It was still raining by the time I hit Houston. I was trying hard to ignore the battery light on my dash and mostly succeeding. Every so often, I glanced at my GPS and smiled as the time to my destination dropped under an hour and then a half hour.<\/p>\n
As I came into Houston proper, the highway widened to five lanes in each direction and I took the middle of the five. The rain was pretty heavy by now and the road-spray was making to hard to see, but the Houston drivers ignored it and were still whipping along at 65-70 mph. A few miles further in, I hit thick pea soup fog and visibility was nearly non-existent. I judged my speed by the taillights in front of me. Traffic had slowed, but barely. The GPS showed that I only had 20 minutes further to go, and that was a good thing as both it and my phone needed to be charged \u2013 I wasn\u2019t plugging in either one in an effort to spare the battery. I wasn\u2019t that worried about either, I just wanted to be able to see.<\/p>\n
And then the car died. <\/p>\n
There had been no warning. I was driving along and everything was fine, and then it wasn\u2019t. The car was completely dead. I tried the ignition, hoping like anything that it would roar back to life, but it didn\u2019t make a noise. The lights on the dash and on the outside of the car faded away to nothing. And there I sat \u2013 in the middle of the highway in holiday traffic, in the thick fog and rain, in a tiny black car\u2026.with no lights.<\/p>\n
My hands searched frantically up and down the steering column for the hazard lights, but they weren\u2019t there. Cars were coming out of the fog within a few feet of me, slamming on their brakes and hydroplaning past me.<\/p>\n
I called my husband and sobbed\/shouted into the phone \u201cHow do I get off the highway?! There are two lanes on either side of me, no one can see me!! What do I do?! What do I do?!? and where are the eff-ing hazard lights?????\u201d<\/p>\n
He struggled to remain calm as he heard the panic in my voice, \u201cThe lights are on the console by the a\/c controls. It\u2019s a button you push. I don\u2019t know how you get off the highway. Let me see if I can find a number for you to call. Hang on.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat there waiting for him and watching dozens of cars miss me by inches. The blaring horns were angry as they shot past. I found myself crying and apologizing to the other drivers. It was then that I began to think about the reality of where I was. The other drivers couldn\u2019t see me until they were almost on top of me, and then it was only their brakes, driving skills, and a little luck that had kept me from being hit thus far. Eventually, that was going to all run out. In a few minutes, one of them was going to hit me. All it would take was one distracted driver or someone with old brakes and I was going to be hit.<\/p>\n
I could vaguely hear my husband reading off phone numbers at me, but I was shaking too hard to listen. The reality was dawning on me that once that other car hit me, I was going to die. My car was small and almost everything flying past me was a truck or an SUV. One hit would send me spinning into traffic and then\u2026.there was no \u201cthen\u201d. If I got hit by one of these trucks, I was dead. Period.<\/p>\n
I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it. \u201cText me the numbers. I can\u2019t write them down.\u201d I said slowly. \u201cI\u2019m hanging up on you now. I\u2019ll call when I get off of the highway.\u201d In my head was the clear thought \u201cI love you too much to let you hear me die.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I closed my eyes and waited. I breathed, willed myself to stay calm, and said aloud,\u201dGod, if today\u2019s the day then I\u2019m ready to go.\u201d Tears ran down my face, and I added \u201cbut, Guardian Angel, I\u2019d really rather not do this today.\u201d I looked down at a picture of my children on my phone, and I sobbed and shook\u2026and whispered goodbye.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was still raining by the time I hit Houston. I was trying hard to ignore the battery light on my dash and mostly succeeding. Every so often, I glanced at my GPS and smiled as the time to my destination dropped under an hour and then a half hour. As I came into Houston […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n