Out of Gas
By Lauren
Being stranded stinks. Besides for the obvious fact that you’re stuck, it’s stressful because you have a problem and it’s sometimes difficult to solve it. Yesterday it happened to us.
Tim has been sick with a deep cough over the last few weeks so I thought since he’d used up most of his leave time I’d get him to the doctor over the weekend and that would be easier than taking more time off. I decided to go with him to keep him company since he doesn’t really like going by himself and leaving me at home when he goes places. That was why we got married, to stay together.
Little did we know I would end up letting the battery drain to the point of the car dying. Little did we know we’d end up having to call for a taxi to go home, get the other vehicle, and come back to jump this one off. Little did we know how that day was going to proceed. I would never have gotten out of bed that day, had we known. I doubt Tim would have either.
As I was saying, moving on. We were stuck and sick and miserable. But we finally made it home. Boy we were happy to be home. We would never leave again.
Until Monday, of course.
There was actually one time in my life I was very happy to be stuck on the side of the road. Only once.
It was a bright, clear spring day in March in the year 2004. The sky was the forget-me-not-blue and birds were singing. We weren’t listening, though. We were too busy packing to get everything ready and leaving for the trip to Birmingham, UAB where I was scheduled to have valve replacement surgery the next day.
We had an appointment for me to be admitted and if I missed the appointment the whole surgery would have to be rescheduled and who knew how long that would take!
I would have been quite happy to postpone that surgery forever. I was not looking forward to it and had been dreading it for weeks. No matter how many surgeries you have, nothing really prepares you for going through another one. There are all manner of things that can go wrong. And it’s a lot of physical and psychological trauma. So I really, really did not want to make it to the hospital. Because at the end of that tunnel was a pretty dark stretch of road.
We were driving along the interstate and making great time, in the silver grand Am which we’d only recently purchased when all of a sudden, the vehicle came to a halt. This was before we had smart phones all the time everywhere or Facebook, and so Tim was panicked about what to do. We had a trac phone in case of emergencies but we didn’t have anybody at church’s number. We didn’t have a phone book in the car either.
Finally we dug through the back seat and found some old church bulletins. They had the name and phone number of the preacher and some of the elders and deacons on it. We were able to call one of them and then get a tow truck to come and get us and the church member picked us up at the towing place so that we could go home and get our other vehicle.
I was pleased as punch about the whole set up and I thought it couldn’t have been better. I was happy as could be. I might not make it to the hospital! Yay! I might get to have my surgery postponed! Yay!
Of course, in reality, the situation was a bit dire, but only Tim seemed to really care at the time. Tim, of course, was really upset about the whole thing.
I was quite disappointed when we were rescued.
As things transpired, it was a broken gas gauge in that vehicle and we had simply run out of gas.
Tim’s diagnosis yesterday was also just as simple: allergies.