The Accident

Jules and me

It was the 29th of April 1982.
The car must have flipped over four or five times before it came to rest upside down, in a dry lake bed. I felt instant relief that I was alive and looked across at Jerry who seemed to be stunned but safe. I called out to Jules in the back seat but there was no response, which caused an instant icy prickle of fear.

Jerry and I crawled through the smashed windscreen since the doors seemed to be jammed shut. My sister was lying at an awkward angle, with her foot trapped under the open rear window.  Jerry had to lift the car so I could reach in and clumsily drag out her unconscious form.

We sat in a state of numbed shock at the side of the road when we noticed some men on cycles emerging out of the dark, who turned out to be factory workers coming off the late shift. They immediately recognised us and rushed to help. They righted the vehicle and carried it up to the road, where surprisingly even though the framework looked more like an accordion than a car and the headlights were lighting up the sky instead of the road it started up with the first turn of the ignition key. We slowly clanked our way  home with Jules still unresponsive in my arms.

I woke up the parents to tell them we had been in a 'slight accident' and when father sleepily staggered out and saw the state of the car he was horrified. It actually looked like one of those wrecks you see on the side of the road and think "No one could have survived that".

He immediately asked if I was alright and then worriedly turned his attention to Jules, who had a big lump burgeoning out of her forehead. He carried her into the bedroom and within a few minutes she began to come to her senses and started to talk so seemed to be alright. I sat down for a minute, while he grilled me over what exactly had happened, and it was then that I found I could not stand up again. I glanced down at my foot and noticed I was bleeding profusely and had left a trail of gory footprints all over the floor. On closer examination it was discovered that I had cut the artery in my ankle, so  father immediately rushed me to the hospital where he put in a few very painful stitches.

Except for the car which was a write off, we were all fine and  thankful  for the narrow escape. Poor Jerry was completely shaken up but we loved him too much to hold anything against him and at the end of the day it really was the stupid 'cycle-wallahs' fault.
On the other hand it took months for father to forgive him for his rash driving, and no explanation that we gave of the sequence of events that led to the unfortunate mishap seemed to satisfy him. He was even heard muttering to a neighbour " Jerry tried to call my daughters!"