My two grown daughters and I threw our stuff into the car for a quick weekend getaway to Florida. Just us girls. Autumn volunteered to drive. I climbed in front next to her, and Amber sat in back. We snapped on our seat belts, and we were off. The three of us sang to the radio at the top of our lungs, happy to be free. We left all our cares behind.
It was a great trip until the skies opened up outside Beaufort, South Carolina, on I-95. Torrents of rain burst from the clouds. The windshield wipers were useless. “I have to pull over,” Autumn said. She tried merging into the far right lane, but trucks barreled past, slamming sheets of water onto our car. It was disorienting, then worse—the tires slid left and right. We were all over the road. Autumn fought to steady the wheel. The car spun out of control. We careened into a motor home. The girls jumped out of the car. My chest throbbed.
“Get out, Mom. Come on!” Amber cried. “We’re not safe here next to the car.”
“I can’t,” I said. “My chest…”
Autumn took out her cell phone: “There’s been an accident. Send an ambulance!”
Trucks whizzed by. Amber and Autumn pulled me out of the car and helped me lie on my back in the grassy area by the roadside. Rain poured down on my face. I had to calm myself. Maybe then the pain in my chest would go away. I closed my eyes.
The rain stopped abruptly. I looked up. A man held an extra-large umbrella over me, shielding me from the downpour. My girls were by my side. Other kind faces surrounded us. A woman pulled bandages from her bag to treat a cut over Amber’s eye. Someone draped an afghan over me. A woman knelt by my side. “I’m going to take your pulse,” she said.
Another woman gently held my other hand. She said no one in the motor home was injured, and help was on the way for us. “We’re here for you till then,” she said. “Your daughters are fine. You will be too.”
I relaxed. We were in very good hands. The woman who took my pulse mentioned she was a nurse. “How do you like that?” said the woman who held my hand. “So am I.” And the other woman who tended to Amber’s cut was an eye specialist. We couldn’t have asked for better care. Everyone who’d appeared so suddenly in the rain seemed to be dispatched from heaven.
The pain in my chest began to subside. EMTs explained I was probably just bruised from the impact of the seat belt. Tests at the hospital confirmed we had no serious injuries. We’d left all our cares behind, but we were in God’s care all the way.
Did you enjoy this story? Subscribe to Angels on Earth magazine.
