I loosen my grip on the steering wheel. Hands stiff. Muscles tense. The road makes me nervous now. I could have died. People keep reminding me of that. You could have died. I could have killed my friends. We are lucky. No. we are blessed.
Black ink peeks out from the underside of my wrist. Caught just outside the corner of my eye. I twist my left hand to reveal its secret. The gauze and wrap around my index finger and palm distracting me for a moment. “You are loved.” How dare I doubt this fact. How dare I question the love that has been lavished on me. Friends pour out of the woodwork. Providing soup and magazines and comforting arms. I am loved. But I have difficulty receiving it. These friends use words to describe me, like sweet and wholesome. But I define myself with labels like guilty and undeserving. Self inflicted. Self proclaimed. My shackles. the weight of it all.
I could have died. I rolled my roommates car three times down an embankment. Dusted in glass shards. Head banging against the walls. The ceiling. The windshield. Hand bloody from debris. Curled in the corner of the SUV. Laying on the driver’s side in the snow covered brush and earth. Huddled. Eyes closed. Crying. Amanda attempts to pull me up and out her window. I push her off. Tears pour out. I keep picturing her face. A pause before the roll. The moment before it was too late. Slow motion. Tumbling in silence, at least in my head. A silent filmstrip playing in front of me. Surreal. Nothing like the movies. She tries to pull me from my resting place, afraid we may have hit the gas line. I push her off and shake my head. “I can’t afford this. I can’t afford to pay for any of this.”
It’s sad when that is your first response. When money wins out over safety and health. I almost refused medical assistance because I knew the ambulance would break the bank. The EMT's pleaded with me. Concerned for my safety. I finally gave in. reaching for my head. Feeling the enormous lump, stiff neck, glass everywhere. I cried all the way to the hospital. Interrupted by moments of silence. Answering questions. Starring out the back window at the snow coming down. All I could think about was the objects inside the ambulance. All the equipment. Everything that would come crashing down on my body, strapped to a gurney, what would happen if we rolled again. In real life there is no Dr. Carter. And in telluride the emergency room is one small space separated by curtains. Nurses bumping into each other through the gauzy divides. You are bound to know someone working there. Margaret paused over my body. “I didn’t recognize you at first.” She said. Dirt ringed my eyes. Smoothed away in half moons by the tears arcing their way down my cheeks and the absent minded brush of my sweater sleeve. the brief moments when I forgot my body was speckled with fragments of glass.
“No insurance. We understand. But we need to check you out. No CT. but we will have to x-ray your hand. and hold on to you until we are certain there is no concussion..” my mind glazed over. What ever they said. The damage was done. The car was wrecked and the ambulance had already been ridden in. it is what it is. No sense in fighting it now. Give in to it. Go with the flow. Worry about something you can actually control. Gotta get a hold of Lauren. I wont be there to meet her plane. She wont know where I am and my cell phone is lost in the debris and wreckage of adam’s ranch road.
The text message read Audrey was in a car accident. She’s in the hospital. Certainly not the news you want to hear when you arrive for a vacation. No voice there to answer all the questions. No comforting arms to point you in the right direction. Just an LCD screen and a sweep of emotions. Paged to the main office, my efforts to get the message to Lauren, she sat crying, bewildered, feeling responsible. Just get to telluride. That was the mission now, rescued by a kind limo driver, she was privy to a custom tour of scenic Montrose. Mount Wilson. The Ralph Lauren ranch. Thousand dollar cattle. Hundreds of them. His attempt to distract her from what lay ahead. Word had reached her that I was okay. But she was already shaken. Met by one of my roommates she made an uneasy trek through town and in to mountain village. Lugging her suitcase and bags through the snowy streets. Riding the gondola for the first time. I hopped the magnificence of this town was not lost on her. The powder coated trees. The tiny overhead view of telluride. A Mr. Roger’s model in real life. Minus the trolley car and creepy mail man.
After the emergency room Amanda and I walked to the chiropractor. Her turn for treatment. The snow had stopped. The sun was out. Water poured off the rooftops. I was angry. The accident was in vain. You couldn’t even tell it had snowed. The puddles that muddied the streets were the only sign there had been weather. And my discheveled reflection in the store front windows. Shuffling down main street I would have sworn it was all a dream. A story I had read the day before. Save for the hot pink bandage adorning my left hand. and the subtle throbbing at the back of my head. “The real pain will come tomorrow,” the doctor said. “After your endorphins wear off. And the stiffness kicks in. You feel awful now, but it will be worse tomorrow. “
The doctors released me. Hesitant. I had passed all of their examinations. Head and neck were cleared immediately. Removal of my neck brace gave me some relief. I was asked to step into a gown for the remainder of the visit. Concerned about the glass I was carrying in my hair and clothes, like thousands of tiny, glistening hitchhiker burrs, the nurses offered to cut me out of my clothes. No ma’am. Definitely not. Do not touch this t-shirt. I clutched at the soft pink fabric that stretched below my thrift store sweater, covering my hips. I pulled on the gift. Rosa loves. I love kelstar. No ma’am. I’ll be careful. Amanda helped pull me from my things. Gently, delicately. I felt like a little girl undressing for her bath. The soft gown felt foreign. And the absence of all my layers sent a chill across my exposed skin. Stepping out of the glass we had left behind on the cold, linolium floor, I slid under the blanket the nurses had provided. It was warm. Like bread, fresh from the oven. I cuddled up to it and waited. Amanda sat on the bed next to me. Holding my hand. tears came in waves. Mine encouraged hers. She made me cry harder.
Pressing and prodding at my torso. My hips. Pulling and pushing on my arms and legs. Ears. Eyes. Nose. Throat. Results of my x-ray. The doctors couldn’t understand how I wasn’t injured more severely. Superficial cuts. Minor abrasions. Not even a concussion. The EMT's were baffled that we were able to climb out of the wreckage of our own accord. That jess was the one to call for the police. The tow truck driver was amazed. Said he has never seen a vehicle look like [that] and not had to pull a body from it. Not exactly a comforting thought when you were one of the bodies that had just crawled through the busted out window. But it was meant to be encouraging. We had become part of the unexplainable. The chiropractor x-rayed Amanda and adjusted and aligned her beat up body. But she found little evidence of trauma. Understanding that her history of adjustments had provided her with a good and healthy base, but still shocked at how well her body had managed to preserve and protect itself. They say that is why accidents seem to happen in slow motion. Gives the body time to react. The brain responds. It is all too amazing to wrap my own around.
Stumbling back out into the road, sunshine was in full effect and it was even more difficult to maintain that this was part of the same day. That the morning had led into this afternoon. That all the events of the early hours had, indeed, occurred. Amanda and I walked slowly towards BIT. Waiting on Nicole. She left work early to meet us. make sure we were okay. Care for us. we have become a close knit group of girls. Amanda, jess, Nicole, sarah. We are a little family. Dinner parties and karaoke. Good times on the mountain. Now, hands to hold and shoulders to cry on. The surealness of the situation only intensified by the absence of jess. She was on a mission to get to Miami. She was headed to the airport on her way to ultra music festival. Meeting friends. Invested a lot of money in the weekend. While Amanda and I were being loaded into an ambulance, jess piled into a shuttle and disappeared down the snowy road, after a quick once over by the EMT and a speedy cleanse and wrap of her hand, she was enroute to Montrose Regional.
All I wanted was a cupcake. Something to bring to Lauren to cheer her up. I was waiting on her phone call. She had amanda’s phone number. Would call us when she arrived. She cried when I talked to her. Blamed herself. I couldn’t bare that thought. We were already headed for a rough weekend. This is not the way we needed to start things off. This was supposed to be good times. A respite from all the noise and commotion of the daily grind. i had caused a new scene. BIT was completely out of frosted goodness. I settled for an apple fritter for the road, and a brownie for Lauren. With Amanda and Nicole in tow we headed to the grocery store to get food for dinner. Veggie chili and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Salavage myself in the kitchen. Calm my nerves with teaspoons and measuring cups. Is domesticity a drug? I climbed the stairs to my apartment. Walked through the door to find Lauren seated on the couch. She was exhausted from her early flight. Worn down from the unexpected news. And haggered from the trip cross town. But despite all of this she mustered a gorgeous smile and a huge hug. My promised greeting upon arrival. Number one on the telluride itinerary. Better late than never.
We settled in on couches. Covered up in blankets. Cozy and warm. I cooked dinner. Moving in slow motion. Everything hurt. Every motion felt exaggerated. But grateful to be moving all the same. The girls watched movies and caught up. Trading stories. Telling tales. My favorite thing about telluride: everyone has a story and is genuinely interested in hearing yours. Life’s too short for small talk. And it is refreshing to be in an environment that encourages real conversations. What happens in telluride doesn’t stay in telluride. It’s carried off to the next place. it’s carried with you. perhaps indefinitely. This place is magic. And despite its reputation as a ritzy ski town, I have met some of the most down to earth people, and engaged in the most unexpected conversations. Hour long discussions stemmed from greetings on a street corner. Late night deliberations. Religion. Politics. God. The state of the economy. Baking techniques. Music. There’s a soundtrack for it all.
A car accident is the last way I would have wanted to start this visit with Lauren. Would not have even been listed as an option had I had to create a poll. But I can honestly say it may have been the key factor to what turned a potentially rough weekend into one of the best I have ever had. My injuries were few and insignificant in comparison to the damages I wrought on my roommates SUV. But my boss felt they deserved enough attention that I was given Thursday and Friday off. I would now be able to spend those evenings with Lauren. And while Nicole and Amanda had volunteered to entertain her for me while I was held up at the hotel, we were now all free to enjoy the town together. We spent the next four days attached at the hip. Showing Lauren around and taking it easy. Rest and play. Eating good food and having long talks with everyone we met. Lauren became the mayor of telluride over night. And they welcomed her with open arms. Skiing was sort of off limits. The idea of speeding down a hill was a little intimidating to both Lauren and me. And as the winds kicked up on our last day we ruled it out and opted for a hike in the woods instead. I wanted to get her on the mountain in some capacity. To show her another side of the place I have staked as home. Deep in the aspen groves, tromping though a fresh layer of snow, Lauren post-holed. Burried up to her knees, she burst out laughing. “You love this. Don’t you? You love being here. All of this…I wasn’t kidding about what I said earlier…I can hear you smiling when we talk on the phone.” My mom has made the same claim. It’s true. I do love this place. I feel alive in a way I have not been able to grasp for the past decade. The entire weekend, I kept finding myself looking around at all the people in whatever room we happened to be in. watching the relations. People caring for my friend Lauren. She was their friend now too. and I could feel it. The immense love. Pure and sober. It was there.
“You could have died,” they said. “You guys are so lucky. Everything happens for a reason.”
I finally get it. I am loved.
But why?
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