A drunk stranger, a thermos of coffee, and 115 miles an hour: what one second cost me.

My speedometer stopped at forty-five. Frozen there, like a clock that gave up mid-tick. The rest of the world had slowed too: glass tumbling past my face one shard at a time, the dashboard rising to meet me, the steering wheel folding into my chest. People say your life flashes before your eyes. Mine didn’t. Time simply stretched, and in that stretched second I understood I was about to die. I was wrong, but only barely, and only because I like coffee.

You’ve been in that lane. Maybe not drunk, maybe three drinks in and certain you were fine, or looking down at a text for what felt like half a second. Half a second is the whole story. That’s all the time it took to take the rest of my life apart.

That was thirty sevenyears ago. It made the front page of a small East Texas newspaper, and it earned me my fifteen minutes in the most austere way a man can get them.

Driving home tonight, I passed more than one driver weaving across lanes. Usually it’s texting or checking a missed call, and of course they’re convinced they can do it more safely than anyone else. Sometimes the weaving is simpler: they’re drunk or high. I know exactly where that road leads, because in 1992 it led straight into me.

A head-on collision at freeway speeds with an intoxicated eighty-year-old forced me to reinvent myself. I survived treatment at a small country hospital that doubled as an emergency vet clinic (joking . . . I think), and I was clearly destined for other things.

The broken bones and lacerations healed, but the scars remain just beneath the surface. Pain is a constant reminder of that day.

I still have my legs because I like coffee. Minutes before impact, I’d stopped for gas and filled a stainless steel thermos, setting it upright on the passenger seat. Cresting a hill, I found a Cadillac barreling toward me in my lane. My options were to swerve or brake. A red truck blocked the next lane, so in the split second it took to say “Oh, shit,” it was over. That fast. I’d locked the anti-lock brakes and bent the brake pedal. He never touched his.

The combined collision speed was 115 miles an hour. How they calculated that, I have no idea; my speedometer was frozen at forty-five.

That split second is etched into my brain, a permanent reminder of what happens when idiots drink and drive. Time fascinates me now, because I believe it isn’t linear but relative. During impact, the world became a high-speed film: glass tumbling frame by frame, left to right; the dash rising to meet me; the steering wheel crushing my face and chest. What I remember isn’t a bang. It was a long tearing, metal giving up all at once, and then the smell: gasoline, hot coolant, and my own blood. The thermos launched to the floor and wedged between the firewall and my seat frame. Full of liquid, its hydraulic resistance stopped the dash from severing my legs and likely kept the steering column from piercing my heart.

The other driver was pinned under his dash. He left in the first ambulance with a single cut on his forehead and was released that day. He wasn’t even wearing a seatbelt. I never learned what became of him. Since we shared the same insurer, I was “lucky” to be compensated. The claims adjuster was nasty on the phone. They wouldn’t replace my six-month-old truck, and they didn’t care that I was upside down on the loan. I understand adjusters work for the company, but I was surely not in “good hands.” If you’re lucky, insurance is money pissed away on something you’ll never need. Either way, they do whatever they can to avoid paying. Worth knowing: you get two years to file every claim. What surfaced in me after those two years was a diagnosis football players collect from the punishment of the game. I’m certain the insurers know that timeline as well as the doctors do. Two years, then it’s “piss off.” Some injuries take years to declare themselves, growing new bone that either steals your range of motion or hands you pain you never escape, until death.

As I said, my trip to the hospital began only after they’d removed the man responsible.

My vision faded as the pain in my chest intensified. Certain I was going to die, I made my peace with God, and strangely, I didn’t mind. There was a peace in it, as if the answer were finally at hand. God had other plans. Waiting for the end, I managed to unbuckle my seatbelt, but the pain remained.

With what vision I had left, I watched them pull the other driver onto a stretcher. A man came to my window. Talking hurt, and breath was scarce, so my answers were short. My face had met the steering wheel (or the wheel had met my face), so speaking clearly wasn’t an option anyway. Blood was leaving my body through every orifice, visible and not.

The engine and tires of my truck had come to rest beneath my seat. I heard the Jaws of Life popping the metal as they cut the door away, then sliced through what remained of my seatbelt. My vision was nearly gone, but I could still hear the equipment and the voices. People talk about the white light; mine faded from white sparkles to a blank white screen. “It’s a miracle he’s alive,” one responder said. They fitted a collar and pulled me out.

I wanted to say something, anything, to prove I was still a person and not a body they were working on. Nothing came out. My hands wouldn’t close. Somewhere behind the ringing a woman was crying, and I couldn’t tell whether it was for me or for him.

Once they laid me down, my sight returned. I saw the emergency vehicles and the wrecker driver gathering my belongings, scattered across the freeway. Steam rose from under my seat, where the engine now sat. The truck bed was warped and twisted by the force of the crash.

In the ambulance, the medic warned me the 18-gauge needle for the sugar water would hurt. Compared to everything else, it was a mosquito bite.

At the hospital, they were already working on the man who’d hit me, separated from me only by a curtain. He was old, drunk, and on medication. His wife had recently bought him this big old Cadillac after he’d totaled his last car, so he’d be protected if he crashed again. He bragged that she’d been right, since here he was.

Listening to him praise his classic Cadillac, what was left of my blood boiled. Bad enough they’d taken him first; now I had to share a room with him.

Then it was my turn to be treated like meat.

As they cut my clothes off, there was no shortage of spectators: doctors, nurses, a physician assistant (young, attractive, long curly brown hair), and a burly old cop who’d clearly never missed a meal.

The accident report was read aloud to everyone, including the note that my seatbelt was unbuckled. I tried to explain that I’d taken it off, but the cop was more interested in fault and writing a ticket than in me. He looked down as if to say, Sure, we’ve heard that one before. Arrogant son of a bitch. If he couldn’t read the evidence, he was a moron.

Then they cut off my shirt and revealed a wide purple stripe across my chest and belly, the mark of the belt. The cop put his ticket book away. I don’t mean to sound churlish; I count many police as friends. But thinking about him still makes me angry.

The doctor arrived in a black silk sports jacket with a yellow logo, on call from some sporting event and clearly unhappy about it. His bedside manner left much to be desired. There were two hospitals in town, one for the poor and one for people with means. I had insurance and means, and they’d brought me to the one in need of everything.

After examining my naked body in front of the crowd, the “doctor” flipped me over and stuffed a finger up my rear as the last insult. Broken bones, crushed chest, shattered face and legs, and without so much as an X-ray, he finished his exam like I was a slab of meat, scribbled orders, and left. A sonogram showed my heart was bruised. Then came X-ray, near the morgue. I could smell the dead, or maybe that was me.

Water-stained ceiling tiles told the story of the building’s finances. The X-ray machine wouldn’t stay put; its old, loose joints let the head slide every time she stepped back to trigger it. We shot several images before she finished. God knows how much extra radiation that museum piece gave me.

Back in the ER, the man’s wife arrived. “They said I was in the wrong lane,” he told her.

He got three stitches and was soon released. Before leaving, his wife came to me. I was covered head to toe in my own blood, my beard caked with it. She rubbed my forehead and apologized: “I knew better than to get him another car.” Then she added, “I’m not supposed to tell you this, but we have good insurance.”

Even in my state, I was too polite to tell her what she could do with her good insurance. First I had to survive the day, the night, and another day before I could think about any of that.

After hours in the ER, I was moved to the ICU. If you’ve never been hospitalized (and I hadn’t), it’s not an experience I’d recommend.

Because of the bruised heart and they didn’t know what drugs I was on, they decided I couldn’t have pain medication. A dentist checked the teeth that had gone through my face and stitched me up from the inside out, no anesthetic. Next came the doctor who set my broken nose, a man who reminded me of the professor from Back to the Future. He pressed with his thumb, couldn’t get it straight, then jammed enormous forceps up my nose and forced it into place. The pain was unbelievable, ending only with the final crunch of bone.

The monitor echoed the throbbing in my body. As long as it beeped, I knew I was alive.

The PA kept pressing me to admit what I was taking. “C’mon, we know you’re on something. We need to know.” “Really, I don’t do that. Never have.” She tried again and again; my answer never changed. I may be the only person on this planet who’s never touched the stuff, but I haven’t. “If we know what your on we can give you pain meds.” True story, they were bribing me with pain relief.

“We don’t know what you’re on, so we can’t give you pain medicine,” she said. What was I supposed to do, lie so they’d treat my pain? I am not making this shit up, it happened. Whoever this Andy person was, they were protecting him.

After the worst week of my life, the toxicology report came back: low potassium. “What are you doing to make your potassium low?” asked the doctor with the bad bedside manner. “Um . . . I don’t salt my food. I had the flue a few weeks ago…???” I never got so much as an aspirin.

The days and nights blurred. I couldn’t sleep. My nose, packed with cotton, throbbed for days. With broken ribs, even breathing hurt.

Every few hours someone jabbed me repeatedly for blood; whoever they were, they were bad at it. Still on saline, urinating was the only activity I could manage, and lifting the sheet was nearly impossible. More than once I needed help. Humbling doesn’t cover it.

By the third day, glass from the crash was still embedded in my hands, arm, and face. My beard remained a solid chunk of dried blood, and not one person offered to clean me up.They had extracted some of the glass but much like a splinter in your foot, the glass in my body was a constant reminder that I was still alive.

For entertainment, I discovered I could control my heartbeat through biofeedback, slowing it to an eerie crawl or speeding it up. I was wired to telemetry so someone, somewhere, could watch my rhythm; a camera on the ceiling watched too. One night I wanted a nurse and couldn’t get one, so I pulled off the leads. The monitor went silent, and nobody came for nearly fifteen minutes. If this was the ICU, I shuddered to imagine a regular room.

The next day I asked to be transferred to Houston. I knew Dr. DeBakey and many other quality doctors personally; he’d once told me to call, if I ever needed him. If something was wrong with my heart, I wanted him and his team, not these people.

Instead, they moved me to a private room in the hospital’s “best” wing, built with someone’s donation. There, with my family’s help, I got myself into the shower and stayed until every trace of dried blood was gone from my hair and skin. Then I dug my own tweezers out of my luggage and pulled the glass from my body myself.

Before releasing me, the doctor with the crappy attitude was noticeably kinder. Maybe he’d finally accepted I wasn’t on anything, or realized the wreck wasn’t my fault, or maybe he’d just gotten lucky the night before. Either way, I was glad to leave. Holding a pillow to my chest, an old friend drove me home, where I lost months of work, and eventually had to leave the job I loved, no longer able to do it.

I never did get Dr. DeBakey and his team. I’d spent years caring for the physicians of the Texas Medical Center, only to end up in a small East Texas hospital that was a joke by any standard.

Months of lost pay later, I got a call from MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I could barely afford it, but I sent them money anyway.

Thirty-seven years to date, I’m still teased about my driving. I’m defensive; I leave plenty of room, and I preach to anyone who’ll listen, watch the traffic at least fifteen cars ahead, and leave enough space to see it. People say I drive like a slow grandpa. “Slow” means the speed limit, give or take a mile or two for terrain.

Driving a big truck full of airbags is only part of my strategy. When I see people fiddling with phones behind the wheel, part of me wants to scream. And the cops? They’ve got radios, phones, laptops, and a dozen other distractions, right through school zones. Folks, they’re no different from you. Watch them drift as they mess with their gadgets. I’ve seen it, and I cringe.

Keep your distance: from big trucks, from cheerleader types who think a selfie in a school zone is smart. They do it, and it’s all over Facebook. Just the other day, a young woman picked up her child and tore out of the school at 40-plus in a 20 zone, texting as she passed me. “Where’s a cop when you need one?” I said, and right on cue, a motorcycle officer pulled onto her bumper. She drove a long way, still texting, before she noticed him. That ticket had to be pricey.

I wish I could say this was fiction. It isn’t. It happened. Some memories have surely faded, but most remain, including the pain. For thirty-seven years I’ve lived in unrelenting pain. I take nothing for it. I manage with exercise as best I can, because no medication would leave me mentally sharp. With opioids and such they work, then you need more, and more, and more, and soon enough you have all kinds of other problems like you can’t poop! No thank you. You would be shocked to learn how many people die on the toilet because they have a heart attack trying to poop.

I don’t know what became of the man who hit me. I finally read the police report in 2016 and learned the only charge against him was driving left of center. He and the cop who worked the scene went to the same church.

The cop came in, prayed with Andy, then crossed to my side of the curtain and watched them cut my clothes off. He had his ticket book open when someone told him my seatbelt hadn’t been on. I’d taken it off to see whether that would ease the pain. It didn’t; my sternum was cracked in two.  When he saw the long purple bruise the belt had left, his face turned to disgust. He’d wanted to ticket me, to make me the villain instead of his church buddy Andy. On his way out, he told the attending to test my blood for anything and everything known to man. Some East Texas cops and sheriffs really do suck.

I do know that when you share an insurer, you lose. He’s surely gone by now, but there are plenty to take his place. There were no smartphones then; now everyone has one. Weed is legal in some states, and I fear those drivers will be impaired too. Even where it’s illegal, I’d bet one in three drivers is under some influence.

He got three stitches. I got thirty-seven years of pain, PTSD, and counting.

That’s the part I need you to sit with. The man who hit me felt almost nothing. He went home that afternoon, praised his Cadillac, and let his wife apologize on his behalf. The cost didn’t land on him. It landed on a stranger cresting a hill with a thermos on the seat beside him, and it has stayed with that stranger every day since.

So if you’ve ever done the arithmetic in a parking lot, counting drinks against miles and telling yourself you’re fine, understand what you’re actually wagering. Not your license. Not your record. Someone else’s life, spent on your behalf, without anyone asking them.

My speedometer stopped at forty-five. I’ve spent every year since trying to keep yours from doing the same. Hand someone else your keys. Take the defensive driving course. It’s the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy

I’ve written a memoir. You can get your copy here. This story is in it in full, along with many others. the cover art is different with more stories than this version but the link will get you there.

Best,

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