Thursday, July 20, 2017 (Yuriday, Cancer 46, 0031)<\/p>\n
As Ty and Claire left the reception that night and headed for home, a torrential rain was blowing sideways, lashing the car. It was a two-hour drive down from D.C. to Richmond in good weather, but in this storm it would take two-and-a-half, at least. Ty maneuvered his recently acquired sunshine-yellow Mercedes-Benz convertible with the vanity plate ON2MARS, slowly and carefully, not wanting to over drive the range of his headlights.<\/p>\n
As fate would have it, about a-mile-and-a-half from home the left front tire suddenly exploded, sounding like a roadside bomb. The Benz veered wildly. Ty wrestled the wheel to keep control and steered the disabled car a short distance to where he could pull over onto the side of the country road. With no streetlight for miles, the pouring rain made the evening appear even darker. As Ty exited the car to change the tire, Claire also climbed out with a large white golf umbrella held over her head and clutching a flashlight to assist him.<\/p>\n
A few miles up the road, Dave Weller was on his way home from a friend’s bachelor party, his car weaving back-and-forth across the wet pavement and the wipers flapping about at full speed. As he drove, he tapped a cigarette from the fresh pack and lit it, using the car lighter. Normally, it was his practice to use matches, except whenever he was in the car. But, in his advanced state of inebriation, he forgot which he was using and after lighting his cigarette, tossed the car’s lighter out the window. As he manually rolled the window back up, it dawned on Dave what he had just done. In disbelief, he stared down at the empty socket where the lighter had been. “Damn!” he thought out loud, “that’s the second one this month.” Returning his attention to the road, he glanced up and saw Ty and Claire standing behind the open trunk of their car, directly in his path. Dave, with a blood-alcohol level of 0.23, hit the brakes, screamed “Oh, shit!”, and yanked his wheel sharply to the left, though much too late. Upon impact, his airbag crushed the glowing ember of his cigarette hard-against his right eyelid.<\/p>\n
Hearing the rapidly approaching wet skid, Ty turned to confront the noise and tried to jump out of the way, but only managed to get his left foot high enough to step into the open trunk before the collision. Having swerved left, the right corner of Dave’s front bumper hit Ty’s rear bumper at an angle, crushing Ty’s right leg in the vee of that angle. Losing consciousness, Ty’s last image of Claire had been that of an angel, her face illuminated by the bright oncoming headlights, and the metal ribs of the umbrella creating a halo framing her crown, reflecting the light.<\/p>\n
Not wanting yet another DWI conviction, Dave fumbled under his seat and pulled out the survival knife that he kept ‘for protection’. He quickly hacked away the airbag from the steering wheel, pitching it over his shoulder to the back seat. Throwing the car into reverse, he backed up ten or twelve feet, releasing Ty’s leg from the vise-like grip between the bumpers. Dave then peeled out, ignoring the disembodied OnStar voice asking, ‘Mr. Weller, we have detected a crash. Are you in need of assistance?’ Ty’s limp body collapsed into the trunk. Twenty minutes later, the rescue squad located Ty’s car after his own OnStar operator received no response.<\/p>\n
Another rescue squad had been dispatched to a second scene, located about a mile down the road. That was as far as Dave was able to navigate, after trying to rub the burning sensation from his eye and failing to negotiate a sharp curve in the road. This time, the airbag lying on the floor behind his seat didn’t help. The force of the crash caused the already weakened steering wheel to break away in his hands and what was left of the steering column penetrated nearly three inches into Dave’s chest cavity. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Coincidentally, his car lay on its roof in Ty and Claire’s side yard, after rolling three times.<\/p>\n
Ty slowly regained consciousness in the ambulance, rushing toward the hospital. “Where is Claire? Where’s my wife? How is she?” he queried, groggily.<\/p>\n
With eyes widening, the paramedic exclaimed, “Was someone else with you? We didn’t find anyone else at the accident site.”<\/p>\n
Ty cried, “My wife! Claire was holding the flashlight. You’ve got to find her! She might be hurt!” He tried to grab the paramedic’s arm, but found a splint had immobilized his right hand, with what his medical training told him was a compartment fracture. Instinctively, he had reached out to stop the approaching car and his wrist was crushed.<\/p>\n
Trying to calm Ty, the paramedic offered, “We’ll have someone look for her right away.” He turned to the driver and ordered, “Call dispatch and have them immediately send a search and rescue back there. His wife was with him.”<\/p>\n
Early the next morning, after the rain had stopped, Claire’s body was discovered almost twenty yards into the woods where the collision had thrown her. Her limp body was draped in a tree, with her back arched over a heavy limb. Already lifeless from the crushing blow of Dave’s car, she never felt the impact with the limb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday, July 20, 2017 (Yuriday, Cancer 46, 0031) As Ty and Claire left the reception that night and headed for home, a torrential rain was blowing sideways, lashing the car. It was a two-hour drive down from D.C. to Richmond in good weather, but in this storm it would take two-and-a-half, at least. Ty maneuvered his recently acquired sunshine-yellow Mercedes-Benz …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emailfrommars.com\/outbound\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}