The coastal coach taking Lila to her destination was bumpy on the potholed roads to each rural stop, but she leant her head against the glass and listened to Il Divo playing on her Ipod. She went into survival mode for the journey. 

She noticed an elderly lady get on using a heavy walking stick with someone pushing her up the awkward steps from the rear. She settled herself with lots of mumbling under her breath and took up two seats. 

It caused some discussion as the bus filled with passengers, but one look at Ms X’s face and people moved on….hurriedly and squeezed in an extra passenger on the back bench.

Gradually the coach divested itself of its cargo and we were the last two aiming for the last stop. ‘Vomiting its human debris…..’ thought Lila gloomily but impressed that she was still thinking creatively!
What a combination…………..one depressed woman of 40ish, a semi crippled dinosaur and a driver who was whistling a tune she vaguely remembered.

One minute Lila was shaking her head mournfully over the peculiar trio they made and in the next, a violent crash on the side spun the small coach. Her stomach threatened to divest itself of its breakfast. As it did a dive down towards the beach it turned in midair and landed on its roof.

Time seemed to stop and Lila became aware gradually that her one ankle was bent at a horrible angle………..the driver was hanging upside down in his harness of seatbelt straps, bleeding………….silent. His annoying whistling had eerily stopped. She could even hear the waves shushing close by until the crippled Ms X began groaning. Neither of them had bothered with the lap seat straps and they were in fact lying on the ceiling of the coach.

Suddenly fear gripped her soul.
She could smell diesel and her only thought was escape from a fiery funeral.

Ms X was crawling amazingly enough and seemed to be unhurt except for her original crippled condition. 
‘I want my bag,’ she muttered, ‘got to find that bag,’ she repeated.

Lila said,’ what we need to do is find the Emergency Exit window and somehow open it.’

‘Where’s my bag, Margaret will be livid if I lose it, she leant it to me for my trip of a lifetime, she told me. Just wanted to get me out of her house I reckon,’ she mumbled on.
Lila grabbed her by her shoulder and was amazed by the muscle tone she discovered. ‘Not such an old lady,’ she thought amazed by her wandering mind.
‘Ma’m stop worrying about Margaret’s bag, we have to make a plan to get out of here.’
‘I’m just a crippled old lady and need help just getting out of bed on bad days. But I need that bag’
‘Can you smell that?’ Lila demanded loudly.
‘Yes, it’s disgusting. Turn it off.’
‘Lady it’s diesel leaking and for all I know we could burst into flames at any minute. We have to take control and get ourselves out of this bus.’

As the old woman opened her mouth to argue, Lila shouted, ‘think of the driver, we are the only ones here to help him.’

Something seemed to click in the old woman’s brain. ‘That’s why I need the blooming handbag! I’ve got scissors for my niece in it, great big ones for her upholstery business.’

‘Nothing wrong with this old lady’s thinking processes,’ thought Lila and suddenly she shrieked, ‘there it is, underneath you. Is it red?’
‘Yes, crazy Margaret said I should make a statement on my travels. Can you get it?’

All this was happening while the coach was creaking alarmingly as we were lying across a ditch. The awful smell of fuel was terrifying. I hauled on the strap of THE red bag and joy of joys with the old lady doing her bit to lift her body I hauled it out and lo and behold I found the giant pair of scissors. I crawled to the front gagging at the blood pouring down the driver’s face. It looked like a big gash on his forehead. In horror I thought I could see bone.

He groaned like a bear coming out of hibernation as he came to.
https://i.postimg.cc/ydC4rXfF/bear-hibernation.png
Pixabay
 He yelled as he saw the scissors coming towards him and I thought, ‘one way to really wake him up,’ and I almost smiled.

Together we worked out a way for him to wedge his one good foot and hang on with his one good hand while I cut the canvas strap with a satisfying rasping “crrrrrrt” and he was free. ‘Thank God,’ I thought sincerely. He was praying out loud and I recognised his earlier whistled tune as ‘How Great Thou art,’ from my long ago church days.

‘What’s with you two up there? Is this a Sunday school outing? Come here NOW, I’ve located the escape hatch.’
She began to cackle with what I realised was rusty laughter as she watched us crawling, wounded and bloody down the ceiling of an over turned, like a helpless turtle, coach.

She took stock. ‘Your ankle is screwed,’ she said to me, ‘you’re pretty useless, no offence as they say in the movies,’ she said squinting her eyes at the bleeding driver, ‘so I guess it’s up to me!’
‘Take my Knob Kerrie stick, and shove with it, here woman where it will help,’ she instructed me. ‘Sir, get your good foot in its hefty boot down here and lady get your one good foot next to it and I’ll put both mine over here………..ready?’ she said seriously to her damaged and motley crew, ‘PUSH, PUSH, PUUUUSH!’

With a lot of sweating, cussing, groaning and effort we worked as a ‘mighty team’ and miraculously we felt the window begin to budge. As the fuel smell intensified I yelled, ‘GO TEAM’ and fresh air flooded the interior of the hot and stinking hell hole that we were in.

The next hour was a blur of a young boy crawling down the bank, asking us, ‘Jislaik, is yous OK in there. It stinks hey?’ With that he disappeared in the direction of the road and his yelling alerted us to the fact that he was getting help. 
https://i.postimg.cc/cHPKzzpF/boy-peeping-thro-hole.png
Pixabay

‘And not a minute too soon,’ Lila thought thankfully as she sank into a wonderful zone of morphia induced pain free medication. In her euphoria she thought I saw angel wings on the two paramedics backs. They simply smiled when she told them and said, ‘we’ll get you to the hospital. Who can we call?’

It had taken an hour for the paramedics to arrive and deal with the three survivors.
They were all going to live. They had minor injuries, in the grand scheme of accidents, and when she worked it out later………when the reality of their close escape became clear to Lila, it was the old woman, a 61 year old music teacher who was crippled with shocking sciatica who had saved them.
In the dire situation she had shuffled out of her crippled state of mind and body into the woman she had once been before pain and bad temper had taken over completely. Without her they could possibly have died in what indeed became a flaming conflagration that attracted dozens of cars and hundreds of people to observe the horror of it in ghoul like fascination.

Meet the 3 SURVIVORS in my next blog as they reunite for that ‘cuppa’ that heals all eventualities. They discuss their ‘take’ on the psychology of people stopping to stare at scenes of accidents and miracles.