"When it hit, glass sprayed all over me. I felt something like a sledgehammer hit me all over my right side. I felt the doorframe hit the side of my head. The noise was incredible Bill, I never heard anything like that. I felt us spin around and then start to tip over. Just as I became upside down there was a splash and water was covering my face. I couldn't breath and my body actually felt a little better, less pain when the cold hit me. I felt the seatbelt holding me in place just like I'd imagined. I was trapped underwater and I was going to die. And it felt RIGHT. I knew that if I just sat there for a minute or two it would all be over. Something inside of me told me just to do that. Just to wait there until everything went black. I wouldn't be in pain. I wouldn't have to worry anymore. It would just be over. It was a calming feeling Bill. The thought of just dying actually got rid of the panic.
"I sat there upside down, not breathing and I saw the roof of the car hit the bottom of the lake. I saw a bunch of bubbles go floating up. I saw a bunch of muck get stirred up and obscure everything outside. It seemed trippy to me. I wasn't afraid. I remember thinking, "so this is what it's like-this isn't so bad". I even saw the cab driver get out of his seat belt and swim out through his window. He'd had it open and he just squeezed his way out. His arm was bleeding and leaving little trails of blood in the water and I tripped off of them for a second. I knew that he'd swim to the top and that he wouldn't try to come back for me. I knew it.
"I didn't feel any pain right then. I was relaxed. Just waiting to die. Just waiting to do what I was SUPPOSED to do. It didn't feel bad at all. It actually felt kind of nice."
"Jesus." I mumbled, staring at her. She hadn't said that with nostalgia, but with horror.
"I was just starting to think that maybe it would be a good idea to just suck in a bunch of water and get it over with. I was SUPPOSED to die, so why prolong it? That's when I thought of you." She soured a little. "It wasn't a nice thought. I thought, "that'll teach Bill not to tell me what I want to know, not to keep me down anymore. Now the asshole can just cry his ass off at my funeral." It was that thought that got me moving. I actually saw you next to my grave, tears running down your face, wondering why I hadn't listened to you. The fact that you could cry for me told me that you really did love me, that you would be…" She broke a little. "Be disappointed in me."
"I sat there upside down, underwater, not able to breathe and all these thoughts going through my head. Was I really going to just die in order to get back at you? You'd fucked over fate time and time again and I was going to let myself die just to prove you were wrong? What the hell was I thinking? Shouldn't I at least TRY to get out of here?"
"I didn't think I was going to make it. I really thought I was going to die anyway because I was supposed to but I decided to at least try." She shook her head. "It was absurdly easy to get out of there. I've been wondering why the Tracy in the other time-line found it so difficult." She glared contemptuously at me, directing her glare to the "other Tracy" whom she obviously had little respect for. "That Tracy simply drowned. She wasn't injured like I was. I found the clasp on my seatbelt and pushed it, expecting that it would be jammed or something but it wasn't. It came right apart and I dropped slowly onto the roof of the car. My right leg was pinned a little bit between the front seat and the door that had been hit. It hurt when I pulled it but it came out without any problem. I was free but I was still in the car.
"Everything was calm and cool. I was considering myself as good as dead so I didn't worry too much about what would happen if I failed to get out. What did I have to lose by trying? I had time and presence of mind to actually consider the options of escape before I gave it a shot, that's how calm I was. I looked at the driver's side window, thinking I could swim out through there. But it was rolled up and the glass hadn't broken. I knew I wouldn't be able to break it. I looked at the window where the van had hit us. The glass had broken but the frame had been smashed in and I didn't think I could squeeze through it. So finally I looked at the window where the driver had gone out. There wasn't a partition between the front and the back seats like the cabs in Berkeley have so I decided that was the way to do it. I twisted myself around and pushed myself into the front seat.
"I noticed I was running out of air at that point, that I badly needed to take a breath, but that still didn't worry me. The worst that could happen was that I could die, right? All I was doing was trying. I didn't even think about how long I'd been under the water. So I pushed myself through the window. As I did that I felt some pain in my hip and in my leg but it wasn't bad, it was distant. Once I was free, I just let myself float up to the top.
"When I broke the surface and took the first breath of air, everything changed. I saw the stars outside, I saw the cab driver pulling himself onto the shore while other cars had stopped and people were starting to run over to the edge of the lake. I tasted the air as it went into my lungs and that was when I realized that I was still alive and that I could stay alive."
She looked meaningfully at me. "That's when it came home to me how precious life was and how close I'd just come to losing it. That's when all the pain hit me and I realized that it wasn't over yet, that I could still drown. Only then, I didn't want to drown, I didn't want to die. Pain went shooting through my whole body, centered on my right side from my face to my feet. It was agony Bill, absolute agony. I started to sink in the water and my face went under. I sucked in a bunch of water before I could force my head back up and started coughing. The coughing made the pain worse.
"I started flailing around in the water, really panicking now and then I noticed the cab was not completely under water. The back wheels were sticking up. I grabbed hold of one and held on as tight as I could. I've never hugged a tire like that before. I tried to put my feet down on the bottom and stand up but as soon as they touched, pain went shooting through my leg and my hips. Horrible pain. So I just held on and let my feet float. I coughed some more, thinking I still had water in my throat and a bunch of blood came shooting out. That's when I realized that I couldn't breathe very well. Every breath was hurting in my chest and it didn't feel like I was getting enough air. I also noticed blood dripping from my head down into the water. I was hurt bad. I started to wonder if I was going to die from the injuries.
"Through all of this nobody on shore noticed me. There must've been sixty people gathered at that point but they were all gathered around the fucking cab driver, may he rot in hell. He'd collapsed on the embankment and some people had pulled him up. They were all fawning over him, asking him a bunch of questions, and nobody was seeing me down in the water because I was on the other side of the cab hanging onto the tire. I tried to scream at them but as soon as I sucked in breath to try it made my chest hurt and made me cough up more blood. Meanwhile it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
"I was out there for almost five minutes and things were starting to get kinda gray and fuzzy. I was thinking that I was going to die anyway, just lose consciousness and slip into the water. It was like one of those dreams where you're trapped and in trouble and trying to call for help but nobody can hear you. You ever have those?"
"Yes." I nodded, surprised. They were a common stress dream for me though I wasn't aware that Tracy, or anyone else for that matter, had them too.