Chapter 1: The night her life fell apart
Chelsea
Lightning cut the sky, split it apart in a beautiful, dangerous way before disappearing. The moon and the stars were obscured by dark, thick storm clouds that hung over Naboomspruit. A lonely car was driving down the long road and into the little town. It had its lights on bright, because there were no street lights to make the road more visible. The road, like most in South Africa, had a pothole here and there.
The driver, Ben Hart, was familiar with the road. He dodged the potholes and squinted, in an attempt to see better, in this extreme weather. The wind was screaming outside like a banshee, and the booming sound of thunder followed the lightning. The family, warm and dry inside the car, didn’t heed nature’s warnings.
“Please help me to look for our turn, Honey,” Ben said to his wife, Ellie. He had very good eyesight, but it was raining too much for him to see well. They kept their attention on the dark wet road and couldn’t see far. What they saw next changed their lives forever.
It happened so fast. One moment they were sitting calm, warm, and safe in their car. The next blinding headlights shone into their eyes, followed by a loud crash! The car that collided with them was driving in the wrong lane, in their lane. It happened so fast that Chelsea was not even sure what was happening. One moment she was chilling in the backseat, thinking about the ocean’s waves, and the next, the world was rolling.
The other car had struck the front of theirs, by the driver’s side, which made the airbags inflate and the car spin. The hood crumpled, and the car slipped of the road. It still had a lot of momentum, so it rolled twice before it came to a stop on its roof. Adrenaline coursed through Chelsea’s veins, and it took her a moment to realise that she was hanging upside down.
“Mom... Dad...” Her voice was a whisper, like those of a child waking her parents in the middle of the night to seek comfort after a bad dream. But this was not a dream. This was real. And her parents were not sleeping. They were...
“Mom! Dad!” Chelsea cried loudly this time. From where she was, she could only see the backs of their heads unmoving. Silent.
Chelsea wanted to undo her seatbelt, and that was the moment she knew that there was something very wrong with her right hand. It did not want to move. She looked down at it and saw that her wrist and two fingers were bent at unnatural angles. She whimpered as she realised that they were broken. And then she felt all the physical pain. It shot through her right wrists and fingers as well as her left arm. Blood was dripping, from her nose, like spit from a dog’s mouth. Her head was throbbing, and she had scratches all over her from the glass from her shattered window.
“Help!” she cried. “Help us!”
She started crying hysterically and fighting her seat belt. The pain was overwhelming, and all she could think about was escaping. When she looked out of her window, she thought, for a moment that someone was standing there.
She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. When she opened them, there was no one outside, and she knew she had imagined it. No one was coming to save her. She had to do this herself. Painfully, she moved her left arm and forced herself to push onto the button that released her seatbelt. It hurt. A click followed, and the seatbelt shot free and let her fall forward, onto her face. She used her legs to push off, as if she was in a swimming pool, and crawled towards her parents’ limp bodies.
“Mom... Dad...”
Her mother’s eyes were open, but staring at nothing, as if she were frozen. Her dad’s eyes were closed and his neck bent too skew. They had almost made it home, safe and sound.
Chelsea looked around for a cell phone so that she could call for help. The police station was close by, which meant that they could be here in fifteen minutes with an ambulance.
Where was the phone?
Shards of glass from the windscreen were scattered inside of the car. The broken windows allowed a screaming wind into the car, along with stinging rain. Chelsea fumbled around. Her right hand was useless but she could prop herself up on that elbow while she searched with her left. She touched her father’s pocket, where he always kept his phone. It was empty. This made her cry even harder, but no one came to wipe her tears away.
Hold it together. You can do this. Just find the phone!
Maybe it was not in the car; it might have fallen out when they rolled. She moved away from her parents and towards her own seat. She was too weak and hurt to open the door, so she crawled through the broken window. The glass cut into her stomach and legs, and made her whimper. Once Chelsea was outside, she managed to get to her feet, despite the rain coming down hard on her.
She started to search frantically for the phone. She saw the other car, close to theirs, with a man, slumped over the steering wheel. Instead of going to see how bad his injuries were, she continued searching for the phone. She was about to breakdown, ready to sink to her knees and cry, when she saw a little piece of silver in the grass. She bent down and picked up her mom’s phone. It was still hard to use her left hand but she forced herself to call the police, who answered on the second ring. She spoke really fast and cried as she gave them the location. The lady on the phone told her to stay on the line and talk, but Chelsea had nothing more to say. She dropped the phone into the mud and turned back to the car.
Chelsea could not hear her sobs over the sound of the thunder. She sank to her knees and let her grief take over. She allowed the pain to fill her mind. She closed her eyes, and a part of her wished that they would never open again. When she looked again, she saw flashing blue lights and people rushing towards her. She couldn’t summon the strength to get to her feet, so she waited for the policemen to come to her.
Lightning cut the sky. She didn’t know if the storm outside was louder than the one inside her—but both were far from over.
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