Friday, October 22, 1999
Nancy is the weekday daytime bartender. On this Thursday at lunch I have the bar to myself, and Nancy and I have time to talk. For a while our conversation wanders. Finally, she tells me about what happened to her four years ago. It was the night of December 23, 1995.
Nancy worked at the Christiansburg store that night. As she closed the bar and prepared to go home, one of her co-workers asked if she could give him a ride home. Nancy agreed, and proceeded to drive him to his home in Radford. The restaurant didn't close its doors until 1 AM, and for those who had to close, it was typical to work until 2 or 2:30 in the morning. It was 3 or 3:30 AM when Nancy turned her Bronco around and headed for her own home.
The most direct route was a "back road" over the mountains. Nancy decided to take this winding, single lane, unpaved road, though she wasn't very familiar with it. The road wound between steep hills which shielded it from the weak December sun and allowed icy spots from recent snowfalls to remain for days.
When she was about a mile and a half from her home she encountered a curve. As her Bronco rounded the curve it hit an icy patch. At first she thought she could recover and keep the Bronco on the road. But it was not to be. The Bronco hit the shoulder and rolled over, rolling several times on its way down into a creek.
Nancy's head hit the windshield and the impact knocked her out. When she awoke, she heard a noise and wondered what it was. She soon realized what was making the noise. The Bronco had landed on its side and the rear window had broken out. The noise she heard was the sound of creek water running through the Bronco. As she regained her awareness, she realized that she was lying, inside her vehicle, in the icy creek water.
Nancy opened the Bronco's door and pulled herself up and out of the vehicle. She was wearing a short miniskirt and tennis shoes. She fortunately had on a leather coat, which she would sorely need. The temperature was ten degrees below zero and she was soaking wet.
Nancy knew that a friend lived just a mile down the road, and though her circumstances were dire, she felt she could make it. All she had to do was climb an embankment to the road and then hike to her friend's house.
In the darkness of the night, disoriented and confused after being knocked unconscious, Nancy made a near-fatal mistake. Instead of climbing the embankment to the road, Nancy climbed the opposite embankment. She struggled forward looking for the road, not knowing that every step carried her deeper into the woods.
Deep in the woods, Nancy knew she was in trouble. She didn't know which way to go, but she knew that she would never be found alive if she stopped. She had to find her way back to the road. It was a new moon night, and the woods were pitch black. Nancy stumbled and fell repeatly over barbed wire and brambles. Soon her legs were torn and bleeding.
At dawn she encountered a small river and swam to the other side. Once there she found a road and started walking down it. It was the road to her home, but she was too disoriented, too exhausted, to realize that she was walking in the wrong direction. By 10 AM she was 10 miles from the site of her accident. She had been trying to find her way home, wet, in subzero weather, for six hours.
Then she encountered two men walking down the road toward her. They were dressed in jeans and flannel shirts and were wearing ball caps. Strangely, neither man had on a coat, nor was there a vehicle in sight on the road. "They must have been angels," she says. "What were they doing out there without coats and with no car or truck?" At the time, Nancy had little time to ponder the matter, as she was close to losing consciousness.
"Please help me," she cried to them. At that point, both men turned around and walked away. Nancy fell backward and collapsed on the road.
When she awoke, the rescue squad was there. Her wet clothes had frozen to the road, and the men in the rescue truck used a shovel to break the ice holding her down -- literally scraping her off the road. They took her to the hospital suffering numerous injuries and severe frostbite. At the hospital, doctors at first did not expect her to live. One doctor told her later that the lowest body temperature that they had been able to revive a person from was 85 degrees. Nancy's body temperature on arrival at the hospital was 82 degrees. After she had revived, doctors warned her that she might lose her legs from the severe frostbite, but they were wrong again. She bounces around behind the bar with no hint of her ordeal, save for the small scars up and down the front of her legs.
"I guess God wasn't through with me yet," she says of her brush with death.
Yeah, Nancy. That, and you're one tough cookie.
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