It's the closest I have to a written transcript of what happened from the time.
One second can change your life.
For an instant Ann was perfect. Her back was ram-rod straight, her body a flow of smooth lines and blurred action. The water in her hair glistened in the light, like a sprinkling of jewels and the rain fell in a halo around her. She positively glowed with movement and energy. Her sharp blue eyes were boring into him, her face was a mask of fury.
She suddenly seemed to notice the car beside her and in mid motion she snapped her head around to stare at it. The bumper hit her across the knees, sending her sprawling forward in a wave. Her thighs touched the front of the radiator. Her belly touched the bonnet. Her head landed just short of the windscreen. Her left hand continued it’s lazy swing to casually graze the glass, sending jagged lines shooting across its surface.
One second and your life is changed. It has happened so suddenly that you don’t even realise until it’s over.
The car’s brakes squealed, slowing it almost to a stand still. Just as quickly as she’d touched it, Ann left the car’s surface. She cart-wheeled through the air, her body turning in the rain. A foot caught the ground. Only one, but it was enough to send her crashing to the tarmac in a sickening crunch. She bounced. Her body spun in the air until she was facing the car, her legs away from Matt. That was about all he had a chance to see before she bounced again. Her body flipped in the air in the long instant before she hit for the third and final time. She slid. Her hair was dragged away from her face to lie in a fan behind her.
Two seconds and now finally your brain can start to catch up with the images that were, and still are, assaulting it.
Everything came to a stand still. The car stood stock still in the rain, two faces starring out from the front seat in the dim lamplight, rain bouncing off it in a steady patter. Ann lay nearly ten feet from where she’d started. A small pool of water, possibly blood, grew around her.
Nothing moved. Nothing at all, and for that instant it was as if the world had paused to consider what had just happened. Matt considered with it, his mind running back and forth across the memory a thousand times in the blink of an eye until he could comprehend what it actually meant.
Three seconds and now your brain is fully up to date with reality but, unable to cope with the completeness of the change, it immediately tries to discard it.
‘That must have hurt,’ thought Matt. ‘Thank God it didn’t happen.’
The rain ran through his short blond hair and continued down into the space between his upturned collar and the back of his neck, drenching his already wet back. He continued to stare at the scene before him but something seemed wrong somehow. The calm in his head seemed to have been defined by something and it was slowly starting to crumple up into him.
Four seconds and you suddenly realise that your life has changed and that you need to be able to function within its change. Given no other option you force yourself to accept something it can’t even comprehend through sheer force of will alone.
“Oh shit,” he heard himself say. As if that was the catalyst the remains of his denial vanished from beneath him and an overwhelming panic threatened to engulf him. A thousand options and thoughts flashed through his mind and disappeared before he could firmly grasp on to any of them. He didn’t know what to do, or even how to do it. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breath.
Five seconds and your life has been changed. Maybe it has even been destroyed.
Deal with it.
