The Vow: The True Events That Inspired the Movie (4 page)

Krickitt also took a position as an exercise technician in Northeastern Regional Hospital’s Center for Health and Fitness, a community fitness center on the campus of New Mexico Highlands University, where she designed exercise programs to help people reach their individual fitness goals. Her friendliness and gymnastics experience made her an instant hit with both the other staff members and the clients.

We decided that Thanksgiving would be a perfect time to make our first visit as husband and wife to visit Krickitt’s parents in Phoenix. On Tuesday of Thanksgiving week, the night before we left, Krickitt and I had a quiet dinner and then sat snuggling on the couch in front of the TV. I had my arm around her, and she leaned her head on my chest. With no warning she looked up at me and asked, “Are you happy, Kimmer?”

I couldn’t resist the urge to kiss her before answering, “I can’t imagine how I could be any happier.” And I kissed her again.

2

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

I
looked up from the car and scanned the area for my wife of less than ten weeks. I was trying to figure out how to pack our car with enough luggage for our first Thanksgiving weekend with Krickitt’s parents and still leave room for the two of us plus one of the members of my coaching staff who was hitching a ride to the airport in Phoenix.

“Hey, Krick, you gonna take all day?” I yelled toward the open door to our apartment.

“Here I am,” Krickitt announced as she appeared in the doorway. She practically hopped down the sidewalk toward me, just like the insect her aunt had compared her to all those years ago. I couldn’t help but watch her as she approached me.

“I love you, Kimmer,” she said as she reached me, suddenly uncharacteristically still. “I love you, Krickitt,” I answered. While Krickitt wedged a few more bags into the trunk, I went back for one last look to see if we’d left anything, then locked and closed the door behind me.

As I headed to the car, I thought for a few moments about the amazing things God had given me over the past few years, most notably a new job and a new wife. I couldn’t believe that two months had passed since Krickitt and I had been on our honeymoon, enjoying the warm sand and tropical paradise of Hawaii. Now we were headed off for the Thanksgiving holiday, and Christmas was just around the corner. Time was moving too fast. I wanted to enjoy every day and I looked forward to starting many new traditions with my wife as we celebrated our first major holiday together.

“Hey, Kimmer, you gonna take all day?” Krickitt tried to be serious, but she couldn’t do it for long and soon broke out into a huge smile. We laughed as I slipped into the driver’s seat. I started the car, backed out of the parking lot, and eased into the holiday traffic.

We had a long trip ahead of us, but it was a relatively easy one from our home in New Mexico. We would have interstate highways the entire time as we made our way through Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff, finally ending in Phoenix. Originally we had planned to leave in the morning in order to get to the Pappas house before dark, but our passenger wasn’t able to leave until after lunch. By the time we picked him up and headed southwest on I–25, it was already after two o’clock. It was going to be close to midnight by the time we pulled into my in-laws’ driveway, but Krickitt and I didn’t care. This was our first official holiday as husband and wife, and nothing mattered as long as we were together.

We sailed through Santa Fe and Albuquerque, but soon after we turned west on I–40 toward the Arizona border, I started feeling as if I was coming down with a cold. I tried to ignore it, because we had a long way to go, but Krickitt noticed something wasn’t right. She asked if I was okay. I told her I wasn’t feeling quite right but that I’d be fine in a few minutes.

But I wasn’t fine in a few minutes, I was worse. By the time Krickitt said we ought to stop for some medicine, I was in no shape to argue with her, so we made a quick pit stop to pick up what I needed.

“Maybe I should drive for a while,” Krickitt suggested. “I don’t mind. Then you can lie down in the back seat and get some rest.”

I felt truly awful, so I had no problem taking her up on her offer. “That would be great.” I sighed before adding, “This sure isn’t how I planned to impress the in-laws on our first holiday with them.”

Krickitt flashed me her signature smile; I smiled back as well as I could, but it didn’t compare. She took the wheel with our passenger by her side while I tried to stretch out in the back. Our Ford Escort was brand new but wasn’t designed for a grown man to sleep in the backseat. However, with an eye more to comfort than safety, I realized I could fold down the back seat and stretch my legs out into the trunk. I did my best to get comfortable while I waited for the medicine to kick in.

Just past six in the evening we passed through Gallup, the last big town before the New Mexico/Arizona border. Darkness was falling fast, and Krickitt turned the headlights on. I finally got into a somewhat comfortable position and dozed off with my head at the back of the driver’s seat and my legs toward the back of the hatchback. Suddenly I was jolted awake by a firm yell of, “Watch out!” as the car quickly decelerated and swerved to the left. I rose up just in time to feel the impact thrust me into the back of Krickitt’s seat. Having slid my head off her seat toward the driver’s door, I looked in the driver’s side mirror and could see headlights zooming toward us, getting larger and larger and then completely filling the mirror in a split second.

My wife let out a bone-chilling scream.

The highway patrolman’s report said that at approximately 6:30 p.m. on November 24, 1993, 5.7 miles east of the Arizona/New Mexico state line, a white Ford Escort was involved in a collision with two trucks. Later investigations revealed that a red flatbed truck with a load of car parts had started having engine trouble as it traveled west on I–40. As a result, the driver slowed to about twenty-five miles per hour in the right lane. Traveling at a normal interstate speed, Krickitt came up behind the truck, which was hidden in a cloud of black smoke produced by a defective fuel filter. During the day, the smoke would have been visible, but as night had fallen, Krickitt had been unable to see it from a distance.

Though the flatbed’s emergency flashers weren’t on, Krickitt eventually saw slow-moving taillights loom into view through the exhaust cloud, braked hard, and swerved to the left. At the same moment a pickup truck following too close behind our car closed in on us.

The right front fender of our Escort clipped the left rear corner of the flatbed. Then as the car started to spin and Krickitt struggled for control, the pickup came from behind and rammed into the driver’s side of our car. The impact sent our car careening into the air. It sailed thirty feet, slammed back to the ground, rolled one and a half times, then slid upside down for 106 feet and stopped on the shoulder of the road.

After we were hit, I don’t remember hearing anything or feeling any immediate pain, but I recall every sensation of movement that took place from the moment of impact until our car came to a stop. My face was suddenly jammed between the driver’s seat and the side of the car. My head was jerked back. Then I rolled over to the other side of the car, where my rib cage hit the wheel well. Next I experienced a momentary floating sensation, a slow-motion twisting and tumbling like the dream sequence in a movie. I saw sparks and thought the car was on fire. Finally, I felt a strange tingling sensation in my back. Then everything was still.

I was too stunned to say anything for a few seconds while my brain started to clear. When I could think again, I didn’t think about the chance that I might be hurt. I couldn’t feel a thing. All I could think of was my wife.

“Krickitt!” I screamed. I was answered with silence. “Krickiiiiitt!!” I knew I could hear, because I recognized the sound of the car engine running. But my wife of two months was not answering me. I took a few seconds to look around and get my bearings. After a second I realized the car was on its top and I was lying inside on the roof. The sunroof had been shattered during the long, final skid, and I had made the last part of that 106-foot trip on broken glass and pavement.

Once again I screamed for my wife, and as the sound of my voice died away, I felt something wet on my face. After the ride I’d just taken, I figured I was probably cut and bleeding. I tried to raise my hand up to my face to feel for injuries. I saw my hand slowly come toward my face, dreamlike, as if it were somebody else’s hand. As it got closer a red splotch appeared on it, then another. The hand itself didn’t seem to be hurt, so I figured the blood was somehow coming from a cut on my head.

I tried to stop the splotches by holding my hand away from my face, but they kept coming. The blood ran down my arm and started dripping down onto the broken sunroof. I finally looked up. It was a strange sensation to see everything upside down, seatbacks pointing down at me, no windows where they should have been.

My still-muddled mind finally deciphered that the dripping blood wasn’t my own. Overhead, my wife was suspended upside down by her seat belt. Her arms dangled limp. Her eyes were closed. She didn’t move. We weren’t more than a couple of feet apart but I couldn’t reach her. Since it was almost dark, I couldn’t see her clearly enough to tell what sorts of injuries she might have. I suddenly realized that she might even be dead.

“Krickitt!” I snapped in my hard-nosed coach voice, hoping to shock her into waking up. Her eyes didn’t open, but she stirred a little. Then she let out a long, ragged, sighing breath and was still again.

I thought I had just heard the last breath my wife would ever take.

I called her name again and started trying to get out of the car, but I couldn’t move and at first I couldn’t figure out why. There wasn’t anything on top of me or in my way, and I had a clear shot out of the car through the rear window next to me since the glass was completely gone. After a few moments I realized I had no feeling in my legs. I was unable to move from the waist down.

My nose started to tingle, so I reached up to touch it. I felt something sharp. I was shocked to discover that it was the bone at the base of where my nose should have been. Lower on my face I felt what I first thought was a badly swollen lip. It was not. It was my nose, hanging down in front of my mouth by a flap of skin.

At last I heard another voice, but it wasn’t Krickitt’s. “Give me your hand! I’ll help you out!” I turned to the window and looked straight into the face of a stranger, our very own Good Samaritan.

“I can’t move my legs,” I shouted back.

“Turn the motor off! This thing could explode any minute.” After a moment of confusion, I realized the man was talking to our passenger, who had been riding shotgun. Somehow he had made it through that whole ordeal with only a separated shoulder. Though he had been a bit dazed, he had been able to get out of the car, and at the stranger’s command he reached back in to get to the ignition.

“The key’s broken off,” he said.

“You’ve got to get it turned off!” the stranger demanded. After some desperate jiggling and twisting, the ignition switch turned and the engine fell silent.

“Okay, I’m coming in to get you,” the man said. Dropping to his stomach, he army crawled through the window beside me. I grabbed him around the shoulders, and he held on to me with one hand while he used the other to help scoot us backward out of the car and over to the grass beside the highway.

I saw then that another vehicle had stopped. A husband and wife headed toward us, leaving their children in their van. “You kids stay inside and pray,” the man instructed as he approached our car. He looked around at all the wreckage and blood and, without any show of panic or defeat, put his hand on one of the upturned tires and started praying. His wife came over to me in the grass to see what she could do to help. She was afraid I was bleeding to death until she discovered much of the blood on me wasn’t my own.