Chapter Four* (The Accident)
After finally cornering the Hubster and exchanging numbers, he had promised to call that Sunday evening. I assumed that he, being a male, would work on man-time and that that meant that I’d hear from him sometime later (around Wednesday). So I decided to go home for the weekend.
While I was home I contracted some death-flu-sickness and was sick the whole time. As a result I was still sporting a hot man voice on Sunday when my best friend Bo Bandy picked me up from B Town so that we could travel back to the city together around 7:30pm. On our way home my phone rang. I fully expected it to be my mother checking in on me (as mommys do) and was surprised when I didn’t recognize the number. I answered, and my jaw nearly hit the floor of the car when it turned out to be the Hubster. :)
We only talked for a minute as he was weirded out by the fact that I a) sounded like a man, b) was in a car, and c) was with some other guy. We made plans to talk when I got home and I began feeling the fluttering of little butterflies in my stomach. We ended up talking for nearly an hour that evening about everything and nothing. We started talking about possibly “hanging out” (the non-threatening term for “date” used by our youth today) and I invited him to some big league women’s hockey game I had had tickets for. We hung up with plans to talk later in the week.
Neither of us realized that later that same week he would have a massive car accident that he miraculously walked away from. When I show you pictures of the car you’ll understand why. This is my Hubs & the car taken a month or two before the accident:
Isn’t he handsome? :) So, as I mentioned earlier, this was all in the dead of winter and my little province is known to see it’s fair share of snow. Quite late one night, he ended up driving home on his own on one of the highways less traveled and less lit in a massive snow storm. While coming around a corner he hit a patch of black ice and started to slide. In that little car he took out a huge wooden traffic sign and rolled down a 30ft ravine. Late at night. Alone. In a huge snowstorm. The car landed on its roof less than a foot from a massive tree trunk that would have utterly destroyed the car and the man that I love.
By some miracle someone had been following him and watched his taillights (that’s all you could see in the snow) slide off the edge of the road. The Hubster had lost consciousness and was sitting upside down in the car. The man, not wanted to move the Hubs for fear of greater injury, called 911 and the towing company that (thankfully) was only a few kilometers down the road. After several minutes he regained consciousness and was able to crawl from the car to see the towing company and the man who had seen him go over at the top of the ravine waiting for the ambulance. He crawled to the top and by some miracle walked away with only minor cuts and bruising. I remember his mother recounting this story to me while we were dating and she began to cry when she talked about picking the pieces of broken glass out of his hair when he finally got home that night.
We didn’t speak again until after his accident, and even then he downplayed what had happened. I didn’t see the size of the sign he hit or the depth of the ravine until after we were engaged and it’s a miracle he wasn’t hurt more seriously. Anyway, when we spoke he was uncomfortable driving the distance to the hockey game (it was about an hour away) as he was still shaken from his accident. I seriously wondered if this was some “sign” that we were not meant to be together–it’s amazing what will run through a woman’s head when she’s stressed. haha! I figured that I had worked this hard to get to know him, and if anything he was fun to talk to and would make a great friend, so I invited him to go skiing with my family the following Monday. I wasn’t sure how he would respond… we hardly knew each other and he was going to meet my entire family! To my surprise he said yes, and as it turned out, it was the night that changed everything… but that’s another story. :)
He crawled out that front window.
Revisiting the site where his car landed several weeks later. Look how massive that stump is. I’m so grateful that he didn’t hit it.
Looking up at the ravine he rolled down. You can see the new sign and pieces of wood from the old one he hit.
Standing with the replacement sign for the one he hit. It’s massive! The Hubs is 6 feet tall!!
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