Just because this is the way I remember it doesn’t mean this is exactly the way it happened. When things like this occur, it is so out of the ordinary it’s almost as if you are operating on instinct. The mind goes on autopilot so details fly by at light speed, through the web that normally traps the most interesting minutiae. For example, I can tell you exactly what I did as my son was brought from the womb to the drying table, and what I was thinking as I looked upon him the first time. But I can’t tell you what items may have been scattered about the freeway near the overturned car, or where the guy with the badge came from. I’m not even sure when he arrived, if he was there before me and I never noticed.

But I do remember how it started.

I was driving north on Interstate 17 toward Sedona, where my son and I were going to stay the night, taking a jeep tour the next day through the back trails amid the red rocks. Bryson was in the back seat playing on the Playstation Portable. I was listening to talk radio because it reported on traffic conditions about every 15 minutes, not bad for the middle of the afternoon. It was a little after 1 o’clock.

We were somewhere near Anthem, a huge subdivision built in New River, about 30 miles north of Phoenix. I remember looking at the temperature gauge in my Toyota, wondering if it was getting colder as the storm moved in. There were thick gray clouds to the northwest, which thinned into the desert. The readout said it was 54, about the same as when we left Gilbert about an hour before.

My eye caught on a large cloud of dust spouting from the median about 200 feet up ahead. Maybe it was 300 feet. Or 100 feet. It was suddenly just there in the strip of desert, about 50 feet wide, separating the northbound and southbound lanes.

How odd, I remember thinking in the split second it took to realize what had really formed the plume. It must be a dust devil, a random whirlwind that kicks up dust every now and then. But those usually only happen in summer as hot air swirls together as it rises, but maybe the storm—

A car emerged from the cloud. A white car. A sedan. It was spinning in mid-air. Then it hit the ground. More dust and I can’t see it, then a glimpse. It landed on the pavement, dead center of the freeway.

Somewhere during this timeframe I screamed, “Bryson, call 911, call 911.” He had a brand new cellphone and had been programming it earlier in the trip, so I knew it was close by. My own phone was in the suitcase in the trunk, put there because I couldn’t think of a reason I would need it in the car.

I am sure Bryson said, “What is it?” and I said, “A car crash just up ahead” before screaming “Call 911” again, but I don’t know. It would make sense, but nothing makes sense when there is an upside-down car laying in the middle of the freeway. Did I tell you it was upside down? Because it was. It was white. It was a sedan.

I looked in the rearview mirror because I knew I had to stop and when I have to stop abruptly, I always look in the rearview mirror to make sure cars behind me are slowing too. If not I will make allowances, stopping just short of the guy in front of me to give them a few more feet. I was also in the left lane and needed to be in the center lane. There was an upside-down car in the center lane up ahead, laying perpendicular to the road and partially in the lane to each side, and I wanted to move into the center lane so I wouldn’t block traffic. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure there was room to pull over and did so. I did not put on my blinker. I remember that.

I stopped, switched off the ignition, set the parking brake (these are all instinctual things for me) and opened the door. There was one car ahead of me, then about 20 feet of nothing, then the upside-down car. When I got out of my car, I could hear her. She was screaming “Oh my God” over and over and over. Then I saw her, and she was wriggling out of the car on the driver’s side, the side closest to us. The man in the car in front of me was already there. I can’t remember if he helped her out, but when I got here she was laying on the freeway, her head, shoulders, torso, hips and upper legs on pavement. Her knees and lower legs were laying on the car’s ceiling. She was still screaming.

“Is there anybody else in the car?” I said it loudly, trying to be heard over her screams. “No, it’s just me, just me,” and thinking back how odd it was that for a moment, she was pretty lucid, answering that question without being asked over and over. Right after she answered, she went back to screaming.

She moved herself out of the car. That’s good, I thought. Not paralyzed. I didn’t see a lot of blood. Any, in fact. Then I looked closer and I have no idea why because blood is not something I like to see, but now it seemed really important. I had to see if she was injured, that way maybe I could … I don’t know what I could do.

I saw blood. It was splashed across the back of her left hand. The nail on her pinky was partially missing. What was left was long, shiny and perfectly curved at the tip before it stopped, then there was blood. I remember thinking that’s OK, that’s not bad for rolling your car into oncoming traffic.

“Dad, I can’t get anyone, it just says to wait my turn.” Bryson was right behind me. He’s got a look in his face. Not scared. Well, maybe. Scared and really worried. He pushed the phone toward me, and now I can understand why. This was an adult thing, not a kid thing.

I took the phone and listened to the recording. It went something like, “We’re sorry, but all available operators are busy, please hold on” and your call will be answered in the order it was received, as if I was phoning for tech support instead of trying to tell someone who can help that a woman screaming “Oh my God” is lying in the middle of the freeway next to her upside-down car.

I looked over and there is another woman on a cellphone and she looked at me and said she couldn’t get through, and I shook my head. I held the phone near Bryson and told him to hang on and see if anyone answered. Then I wasn’t holding the phone anymore.

That’s when the guy holding the badge appeared. Or maybe he heard me asking the woman if anyone else was in the car. Or was he the first guy and he just pulled the badge to identify himself. This much was clear: A man brandishing a gold badge in a leather case now stood by the upside-down car and he was telling everyone to get back.

Everyone? I turned around. Not one car in each of the three lanes was moving. Lots of people were standing around, nearly all of them with a cellphone to their ears. I couldn’t see more than five or six car-lengths away, but this thought hit me, “No one is going to be on time today.”

The guy with the badge was still screaming for everyone to get away. Perhaps one of us should have said something. Who are you, who are you with? What if he was just a prison guard or something?

But at the time there was a screaming woman, an upside-down car and a guy with a badge. A guy with a badge gets a lot of respect in that situation.

“Right now I just need everyone to get back to their cars,” he told people who only wanted to help. After all, we had been there first. Hadn’t we? But we didn’t have a badge.

And there was only a handful of us. Most people we’re waiting in their cars. But the few of us standing there, we saw a car flipping through the median. We saw it roll to a stop. Everyone else, all they knew was that everyone was stopping. Perhaps even a few noticed an upside-down car in the middle of the freeway. But we had seen what happened. We were part of this. Or so it seemed at the time, until the guy with the badge told us we were doing nothing but getting in the way.

He said help was on the way, that everyone dialing 911 should hang up. He probably said, “The situation is under control” because that is what people with badges say in the movies as they shoo everyone away.

The guy with the badge said,” Does anyone have any blankets?” I had a coat in my car. I was planning on wearing it during the jeep tour in Sedona. I’d need that coat. A coat was not a blanket. But should I offer it anyway? It seemed so important at the time. But I never said, “I have a coat.”

The guy with the badge was talking to someone. The conversation was loud, but that’s all I remember. It seemed the guy without the badge was angry about not being allowed to help. The guy with the badge was pretty adamant about everyone staying away. I don’t recall the guy with the badge ever talking with the woman laying outside the upside-down car. I wanted to tell her that help was on its way, that everyone was dialing 911, that she won’t be alone. But the guy with the badge had her sealed off pretty well. Maybe that was the thing to do. She may have had terrible internal injuries or broken bones, and if she tried to move or talk, it would only make it worse. Only she was still screaming “Oh my God.” I could still hear her as I walked back to my car.

Bryson asked me what was going on. I told him about the woman, that she was hurt but that she was going to be OK, and the guy with the badge keeping everyone away. And it struck me – why are we staying here?

I needed the approval from the guy with the badge. It seemed right. I went back and even though he was still talking loudly with the guy without a badge, I asked him if it was OK to be on our way. Or something like that.

I’m not sure what he said, but it was something to the effect of staying in our cars and keeping away from “the area,” which I assumed was anywhere near him. So I decided we were going to leave.

I walked back to my car and told Bryson to get back in and buckle up. I spoke to a few of the people waiting by their cars. “There’s a cop (any guy who shows a badge at an accident is a cop, I’d decided) who says he wants us out of here.” I noticed some cars were already starting to move, using the shoulder to pass on the right. I got into my car, started the engine, released the emergency brake, reversed a few feet to get around the car in front of me, and turned to the left, intending to ease into the median and go around the upside-down car. As I did, a woman in a Lincoln (old woman, new Lincoln) trying to do the same. I had nosed in front of her, and she gave me a look as if there had never been a woman lying next to an upside-down car in the middle of the freeway.

Some things never change.