Angels all around!

I feel nervous as I begin to tell this story – nervous mostly that my words won’t do the story justice.  My husband is in law enforcement and for more than ten years before he went into that profession he was a volunteer fire fighter.  I offer that tidbit because I want to make it clear that he has seen his fair share of car accidents and knows when he sees one where the passengers aren’t likely to have survived.  This was one of those accidents.  The teens driving the car had been drinking and unfortunately they didn’t see the telephone pole until it was too late.  They crashed into it headfirst at a very high rate of speed.  There was no evidence that they even put on the brakes (no skid marks on the ground).  The engine was transplanted into the front seat; the air bag on the passenger side looked as if it never deflated after impact – that’s because it was full of parts of the hood and engine!  When Chris arrived the boys had both gotten out of the car on their own and they were telling their version of the event on different sides of the car (where they were each being treated for injuries).  Independently, they kept telling of the girl in the car.  They described her the same – same height, same color hair but one key thing was different – they each said she was the other one’s friend.  Neither of the boys knew her name and they both indicated she was sitting in the passenger seat.  Chris said that it was virtually impossible to imagine anyone not being ejected if they had been sitting up front without a seatbelt and the vehicle didn’t have a backseat because there were sub-boxes (the big kind of boxes that hold speakers that go boom).  The boys went on to the hospital and the emergency personnel stayed on behind at the scene for about two hours, using dogs and heat seeking instruments to try and find the girl.  Chris works nights and typically gets home around 3:30 a.m., when he finally arrived home at 5:30 that morning he was really upset because they had not found her.  As he told me the story I immediately felt overwhelmed and convinced that the reason they didn’t find her is because she was an angel and she protected those boys at a time they need it most.  As soon as I said it, Chris totally agreed and we cried at the thought that he had been in the place where a miracle occurred, where an angel showed mercy on kids doing something dumb, and gave them a chance to make better choices next time.  For days after I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I needed to go talk to the boys and make sure they knew what had happened.  What if knowing would shift the focus or direction of their lives?  Chris had to remind me it would be a serious HIPPA violation to go see them in the hospital (darn HIPPA) but one day – when all the charges are behind them and they are all healed, I might have to send them an anonymous letter to make sure they know there are angels all around!