Jen was cranky this morning when I woke her up. Maybe it's because I thought the best way to do it was by serenading her with my trombone. In any case, there was only half an hour until soccer practice and she takes 20 minutes to eat a bowl of cereal so it was time to make a move. There were clouds looming in the sky and a forecast for a bit of rain so practice was probably going to get a bit messy. Saturday morning in Miami usually meant a cruise in the drop-top Mercedes along the coast while Jen was at practice, but I thought the rain was probably going to put a damper on things. I took the Range Rover instead and decided to come straight back after dropping her off. She can be the one getting drenched.

Ten minutes before the start of practice, we finally left. I guessed we'd be five minutes late, again. She probably does this deliberately to avoid the warmup runs. I sometimes wondered whether it was worth taking her, and what the point of it all was if she was just going to sulk every morning. I thought she might thank me in 10 years when she became the adult she was supposed to become. She was sitting in the back seat, still putting her shoes on when we got onto the freeway. That's when it happened.

Darkness.

It felt like time had frozen, but I could still hear the engine. The lights on the dashboard were still on, so I was obviously still alive and could see, but something was wrong. It was as if someone had dropped paint all over the car. I knew there were cars behind me, so I didn't want to brake. But what if the car in front of me had been painted too and did brake? Jen was screaming behind me, "Daddy!"

I looked at the GPS and it showed a gentle curvature coming up. I could hear screeching of tires to my left. I had to do something. I tried to find the window switch on the armrest but it took me a second to find. I pressed it and the front passenger window started to roll down excruciatingly slowly. I had hit the wrong button. Jen was still screaming as the cabin was flooded with light again and I found the correct button. I quickly realised I was right next to the concrete barrier on the right shoulder. That's when I stamped on the brakes, but I just slid over the wet roads. I could hear cars crashing around me. We were still going 50 miles an hour when the road started to curve and we scraped the barrier. From 30 miles an hour, we jolted to a violent stop. I don't remember much after that.

When I woke up, Jen was beside me. We were in a hospital. I don't know what happened but the world was different. The TV was off but I could hear a radio outside. Someone was talking about the refractive index of glass or something. All that mattered was that Jen was safe.