On a clear spring night in the mid-1990s, I stopped last in a line of cars formed to allow a left hand turn. Glancing up, I remember seeing light flash in the rear view mirror and then lights ramping over the hill. “It’s not going to stop in time!” was my last coherent thought. The crash involved four cars. Even with a seatbelt on, I flew into the steering wheel and then back into a prone position when the seat back broke. Stunned, I struggled out of the car—I don’t know which side—to see if the sedan’s driver was ok. His head lay toward the door on the passenger side of the front seat. “He’s dead,” I thought, but I could not reach in to help him; I turned away just as a witness rushed up. “I think he’s dead,” I told the person whose arm wrapped my shoulder and moved me back to my car.

I felt short of breath, cold, and completely outside of my body—but not in pain. In my memories, I seem to see the scenes, not from inside my head, but from over my right shoulder. These scenes are less like movies and more like snapshots that can be shuffled without regard to sequence. Someone offered to call my family from a cell phone. I was examined by emergency workers and interviewed by a police officer. I was told that the young driver was not dead but unconscious. Even today, I can work out the sequence logically, moving the frames into some orders more comfortable than others, but not into an order as fluid as a movie.