Veni, Vidi, Fracti

The door wouldn’t open.

Sitting in the front passenger seat, I couldn’t see out of the windshield. But I saw smoke. The engine could be on fire. I tried the door again but couldn’t escape.

Two minutes earlier, my wife Janelle and I had been traveling to visit her parents in northeastern Iowa. Driving seemed safer than flying. Fewer encounters. Fewer chances to get sick. The journey had been uneventful, though face masks had been scarce across Nebraska. We were on the last half-hour of a thirteen-hour trip, close to midnight, darkened towns drifting past our windows. Janelle was driving, as she was familiar with the route. Our dog Nobu, a Chinese Crested with a personality five times his size, laid in his car seat behind me, paws twitching as he slept.

Vehicles appeared infrequently, mostly semis rumbling like cogs from a large wheel buried in the earth.

As the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes audiobook played on the sound system, Janelle followed the curve of the highway; our headlights swept slowly to the left—and suddenly revealed a deer in the road. Too near to avoid.

Janelle hit the brakes, angled to the left, but not too far or we’d launch into the median.

The next moment—not even a moment, a second, a startled heartbeat, no time to reach out, to brace—there was a sharp crunch/bang. Light hit me, an object nearly did as well. Had it been the deer? The doe had been in front of me. No, the object was an airbag. I couldn’t see the deer, couldn’t see anything past the windshield.

A horrible smell assaulted me. Then I saw smoke, felt heat. We were still moving, rolling forward; the impact, which had jarred me, hadn’t stopped us. I looked at Janelle. Feared what I’d find. She was OK. Eyes wide, a partly-deflated airbag jutting from the steering wheel, but OK. She pushed down the airbag to see. I did the same. The smell nearly gagged me. Where was the deer? I feared the engine was burning. I had to get out, save Janelle and Nobu. The door only opened a couple of inches, then shut. Tried again. Told Janelle it wouldn’t open. My side of the windshield was cracked. The interior lights had come on, some safety thing, though they blinded us. I thought my door wouldn’t open because the deer laid against it, though when Janelle started cautiously forward, our way was unobstructed.

We looked at the car seat behind us. Miraculously, Nobu was alive. If he’d been standing, if Janelle had been going faster, if we’d hit something bigger, he would’ve gone flying. He wouldn’t have survived.

Janelle pulled onto the lefthand shoulder. I tried the door again, stupid as I would’ve stepped onto the highway. Reason returned. There wasn’t fire. The smoke and smell came from the airbags, which had deployed. Jesus they stank. I called 911 while Janelle checked on Nobu. Rolled down the window. In minutes, Officer Honda arrived. I climbed out of the car via the open window and inspected the damage. The front end had accordioned, the right front quarterpanel shoved back—which was why the door wouldn’t open.

Even after the tow truck came, the experience felt unreal. Clichés pummeled my mind: out-of-nowhere, happened-so-fast. They didn’t capture the confusion or the jarring of my world.

I knew life was precious, the odds of us being on this planet, of my existing in the first place let alone standing on the shoulder of a highway in the middle of the night as red and blue lights flashed, were astronomical. Yet I felt snatched out of my daily routine, my rotating thoughts of work and writing and my loved ones wiped away to reveal the frailty of existence. Each day was a construct of gossamer wings and hope. We couldn’t always remember this truth, or we wouldn’t forage forward. Yet with each step, we moved more bravely than we acknowledged. And moving forward was our calling, the need propelled by instinct, desire, and want that lived inside us.

Janelle, Nobu and I were lucky. We’d walked away unscathed, though the event harshly reminded me of the precarious bridge we stood on, our path in the fog obscured—but still stretching forward.