Quick as lightning, my dad unbuckles his seatbelt. He reaches into his pocket and tosses his Blackberry to my mom, and shouts, “Call 9-1-1!” My mind races. What’s happening? Why is he doing this? He can’t leave us. He can’t die. Please, God, don’t let him die.

It’s New Year’s day and my family and I are leaving our beach condo to visit my grandparents. The air is crisp, the clouds are full, and the sky is grey. Staring out the car window, all I see are the dijon mustard colored grass fields. My sister insists she watch a movie with the name no one remembers, my mom is shopping on her iPad, and my father drives five miles over the speed limit. Bored out of my mind, I don’t know what to do with myself. This is such a typical car ride, it’s as if I am going through dejavu.

All of a sudden, the car comes to a harsh stop, my torso pushing forward, the seatbelt saving me from flying. Dad jumps out of our Toyota mini van and rushes across the median, to the other side of the road. Now I can see what’s happened. A copper-colored station wagon has crashed into a white sedan. The white sedan flew backwards and took out the telephone pole on the opposite side of the road. The median is sprinkled with live power lines...and my father is running across them. He never touches a single power line and is now rushing over to the smashed, smoking, white sedan.

My mother, sister, and I watch in fear, silently. Fifteen feet away from the car an electrical fire rages from the power lines on the right side. Reacting instinctively, my mother drives to the other side of the road, crossing the median. We drive around the sprinkled power lines, as if we are field mice in a maze. “God, don’t let him die, don’t let him die,” I silently pray.

My father is now at the smoking sedan with two other men. I see them pull out an elderly lady, maybe eighty years old. About thirty seconds after my dad pulls her out, the sedan is totally engulfed in flames. Black smoke spews out of the windows, trunk, and hood of the car. The electrical fire on the right side is still growing in the dry grass. My father and the two other men are like cheetahs running after prey. But they aren’t running for prey; they are the prey. Prey for the hurricane of fire and smoke, the color of coal.

“Dad! Please, come back! What are you doing? Stop! Please! I need you!” I cry at the top of my lungs. My ear-shattering screams aren’t loud enough to break the silence of horror.  I continually pinch myself, hoping that this is just a nightmare. My mother watches like a hawk, yet is silent as a mouse. “Grace, it’s okay. Everything is going to be alright,” my sister assures me.

“No, it’s not! Nothing is going to be okay until he gets in the car! He needs to get in the car! We need him! I need him!” I wail.

Then, red, flashing lights are all that are visible as I blink away my tears. Curled up in a tight little ball, I hide from the noise of the sirens. My ears are covered, my head is buried, and my eyes are shut as tight as they can be shut. The deafening sirens finally come to an end. Before my safe little ball unravels, I hope that all of the fire is over and nobody is dead. One thing definitely hasn’t stopped. The fire. Minutes seem like hours as the fire trucks spray the water on the flaming car and the dry grass.  

Dad squats down next to the lady whom he saved. The ambulance is parked on their left side. A paramedic seems like she is asking my dad questions about what happened. Dad uses hand motions and I might be able to see what he was saying if only we were closer. The paramedic shakes Dad’s hand and allows him to leave.

Dad rushes back to us, safe and sound. My stomach fills with butterflies, as if I were getting a brand new puppy. Dad calmly opens the car door and sits down as if nothing had happened. Immediately, my mom hands my dad a wet-wipe to wipe off the old lady’s rusty  red blood. The car ride is silent. It is a different silence than it was before. It means that we don’t have words for my dad since we are so proud of him. I am happy to now be able to say, “Dad, you’re a lifesaver.”