In the immediate aftermath of the accident, little was going through my head except to get out of my crumpled car and check on the other driver. Somehow remaining calm (I guess my ER training is beginning to pay off), I blindly groped for my phone on the floor through the haze of smoke and airbag powder. I also thought to grab my wallet, and like every other brainwashed intern, my pager. I stepped out of the car and was swarmed by people asking if I was ok. The driver of the other vehicle, who had mistakenly jutted out in front of my car, was uninjured as well. The police arrived shortly thereafter, and the tow truck mere minutes behind them. It was then that I saw what had happened to my car.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Will it be ok?” I asked the police officer filing the report.
“Ma’am, you better sit down.” He lightly rested a hand on my shoulder and I sat. He shot a glance at the tow truck man, who looked down and slowly shook his head. “I’m afraid your car has been totaled.”
Unclear thoughts swarmed through my head. Surely, he couldn’t mean that my car was past the point of no return. Maybe he meant ‘totaled,’ like ‘totally hard to fix but not impossible?’
He must have seen the optimism in my face because his eyes filled with pity. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’m afraid there’s no hope.”
While the other driver was arguing with the tow truck cowboy about the costs being incurred, I looked back to my car. The front end was jammed in, the windshield cracked, airbags crumpled on the front seats. The bumper had flown several feet to the right. I could still see the place I had once scraped it against the carport and tried to cover it up with a different color paint. I understood then what they meant by “totaled.” My car had suffered a traumatic death.
Our precious moments together flashed before my eyes…
Teaching my friends how to manually lock the doors, and constantly having to do it for them no matter how much I reminded them. As if they couldn’t remember a time before power locks and windows.
How I had to press the CD stereo face in at the same time I was changing radio stations. I got so good at it, the naked eye could hardly detect it.
When it died on new year’s eve in Phoenix and I missed the countdown.
Raising my voice to carry on a normal conversation over the obnoxious noise my engine would sporadically make, while all my friends would say, “What the hell was that?”
And how could I forget the first time the AC went out in the midst of an Arizona summer?
“At least it was old” said a gruff voice to the left. It was the other driver, the man responsible for the premature death of my car. He didn’t understand our history, our good times together. My car was leaking clear fluid from the silent engine, and I felt like crying, too.
The next day, things were wrapping up. The culprit had received several tickets (the tow truck guy triumphantly said one was for “being a jerk and giving the cops a hard time”) and my claim to his insurance company had been approved lightning-fast. All that was left was to say my final goodbyes. I was ready for closure.
I found it in the back of the dismal tow lot, crammed between a forlorn-looking chevy and a pontiac with no front window. Even in its wrecked state, my honda looked too proud to be there. I was told it would soon be moved to a salvage lot, where greasy men would pick it apart like vultures and reduce it to rubble. But then I had a comforting thought. Perhaps some young and eager teenager with fifty dollars in his pocket and a dream would one day discover it and use the parts to fix up his first car. It gave me a little solace thinking my honda would somehow live on through another.
As I walked away, I whispered, “I will never forget you. Never forget!”
Then I went and had some ice cream.
