Him (2)

It was July 4th; a hot, muggy day that started like any other. But, in the blink of an eye, here I was. My car was laying on its top in the ditch. My sister began to scream behind me. I turned around and saw her laying on the ceiling of my car with her arm pinned beneath it. She had glass over two inches long sticking out of her other arm on both sides.

I started to panic but knew I needed to call 911. I frantically crawled through all the broken glass laying on the ceiling in search of my phone, which I had managed to hang on to during the crash but dropped when I heard my sister screaming.

I called 911 while He sat with my sister, trying to calm her down. She was hysterical. I remember being almost hysterical when I lost connection with the operator. We were in a dead spot and I had very little cell service. I had to call them 3 times before I was able to convey what had happened and that we really needed help, all while listening to my little sister screaming in pain behind me.

After I got off the phone with 911, I crawled back into my car to be with my sister while the firefighters and paramedics were on their way. It was so hard to try to keep her calm. Her entire forearm, up to the elbow, was completely under my car. She was screaming for my mom and asking if she was going to die. As a 15-year-old, it was really hard for me to reassure her that things were going to be okay. I didn’t even believe they would be.

She was asking if we could try to dig her arm out from under the car, and I knew there was no way we would be able to. But He started to try so she would calm down. It seemed like forever that we waited for someone to come help us.

One of the hardest things I had to do was call my mom and tell her we had been in an accident and that my sister’s arm was pinned under my car. She raced to her car and made it to us at the same time as the fire and rescue teams.

When the fire department came, they made me leave my sister, who was crying for me to come back. Someone crawled into the car with her and kept her stable while about ten other men surrounded my car and lifted it up enough for the first man to get her arm out from underneath.

I remember feeling a flood of relief overcome me when I saw them carrying her out of the ditch. They loaded her up into an ambulance and took her to the emergency room. They spent hours in surgery removing all the glass from both of her arms, but the one that was pinned under the car was only fractured. Her skin looked like hamburger, though, and she’s lucky she didn’t lose her arm. Or worse.

My sister had to stay in the hospital for at least a couple days and had multiple surgeries to clean glass out of her arms. I was in the emergency room for about 6 hours with severe whiplash and some minor cuts and bruises.

All three of us are extremely lucky to be alive. It could’ve easily been my sister’s head under my car. We have god to thank that it was only her arm.

I wish I could say this was the only traumatizing experience between Him and me, but it was only the beginning. When we got back home, He told me He loved me and would never let anything like that happen to me ever again. I believed Him. He asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes. This was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made, but of course, I didn’t know it at the time.