This is going to hurt.

This is going to hurt!

The traffic lights ahead have been green for a long time as we drive down the hill towards them. It’s raining so hard coupled with being a cold day in October. Its David’s assessment drive on part two, David is 22 years old, has a mop of blonde curly hair and is very shy. I would imagine very scared too. The ratio in my car is 3:1. 3 Females and 1 male. They are all on their part two assessment drives  Having 3 females is very rare let me tell you. The conversation is getting more and more ruder in the back with Sandra and Kate. Women can be way cruder in a group than any group of men let me tell you. They are both making me smile but I’m trying not to let them see it. Got to be “professional”. I can hear Sandra whisper:

 “Do ya think his balls have dropped yet, is he even old enough to be doing this”? “Bet he is a virgin, shall we ask him?”

 I just want to laugh out loud so badly. I must admit he did look like he was 16 and not his 22 years. So what he was young. David is driving my car towards the green traffic lights now and he is fixated ahead, no eye movement, no conversation. There is deadly silence in my car apart from the whispered giggles at the back and the clicking of my pen as I write down all his driving faults on my DL25.

“At the traffic lights David I would like you to follow the road ahead please”.

I get no reply from David. I can see he has the steering wheel held so tightly the colour of his knuckles are white. I look in my eyeball mirror thinking that the 40 ton articulated lorry is coming down the hill behind us faster and closer than I would like. It’s raining hard now. The giggles at the back are getting louder now so I ask Sandra and Kate to

“Turn it down a bit”;

I glance at them and smile with a wink. All three of us knew what the wink was for, enough said. (White knuckle boy).

As I turn round to look round to look at the road ahead, I can see the traffic lights are turning to amber, we are just about to cross over the line now but for some reason David stands on the brakes. I tell him quite urgently

 “Go, go David go, get off the brakes”.

I look in my eyeball mirror and the back window of my Rover is now being filled more and more by the grill of the lorry. (If it had been an Eddie Stobbard I could have had a name for the lorry “Lucy Jo” maybe?)

Everything literally goes into slow motion; I know what is coming next. I have watched this in “The Matrix”. Am I plugged in, am I going to wake up and is all this just a bad dream?  As I tense every single muscle in my body, I know we are about to experience the biggest sodomy since George Michael got sent down for pocessing drugs and had to spend a stint in the clink.  “You’re my beatch” to “the daddy” of wing C. “Don’t drop the soap, don’t drop the soap”

This is going to hurt…………………

The loudest of bangs are heard now, the crunching of metal, tiny beads of glass are being strewn forwards towards me from the back and side windows. The beads are in my hair and are falling down into the foot well. They are tumbling into my boots. The giggling that was making me smile has now turned into screaming from the back. I glance across to David without moving my head, I can’t seem to move my head, and David is frozen in the same white knuckled position he had been since he got into the car. God this guy was asking for a slap. We are now spinning around clockwise towards the middle of the crossroads and we are heading towards an on coming car. I close my eyes and I’m thinking:

 “What it is going to feel like to die”. “What under ware did I put on this morning”?  “Is it going to hurt”?

 I can’t take physical pain. Mental pain I’m ok with but not physical. I have a really low threshold on physical pain. The car stops spinning and I slowly open my eyes, I’m all confused and dazed, I can’t work out ware we are on the road. The screaming is getting louder in the back now and I think my adrenalin kicks in at this point. I glance across at David and scream at him “get the fucking car off the road, NOW”. He doesn’t respond. “Get the car off the fucking road NOWWWWWWWWWWW”!

I shove David to snap him out of his coma state and that causes a sharp pain to run down my back. David is now brought out of his coma as he shakes his head, switches the car on and parks up on the kerb some ware. All I can hear is bits of metal dropping off the car and a “clunk clunk clunking” sound as he drives this mangled heap that was my car toward the kerb.

I can’t move for some reason at this point, but the adrenalin is coursing through my body. I have to make sure everyone in the car is ok. I shout out,

“Sandra, Kate are you ok” “Sandra is bleeding badly, Rach” “it’s her nose I think she hit your seat with her head, there’s blood every ware all over of her”.

 For some reason Kate is eating an apple, the same apple she has been eating just before impact. It’s the ordinariness of it in the midst of what is happening I don’t understand.  I tell Kate not to move Sandra and to hold her head from moving. They are both sobbing in the back. I tell them both

 “Everything will be ok”,

 (Something told me in my heart this was not going to be true though) I ask David if he is ok, but he is silent, just staring ahead, glazed. I have to resist the urge of grabbing him and asking him

 “What the hell did you stop for, you first class moron from Moronsville, near Morons Island”?

I think the adrenalin is starting to ware off a bit now because all I can feel is an overwhelming, intense burning pain. The like of which I have never felt before, but will remember forever. I can’t move my head at all now; the pain is surging down my spine. It feels like boiling oil being poured over me. I’m not going to cry im thinking, no way am I going to let these guys see me cry.

My car door is suddenly pulled open by a scruffy oil covered man. Rain is pouring into the car and over me,

“Sorry, sorry, are you ok”?

 “Errr no, im not ok………..Were you driving that lorry”?

 “Err yes but you just stopped at a green light”.

“You were driving too bloody fast AND CLOSE behind us; I saw you, just piss off and close my door im getting wet”.

Fear was now turning into anger, anger at white knuckle boy, anger at oily lorry man. I had made plans to go out tonight with friends. I had arranged to go to the gym with my best friend straight after work. Shit. Got to let her know there’s a chance “lunges and side dips” is gonna be a bit of a problem tonight.

 Flashing blue lights and sirens can be heard from every ware now. My door is opened again and the rain is lashing at my face. I’m physically trembling, uncontrollably now.

“What’s your name love, don’t move”? The ambulance man says..

 I look up trying not to get rain in my eyes and all I can see are these huge pair of beautiful blue eyes looking at me. For a moment, the sight of them took my mind off the pain. I’m a sucker for blue eyes……

I think shock and pain are kicking in now big time,

 “Rach re r, Rachel”. I say in a very shaky voice.

“Does anything hurt love”?

“Yes err my back, err my back, I can’t move my head”.

“Don’t move love, were gonna put you on table and put your head in a brace”.

Shit, I am thinking. There gonna mess my hair up now, as if the rain wasn’t doing enough mess at this point. My mascara is running down my face from the rain lashing at my eyes. Shit I hope they don’t ask me what under ware I am waring. Not a good look. I’m still holding my bloody pen as well

 Blue eyes puts the brace goes around my neck; I let out a whimpering of pain. I don’t do whimpering so I am surprised when this sound is coming out of my mouth. I’m swearing a lot now as I am winched onto the table, my face and clothes are soaking wet now. The rain is hitting my eyes hard and I am blinking to get the rain out of my eyes because my arms are strapped to my sides. Only now as the pain ravages me do the tears start to come, mixed in with the cold liquid of the rain. I can just say it is the rain and not my tears if I am seen to be crying.  All I can think about is my Mum now. I want her with me at this time; I am terrified, trembling with pain and shock. She will tell me I am going to be ok, like she did when I was a kid and if I fell over with bloodied knees. Somebody tell her what has happened.

“Phone my mum, tell my mum pleeease”.

 No one can hear me whimpering in the rain now. All the noise and crying coming from my car is drowning my cries out. There are dozens of people standing around now looking at the car crash, pointing at me. I am on this table, rain pissing down on me, I’m crying out for my mum and no one can hear me.

The pain got worse until I must have just passed out.

Well that happened 13 years ago when I was working for a large Instructor training establishment in Birmingham. I will tell you what the ripple effect of that day was…... If you would like to know?

 Do you want to know?

Well white knuckle boy dropped off the course.

 Sandra went on to qualify as an ADI and become a good friend to me, she still is…..

Kate never really got over what happened and came off the course as well. She never drove again after that day.

As for me, well let’s say it was a big kick in the pants. I struggled to get back in a car after that day. Not just physically, but mentally aswel. Until one day I decided I was not going to let it stop me doing the job I loved. So, I bit the bullet and said to myself

“you have been through worse than this and come out the other end, get your arse back in a car and stop thinking negative about that accident”. It happened. Get over it and move forward……

So I did……..

 Im glad I had that accident now though because it made me a better instructor in many ways. It made me more aware of the pupils that sit next to me with “white knuckles”. So I think the saying

“What don’t kill ya makes ya stronger” is apt.

 One of the other instructors took some photos of the car after it was towed back the garage. It was a crumpled mess. I have one of the photos some ware. A few weeks after the accident, one of the senior managers asked me

“How are you Rach?”

 I jokingly said “im fine”.

 He looked at me seriously and said

 “Rach, how are you IN YOURSELF”

This forced me to give a serious answer. I said,

 “Im getting there I think”.

So the next time you have a pupil in your car with white knuckles gripped around the steering wheel, not speaking and heading towards traffic lights, in a coma like state, remember this, the pupil might just try and kill you by jumping on those brakes at a green/amber light!!

What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger I promise……………..