to my side. Against my will, I’m pushed into the memory of handing my own keys to a total stranger and hopping into the back of an ambulance to be checked out at the hospital. Too dazed and in shock to comprehend what I was even doing.

Finally, I’m handed back my phone and the two of us sit in my car, on speakerphone, discussing all the boring details of our policy. Twenty-eight minutes after first dialing, we hang up the phone.

I cringe as the tow-truck driver sets up to rip our Mazda off the curb that it is stuck on. The haphazardly balanced front bumper stays in the parking lot as the driver pulls in short bursts - again and again - until the rest of the car is dragged back onto the street before being hoisted onto the flatbed. I watch the broom clean up the shattered glass after the larger pieces are removed from the parking lot and road.

Jonathan leaves to speak with the officers as they give him an incident report. “So, did they tell you what happened?” I ask.

“Yeah, there was another car involved.” I look around, confused. If there was another car involved still here, it isn’t clear. Their car must have also gotten off with minimal damage. It was still driveable.

“The car that hit me was making a left across traffic,” Jonathan explains. “Another car hit hers and she spun around, hitting me in the back. Apparently, she was spinning so fast that she spun around after the first hit and slammed into me again, in the front. I guess that’s when I got pushed over and stuck on the curb.” He shrugs as I struggle to picture the scene.

It makes little sense to me. Normally, I can visualize the words in my mind.

However, I’m not surprised that my mind won’t let me see this. 

“The guy behind me, who stopped to help, has a dash cam. The cops already reviewed it and he emailed a copy over to them. They said you can tell I’m not responsible.”

I sigh. “So, basically you were a third car, forced into what should have been a two car accident?”

“Yeah.”

I thank God for modern safety technology that he’s still in one piece.

We buckle up, cautiously heading the five blocks home. Not only because of my anxiety that the tires are going to fall on our dog, but because I’m extra paranoid about car accidents. Again. I don’t know the statistics on having multiple car accidents on the same day, but I’m not willing to take chances. I won't be looking it up.

An hour and a half after I left work, we arrive home.

I sigh.

This is the normal time I would get home, had I not left early. “Are you sure you don’t want to get checked out at the hospital? Auto insurance will cover it.” I worry he could have damage crop up as injury announces themselves later on.

“I want to change out of my uniform first,” Jonathan tells me, agreeing. After each of us changes into street clothes, I grab my keys and we open the patio door, headed to my car. Our final miracle of the day: not spending all night in the ER.  He’ll be diagnosed with a very mild concussion by our attending doctor and we’ll be back home in an hour and a half.

In and out.

“Want me to drive?” Jonathan asks me with a grin.

I glare at him, a glint of humor in my eye. “No, you’re not allowed to drive ever again.”

Photo of Anne Dougherty

BIO: Anne Dougherty resides in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA with her husband, Jonathan, their dog, Ruby Tuesday, and her cat, Theodore. She's worked in the veterinary field for over a decade. When not working, she can be found biking, reading, or writing. Her work can be found in Oddballs Magazine, Bright Flash Literary Review, The Palisades Review, The Write Launch, Pfeiffer Phoenix, and others.