Memorial Box Monday - The Dropped Call

Normally a dropped call isn’t a good thing… but in our case I believe it was an act of God that saved our life and the life of our unborn baby.

Tim and I lived in small town Tennesee for 3 amazing summers.

We were driving the nearly 80 miles from Crossville to Knoxville for a midwife appointment at Lisa Ross Birth and Women’s Center. I was 7 months along with our 1st baby and I had a big, beautiful, round belly to prove it!

There is one area on the drive that is beautiful… just as you are dropping of the “plateau” down into the Knoxville valley area. It is lush, green and the highway curves and declines very steeply. It is common for I40 to be congested with 18 wheelers going from Nashville to Knoxville… often the “slow lane” is one long line of semis. It was that day.

This particular day Tim was driving and talking on the phone to his dad in California. Right as we dropped down the steeper grade and started the turn the call gets dropped. Tim takes his eyes off the road and looks and his phone and it immediately and literally the phone falls out of his hand on to the floor. He puts his hand on the wheel and out of the corner of my eye I see a semi SLAM into the back of another semi. Then it recoils and SLAMS AGAIN!!!

Evidently the semi in the back break’s had burned out and as it started down the steep grade it couldn’t slow down.

Mind you, we are RIGHT next to the impact… debres flies into us and hits our car. Tim swirves instinctively and we run on to the very small shoulder, but still can’t avoid as the semis careen past us and hit again. The back semi shuttered and lurched into our lane.

Thank goodness the trucker in front had enough sense to absorb the impact and to applied his breaks gingerly and gradually so that he could stop both his truck and the truck behind him.

Mean while I am hyperventilating (first time ever in my life) and holding my belly and saying, “We almost died… we almost died… Thank you God! Thank you God!”

Tim actually had to say, “Marci slow down… breath easier.” I am generally a very calm person, but it just surprised me so much and I could see the truck shutter and lurch and loom over us so closely that I was SURE we would be hit or crushed.

We arrived at the Birth center 15 minutes later and my noramally very LOW blood pressure was through the roof. My midwife wanted to admit me, fearing I had preeclampsia, until we explained the circumstances that made it so high. She laughed and said, she thought it would go down and rechecked it before I left and found it to be lower.

That is one day we were more than glad that our call got dropped and Tim had two hands on the wheel. God knew!