The road to destiny
My life took a horrific turn for the worse...
Monique Kelley, 28
Loading up the car, I was anxious to start the three-hour journey to visit family with my son Kamden, 5.
But a nagging feeling made my stomach churn.
Ever since I was a little girl, I’d had a horrible premonition.
‘I’ll die in a car accident when I’m 27,’ I told all who’d listen.
Most of the time, I laughed about my odd feeling.
But in January 2018, that sense of dread was stronger than ever.
Just weeks earlier, my brother Kevin had died after being knocked off his motorbike. Gone at just 25, we’d been left reeling.
‘Do you know what to do if we have an accident and Mama’s hurt?’ I asked Kamden. ‘No,’ he replied. I showed him how to unlock my phone screen and make a call.
Then I strapped him in and set off.
After two days with my family, we headed back home again.
It was a quiet Monday morning after rush hour, and though snow was piled high either side of the road here in Oregon, the weather and ground looked clear.
An hour later, we joined the motorway.
Suddenly, slick black ice beneath the tyres of our four-by-four sent us skidding.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion as we shot across three lanes.
This is it, I thought. This is how I die…
Then everything turned white. When I came to, our car was upside down in the snow.
Kamden had made it out and was standing in front of me.
Hanging out the back window, I couldn’t move.
‘Get Mummy’s phone, remember?’ I said to him, strangely calm.
After a few minutes, he cried, ‘I can’t find it!’
I knew I had to get out somehow, but my legs weren’t working.
Then I looked over to my left and gasped.
My left foot was up by my shoulder, my body contorted.
Any sense of calm I’d managed for Kamden’s sake evaporated.
‘Help!’ I screamed, before blacking out.
When I awoke, paramedics were freeing me.
But once in the ambulance, I could feel my strength starting to ebb away…
‘I love you,’ I told Kamden. ‘Be good for your grandparents.’
Miraculously, I survived, after having emergency surgery on my spine.
The next few days passed in a haze of pain and medication.
Then one of the doctors came to see me.
‘When your car flipped, your spine shattered,’ he explained.
Two metal rods were holding it in place.
I’d died three times on the way to hospital.
My premonition…
‘Will I walk again?’ I asked. ‘I’m afraid it’s too soon to know,’ he replied.
As the weeks passed, hope faded. I was paralysed from the chest down.
‘Will I be in a wheelchair forever?’ I asked the doctor.
‘Probably,’ he said sadly. ‘But we won’t know for sure for a couple of years.’
I thought of Kamden and my heart broke, realising all the things I’d miss out on with him as he grew up.
Swimming in the sea, forest walks, dancing...
Time dragged painfully and progress was unbearably slow.
Seven weeks after the accident, I was transferred to a rehab clinic specialising in spinal injuries.
There, for the first time, I felt a glimmer of hope…
I died three times on the way to the hospital