Storm

As Iowa turned into Nebraska, I saw the sun turn into a sheet of dark sky. Traffic through Omaha moved at a dead crawl, nothing but glowing headlights, black as night in the middle of the day. I was thankful when I drove out of the city and the light started to return. Then it got worse. I could see nothing around me but thick grey sheets of pounding rain. The music that soothed me turned into a screeching signal, "THIS IS THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM, THIS IS NOT A TEST," with a warning of tornadoes at mile marker 414. I was at mile marker 412. 


There was no way to stop and no where to go, so I just kept going. An exit appeared. I took it. A single truck stop with a restaurant. I ran through the rain to the entrance. The storm showed no sign of letting up so I went into the restaurant and ordered tea and a piece of pie. Lukewarm Lipton and the worst apple pie I'd ever had. I picked at the crust around the gummy filling, waiting for time and the storm to pass. The sky seemed to clear and I went to pay my bill.


The lady behind the counter told me the interstate was closed. A semi had been hit by a tornado at mile marker 414 and was strewn across the highway, there was no way around it. It was where I would've been if I hadn't seen the exit and stopped for pie. She gave me directions to the frontage road where I drove past flooded fields and enormous trees snapped in half.


Storms returned and raged on and off for hours, a battle between dark and light. Silvery sun ripped through angry black clouds, only to be snuffed out again. Light grey calm would give me hope, until I saw another storm rolling across the fields with nothing to brake it. Mile after mile of terrifying storms raging through Nebraska, no where to stop, no where to go. When the fear was at its worst I felt myself merge with the deer and it gave me calm and I sang and I drove.


I arrived at the hotel, grateful and shaky and exhausted. I bought a bottle of water. The next morning when the sun rose I saw it was made of blue glass. When I arrived in Los Angeles weeks later for my internship, my first patient was a truck driver with a brain injury, whose semi had rolled over in an accident.