The 911 Call

I was talking on the phone to my best friend when it happened. We were chatting about swimming pools and barbecues as my family hurtled along I-35 toward Des Moines.

The little SUV two cars ahead of us swerved and rolled, ending up in the ditch, two of its wheels straight, two bent, the back windows blown out.

Three cars stopped, including us. I hadn't been paying attention when it happened, just heard Beloved mumbling and noticed our rapid slowing. "I've got to go," I told Steph. "I think I need to call 911."

Beloved and I were not thinking clearly -- neither of us took the little angel, who was still in the back seat. I was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, no idea if the man driving the car was hurt or not, just wanting some authority figure to show up as soon as possible. They asked where we were. I thought we were in Missouri still, but we'd passed over the state line and were near Lamoni. I ran back to the closest sign, but it was a rest area sign, not a mile marker sign. I really had no idea where we were. I tried to use the GPS on my phone, but it wouldn't leave the screen I was on since it was an emergency call.

Finally, we figured out where we were with Garmina in our car. The little angel had gotten out of our car and crawled down to my husband, who stood talking to the man in wet shorts with a cell phone pressed to his head and shaking hands. I tried to get the man to sit down, but he kept talking about how his wife and 19-year-old daughter had flown to Minnesota and he was driving the car up from Houston to meet them because his daughter needed the car for her vacation because she was too young to drive a rental. His face fell. "I've ruined everything! I've ruined her vacation!" he moaned, his hands still shaking.

"I'm sure she won't care. She'll be happy you're okay," I said, trying to calm him down.

"Oh, I don't know. There's stuff she needs in this car. She's nineteen."

"Even a nineteen-year-old will be relieved her father isn't hurt after rolling his car," I said. "Please sit down. Please don't worry."

He wouldn't sit down.

A Lamoni police officer arrived and said an ambulance was on the way. The man seemed okay, but I think he was a little bit in shock. I worried about his neck. 

The first car had left after we assured them we would stay with the man. The second car was a woman driving to Wisconsin to see her daughter dance in a competition. She was from a little town in Missouri just down the road from us. The Lamoni cop said he would question her, since she had been directly behind the man. He said we could go. I kind of wanted to hug the man and the woman, but it would've been weird. I wish now I'd hugged the man.

The man kept thanking us, but I felt bad leaving him there, all alone, states away from his wife and daughter with a totaled car and maybe some sort of injury. But the woman had searched through the grass and found his cell phone, and he'd talked to his wife. The woman told the wife her husband had been in an accident.

"Can you imagine it?" Beloved said as we got back on the road to head to my parents-in-law's house. "Getting the call from a total stranger?"

Oh, of course I can. I catastrophize about everything.

I've thought about the man several times since then. It's a miracle of car safety technology and smart people who wear seatbelts that he was as unscathed as he seemed. It seems unbelievable you can roll a car at highway speed and come out of it with nothing more than a pair of wet shorts. But I did the exact same thing when I was 14 driving on a school permit, except instead of a complete roll I was stopped by a fence post and ended up hanging from the ceiling by my seatbelt.

Every day is a gamble and a gift.