While speeding down the freeway, at about 75 mph, late at night on the way back to my parents’ house, I noticed a car zigzagging in and out of the lane behind me in my rearview mirror.

I moved into the slow lane to try to get away from it, but it seemed everywhere I moved, the other car followed. Then it hit me, and I lost control of my car. It swerved crazily before it flipped over and over—a total of eleven times!—off the freeway and down an embankment where we landed, amazingly, upright on all four wheels in a dark, wooded ravine. However, the roof of the car was in a triangle shape, like the roof of a house. All the glass was broken out of the windows, and the driver’s side door had embedded itself into the left fender.

When the car stopped, I landed in the strangest praying position, on my knees, so my lower body was hanging out of the car and my upper body was slumped over the driver’s seat.

Dee was thrown out of the car, and I couldn’t see him anywhere, so I kept calling out his name.

After what seemed like an eternity, his voice faint, Dee answered, “Shamikki, are you okay?”

“I don’t know!” I called back.

Dee wasn’t hurt too badly; he only had some scrapes and minor bruises, and a while later, he found his way back to the car and me.

Meanwhile, I could hear people yelling from afar, “Are you okay down there?” “Don’t move.” “We called 9-1-1!” That’s when I realized my car had gone off of the freeway, and they were standing above me on the shoulder of the road. (I also realized, much later, that my siblings, who had been behind me on the freeway, saw the whole thing, and they were some of the people I heard.)

I groped around in the car and felt my cell phone, miracle of miracles. Then I called Chuck. “I’ve been in an accident. My car flipped off the freeway, but I don’t know where I am,” I told him.

“Just hold on and keep talking; help is on the way,” he said.

After a while, I said, “I’m getting tired.” I didn’t realize it then, but I was going into shock.

I felt like I had to find some way to get up, but I couldn’t. That’s when I realized something was seriously wrong with my legs. I could feel them, but when I tried to move them, the pain was unbearable.

Chuck urged, “Shamikki! Whatever you do, try not to fall asleep! Stay awake!”

But I just repeated, “I’m getting tired…” and dropped the phone.

Dee arrived at the car. The pressure on my legs as I knelt so oddly on the ground was excruciating, so with the last of my strength, I yanked the emergency brake up and hung onto it in an effort to relieve the torture. But this only served to exacerbate it. I must’ve blacked out then because when I woke up, I was in the emergency room. (I was told later that I was medevac’d to the nearest trauma hospital in Riverside.)

I heard a couple of nurses chuckling, and one said, “An angel must have been with you, girl, because you don’t have one scratch, not one cut, on you, only a bruise on the side of your neck from the seatbelt.”

“I don’t understand…” I said.

The other nurse said, “Ma’am, you were in a terrible accident. Your car flipped off the freeway, and both your legs are broken. With all the internal damage you have, you should have external damage, too. It’s unbelievable that you don’t. And with that hospital blanket over your legs, no one can even tell they’re broken.” The nurse shook her head. “It’s like you had a shield around your body! Just incredible!”

I only recall a couple of things that went on before I had surgery. Mom, who of course always had to be in control, yelled at the doctor over the phone. “Don’t operate until I get there!” and Chuck argued with the surgeon because he didn’t want me to get a blood transfusion—due to his beliefs, not mine—even though I was hemorrhaging internally.

They had already medicated me heavily to relieve the pain, but then the doctor had to put me in an induced coma until my mother arrived and I could finally have surgery to repair my shattered femurs. It was the ultimate craziness that the people who should have loved me the most put me at such extreme risk. It’s a wonder I even survived their shenanigans!

When I woke up in the recovery room, I saw a weird contraption holding my legs straight out because titanium rods had been put in both of them, no casts.

Then the doctor came in to tell me, “Unfortunately, there were some complications. You will be experiencing some paralysis off and on, and it will be a miracle if you ever walk again.”

The accident and its aftermath shook me to my core. I prayed I would walk again so that I could take better care of Kris and be the person I was meant to be.