Heels Over Head
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About this ebook
After you've been an automobile passenger in a serious wreck, you might be squeamish about getting in another vehicle, and you might even have qualms about getting in a car again with the same driver. What if you were the driver? How do you develop the stamina to get behind the wheel again, and how do you justify taking lives into your hands again by allowing others in your vehicle?
Walk the walk, ride the bicycle and drive the drive alongside Deborah Atkinson as she recounts the journey of healing, personal forgiveness, overcoming self-doubt, regaining confidence and returning to a spirit of adventure after a rollover accident that miraculously didn't claim any lives but altered lifestyles and personalities.
Deborah Atkinson
Fiber, photographic and digital art tickle my creative desires, itching to escape my soul. I love to quilt, crochet, knit, sew, embroider, design, digitally manipulate, garden, bake and write when I'm not on my bicycle, cross-country skis or any of the awesome trails anywhere in Colorado. I'm almost always found with camera in hand. And smile on face.
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Book preview
Heels Over Head - Deborah Atkinson
Heels Over Head
by Deborah Atkinson
* * * * *
Published by Deborah Atkinson on Smashwords
Copyright 2006-2013 by Deborah Atkinson
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
* * * * *
to anyone who's ever had a bad wreck
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
About the Author
Bonus Chapter: Heart Strings
Chapter One
For a brief instant, I didn't know for sure if I'd be alive when the car stopped moving. I knew I was upside down, but I didn't know what direction I was heading. Or where the car would land.
Pavement grinding across the roof of the car and fracturing the windshield had replaced the comforting whispery rhythm of raindrops. The fresh aroma of moisture-laden pine had been replaced by the bitter and suffocating stench of burning plastic. I remember thinking my airbag had replaced a few of my front teeth. With air.
I assumed my children were dead. They screamed when the tail end of the car veered to the right on the rain soaked interstate. But then they were silent. Frightfully silent. My deepest fear had always been who would take care of them if anything happened to me. For that fragment of a second, however, my life didn't flash before me, and I didn't think of all the things I wouldn't get to do. All I could think of was my kids.
Who would take care of me if I survived and they didn't?
What if we all died? Would my children greet me with their customary hugs and smiles when I joined them in that bright white light people talk about as they recount near death experiences? I wondered if Taz and Raz would ever speak to me again, being as I'd been the one behind the wheel when their short lives ended.
I wondered what I'd say to God.
I know it must seem right now as if I didn't appreciate Your entrusting these two precious children to my care. I really do love them. I didn't mean for this to happen...
The car finally came to a halt after skidding off the jersey barrier in the muddy median. The silence was deafening. Not even the blaring of my horn and full throttle revving of my engine could drown out the quiet. I didn't immediately realize the horror was over, or that I was hanging upside down from my seatbelt.
Even my heart and my lungs were still. I was afraid to move. Until I heard first one scream from the back seat, then a strained second. My heart leaped into action. My children were alive!
Mom, I can't breathe!
Raz cried.
Mom, I'm choking!
Taz yelled simultaneously.
The smoke from the airbag had filled the car with the vile burnt odor I was inhaling. I unsnapped my seatbelt and promptly fell to the roof ─ a highly unusual sensation. The engine and the horn didn't conceal the twin thud of two pint-sized bodies hitting the roof behind me. They had followed my cue and released their seatbelts.
My newly extra compacted subcompact car kept me from visually determining the extent of the kids' wounds. All I could see was woven seatcloth. Bloody woven seatcloth.
I reached up toward my door handle ─ another awkward feeling ─ hoping to unroll my window and allow fresh air to fill the smoky compartment. The window had somehow remained intact, but it wouldn't budge. I had intended to crawl out of what must have become a gnarled mass of metal. I was driven to fling open the back door and free my children. My window would not cooperate, however. The handle felt as though it weighed more than the entire car.
In frustration I reached across the roof to the passenger side window. I didn't notice until much later during flashback episodes how small the area of the front seats had become. I could see blood dripping from my face, and I could feel what felt like three or four teeth wedged between my gums and my lips, but my mouth didn't hurt. At least not then. My nose didn't hurt. My head didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. All I could feel was an urgency to get my children out of the car. Now!!!
As I grabbed the passenger-side handle, I realized I had been cranking in the wrong direction. I realized I needed to think upside down. Nothing was in the normal place. I couldn't do automatic things anymore. Nothing was going to work like normal because everything was upside down. I set that thought in my mind as I began to pull on the handle counter clockwise.
The window began to rise smoothly, almost effortlessly, and the fresh moist air felt invigorating against my skin and inside my wet but burning nose. The refreshing comfort abruptly departed as the impact of another vehicle sent our upside down haven into another spin. The back of my head hit my gearshift, and my left shoulder was smashed into the steering wheel. My car slammed into the concrete barrier. Like a spray of crystals, glass flew everywhere. The children were screaming again, and I had lost all sense of direction.
The next split second felt almost like a cartoon. I shook my head to halt the spinning. I was instinctively braced for yet another impact. I waited. Nothing happened.
A wall of damp, muddy concrete outside my now missing driver-side window seemed to form the impenetrable wall of a cold, wet prison.
I could see mud and grass on the other side of the passenger window. I reached up to finish unrolling that window, ignoring the crippling pangs that traveled through my arms into my chest as I stretched. Once the window was completely open, I put one hand through into the mud, with every intention of pulling myself out of the car and then getting my children away from the wreck before we could be hit again. Almost before I realized what was happening, I was flat on my back on a muddy slope, rain pouring on my face. Someone was holding my head firmly in place, and a woman had knelt beside me to assure me everything would be all right.
I'm a paramedic,
she explained in a steady voice.
I struggled to free myself from my human restraints, crying that I had to get my children out of the car.
Your children are fine. They are out of the car. They are not hurt,
the woman tried to calm me.
No, they're still in the car,
I cried, feebly fighting the three people now holding me in place. I have to get them out...
"Ma'am, how many