Nkem prayed fervently as she literally pushed her 1995 Nissan Sunny down Ozumba Mbadiwe. The thing was no more than a junk heap that was falling apart around her, but it was all she had and she had no choice other than to pray to God that it wouldn’t break down on her again tonight.
It was already going on 11 and it had been one of those days at work. All she wanted was to get home and just simply drop. At Sand-fill, the lights stopped the dánfó in front of her and she rolled to a stop behind it. Her engine idled like a sine wave, ear-splitting groan then pathetic whine, over and over again and she intensified her prayers that it wouldn’t die because starting it again would be a herculean task. When the lights turned green, she sent up a Hallelujah and shifted into two because the thing always died on one. The dánfó sped through the intersection while her car crawled forward as if to say to the dánfó,”Slow and steady wins the race!” She pumped the gas pedal furiously and shifted the gear up to three but the only response she got from her car was a groan.
“Come on, come on!” She muttered trying to coax the car forward. The Prado Jeep behind her started to honk loudly, impatient with her snail’s pace.
“You can start flying oh!” she retorted hissing and getting even more pissed by the realization that the guy couldn’t hear her.
Just then, the infuriating sounds of his horn were drowned out by the roaring of an engine from her right. She looked towards the sound and was blinded by the glare of a Mack Truck’s headlights. She froze with the realization that the Truck was moving too fast and her car too slow for her to make it through the intersection before it got there. Everything seemed to slow down then, like life wanted to offer her one last, long look before it kicked her skinny butt out. She looked up into the Trucks cab and saw her shock mirrored on the driver’s face. She watched in a daze as the head lamps of the Tanker, which was now just a few feet from her, shattered and blinked out, spraying tiny glass shards everywhere. Next, the bonnet crumpled like a paper fan and she heard the distinctive scrapping sound of metal folding and warping under massive force. She flinched involuntarily as the radiator burst and a spray of hot water went up like a firework display, even though she was shielded somehow from the spray. The windshield cracked and fragmented and the driver was thrown forward by the force of the collision like a rag doll. His seat belt held for a few moments before the frayed fabric gave way and he continued on his forward flight. Though she couldn’t have possibly seen it, his brain started to hemorrhage at that point from the almost 10,000 Newton force it was subjected to in just a little over 2 seconds. The initial snap back by the seat belt fractured his ninth thoracic vertebra and shifted the tenth by a quarter of an inch, and when it gave way, three of his ribs were snapped on the steering wheel.
As if someone had flicked a light switch, life snapped back into focus and she became aware of everything else around her: the shouts of the crowds and the shocked, incredulous looks on their faces. The long line of cars exiting the Oriental. Mr Prado Jeep’s headlights rapidly growing smaller in her rearview mirror. The nauseating smell of exhaust gasses from her leaking exhaust pipe. The groans of her Sunny’s engine as it finally made it through the intersection. What she wasn’t aware of however was that she had involuntarily created a force field so strong, it was enough to crush the truck and shield her and her tin-can car from certain death.
