The stress was killing everyone in the car, as all eyes were now focused on the road. It had been at least fifteen minutes since the last time I had saw another car.
“Mom, are you still on the correct side of the road?” Alex asked worriedly.
“Shit, how can I tell Alex, it starting to look all the same to me?” I said while slowing down even more. I couldn’t have been going faster than twenty miles an hour.
I guess it was inevitable when our accident finally happened. The old timers would nod their heads and just say I should have pulled over and weathered the storm. You can’t just drive blind on a road and think you’re not going to lose control somehow.
At first there was no indication that we had actually left the road. Apparently I had slowly drifted off to my right and off the ice covered pavement until I was literally driving on top of a smooth flat snow bank covering the ditch. When my front right tire finally broke through the ice crust, the steering wheel of the Jeep jerked sharply out of my hands. The next second had the Jeep swerving hard to the right and then because of the steepness of the embankment had the Jeep tumbling sideways down into a snow covered ditch into deep powdery snow.
I must have knocked my head on the steering wheel as we tumbled because when I woke up, I was up-side down. Bizarrely floating in the air with my seat belt holding my butt and back in place while my long blond hair hung below me to pool up at the Jeep ceiling which was now our floor board.
“Mom, are you alright?” Alex was yelling with not a little bit of panic in his voice. He had already unfastened his belt and fell free. He had turned on the interior light switch (which was now located near his feet). The bright light showed me that Alex was now sitting cross legged on the ceiling under his own bucket seat, shaking me awake. I was obviously still disorientated from the accident but was quickly alarmed that he had a couple of cuts on his face that were slowly bleeding. Seeing where my eye went he quickly added, “I’m fine Mom, really. Just a few scratches. Can you unhook yourself?”
Not really thinking clear, and with all of my weight being focused on that metal buckle, I pulled the release and was promptly dumped unceremoniously down on my head.
“Are you alright?” Alex asked for a second time as he scrambled to me up.
Seeing stars for the second time that night, I was a little afraid that I might actually have a mild concussion. But could I actually be concussed, if I was capable of wondering if I was concussed? I don’t know the rules about that sort of thing. But being a concerned mother I just lied to Alex saying, “Honey I am fine. Really.”
We both turned when we heard my sister moan from the back seat, “Yeah, I’m alright too… thanks for asking!”
Alexi was the snarky one, so her sarcasm actually answered my questions about how she actually was ok. When she unbuckled herself from one of the back seats, she also dropped down onto the freezing cold ceiling that was now our floor.