Chapter 2

Time passes slowly when you’re stuck in the snow, and Dr. Adrianna Roberts was good and stuck.

She had flown from her home in Denver, Colorado, to Buffalo, New York for a medical conference to be held at the South Boston Hospital, a new hospital in a growing rural community about 20 miles south of Buffalo. Andi, as she’s most commonly called, didn’t expect much from this conference, but one of the speakers’ name rang a bell. Dr. Lucy Kosis, her best friend in the world who now lives in the Buffalo area, encouraged her to go. Other than the opportunity to come and visit Lucy, there was really no need to go. Looking at the speakers and the list of classes to be held in the seminar, it was all ‘stuff’ that she wrote many papers on in her past, some even before she got her fellowship. At least University hospital paid for the trip. Andi guessed they figured, “What trouble could she get into in Buffalo?”

She brought the twins with her too; they are the joys of her life. Since Lucy left Denver and moved to Buffalo, the twins were the only joy left in Andi’s life. They will start school next year, so this might be the last time she could bring them with her on a business trip, even though this was the first business trip she had been on since they were born. The last trip she took was to a conference in Minneapolis not long before the twins were born.

They landed in Buffalo several days early to unwind at a highly rated B&B out in the country. Then she had the week-long conference while the twins relaxed with Aunt Lucy, then two weeks of vacation; one week spent skiing and tubing in the “snow belt” south of Buffalo, then Christmas week in Niagara Falls and Toronto. Her very best friend and colleague Lucy Kocis would be there to guide them around the area, offer day care during the conference, and being a world-class athlete Lucy would be her instructor for the important Nordic skills of tobogganing, inner tubing, and consuming wine by the fire.

Getting out of the airport and into a rental car was easy enough. In fact, Buffalo International is one of the easiest airports to get out of that Andi had ever flown into. Soon they were in the rental car heading south, singing along with Christmas carols on Andi’s iPhone, which she paired with the radio on the rental car. And then it started snowing. She was extremely confident in her winter driving skills, having been born and raised in Denver, and she visited Grandma and Grandpa Olson in Bismarck, North Dakota almost annually ... how hard could winter driving be in Buffalo?

Had they been listening to a local radio station, they would have discovered that the sports talk switched to weather talk, and they were heading into the teeth of a Lake Effect blizzard, the type of storm that Buffalo is famous for. The snow started in small, wet, widely spaced flakes as they passed New Era Stadium, the home of the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, but the further south they drove, the heavier the snow fell. As they got closer to their target destination, Springville, not only was the snow flying in earnest, but there was also thunder and lightning. “Thundersnow?” Andi asked no one in particular, “who has thundersnow?”

“Thundersnow! Thundersnow! Thundersnow!” the twins sang along with ‘Let It Snow.’

Her windshield wipers could barely keep up with the onslaught, and to make matters worse, when she exited the 219 expressway, she ended up heading west into the countryside rather than east into town and the cozy bed and breakfast room waiting for them. She wanted to turn around but there was oncoming traffic which prevented a U turn, and there was no intersection visible.

As she drove, the four lane wide highway narrowed down to a two-lane paved country road, something she didn’t notice happening due to the heavy snow. She almost discovered that the roads in this part of the world have deep ditches due to the amount of rain and snowfall. Andi stopped and checked her GPS, her right tires perilously close to sliding into the ditch unbeknownst to her. She found her mistake quickly and decided to turn around at the next intersection, which was 5 slow miles ahead.

When she finally reached the intersection, she nearly missed it. Snow was piling up fast, and even though it was still early in the afternoon, the world grew very dark and took on a brownish gray hue from so much snow in the air. She misjudged how narrow the country road that she turned on to was, and without warning her slow-moving car slid sadly into the ditch on the side of the road.

Much of Andi’s winter driving experience came from North Dakota visiting her grandparents, and not Denver. Denver is almost tropical compared to Bismarck, North Dakota. Even in the mountains, the roads that Andi traveled on in Colorado were well groomed. In North Dakota she learned that when you go into the wide shallow ditches, you drive on the frozen ground until you find a place to pull back on the road. Western New York is vastly different. She tried to continue with one set of wheels in the ditch until she found a field entry driveway, which is what she would do in North Dakota.

However, the steep sided deep ditches in New York are different from the wide, shallow ditches of North Dakota and soon she was hopelessly stuck, far off of the main road, highway 39. She stopped the car and immediately it slid deeper into the ditch, tilting up to almost forty-five degrees. Immediately the twins panicked, chattering away at the edge of terror as only 5-year-old twin girls can chatter. Andi dubbed it TwinBabble®, and it took Andi several minutes to calm them into a form of quiet that would allow an emergency phone call.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency?” Andi gulped. She had informed scores of terrified patients to call 911, but she has never done it herself. Is there a protocol? What do I say? She realized she must have been discussing this situation with herself in her head longer than she realized because the operator repeated, “Nine one one, what is your emergency?”

“Oh, um, sorry. Hi.” Now she felt stupid. Who says “Hi” to a 911 operator? “I’m Doctor Adrianna Roberts and I’m stuck in the snow.” Now she felt even dumber. Why would she think that throwing her title at the 911 operator could improve the situation? Maybe if she rattled off her list of publications, the tow truck would arrive faster?

“Where are you located? Take your time if you have to.”

Andi decided that the 911 operator was an empath and realized how stupid she was making herself feel. “I’m not sure, we turned off the 219 expressway at Springville but headed west instead of east on Route 39, then I tried to turn around at an intersection and slid into the ditch.”

The operator sounded calm. “I know that area pretty well, it’s easy to get turned around in a snowstorm, so I’m just going to ask a few questions to help figure out where you are, OK? When you turned, was this the first intersection after 39 narrowed from four lane to two lane? Or did you go further?”

Andi suddenly realized that she did not notice if there were intersections before the road narrowed. No, wait ... the only sign she saw was the sign indicating that the right lane had to merge left, so she wasn’t completely ignorant of the world around her as she drove, but there was so much snow that she couldn’t actually see the road narrow. “Yes, the first one after.”

The 911 operator frowned to herself. If Doctor Roberts had turned at the next intersection a few miles further west on 39, she would be safe in the tiny village of Morton’s Corners. “Did you turn left or right off of 39?” she asked Andi.

“Left, we turned left onto the side road.”

“Ok, here’s the good news. I know exactly where you are.” Andi gulped. There is another shoe waiting to drop. The operator continued. “The bad news is that the Erie County Sheriff’s office has put a driving ban in place, and they themselves are not on the road.”

“Oh God, what do I do?” gasped Andi. “I have two five year old girls in here with me.” She tried to keep the terror out of her voice, but was fighting a losing battle.

“There is a farmhouse very close to you,” said the operator. “Can you see it?”

Andi tried looking out of the windows, but she could see nothing. “No, I can’t see past the hood of my car, my girls ... I don’t think I could walk them to the farmhouse in this snow.”

“I’m going to reach out to the Town of Concord, which is where you are right now. They may have assets available.”

Andi’s heart sank. She verified her phone number with the 911 operator who gave her some tips on staying warm, then hung up. What do I do? She asked herself, lie to the girls that everything is going to be ok? The girls were panicking as they hung in an angle in their car seats, so Andi turned around and released them.

“Do we have to wait in the car or can Sandy and I go out and play in the snow?” asked the younger of the twins, Madeline. She was younger than Sandy by 2 minutes. When Andi told them, they couldn’t go out in the snow, the moppets started fighting over who was sitting on who in the car that was leaning on a 45-degree angle, causing Madeline to end up on Sandy’s lap. Sandy decided that since she was older, she got to sit on her younger sister’s lap.

“No you cannot go outside and play, the police will be calling me soon to tell me what we can do,” Andi was exerting considerable self-control to keep herself from screaming, but it was a cute thought, wanting to go build a snowman in a blizzard to pass the time. Her cell phone rang as she was trying to break up the fight. “Doctor Roberts,” she answered mechanically.

“Doctor Roberts, this is Sergeant Montgomery of the Town of Concord police department, how y’all doin’?”

“I think cabin fever is starting to set in with the twins, but we’re doing ok.”

“Ma’am, to be blunt, we do not have any units on the road, nor do we have any plows or snowmobiles in that area.” Before Andi could audibly moan, he continued, “I made a few calls, and a fellow who lives just up the road from where you’re at agreed to head out to help you. It may take a little time, so stay warm, keep the engine running and the lights on so he can see you, but you’re going to have to keep the tail pipe clear to prevent carbon monoxide build up.”

“Thank you so much Sergeant!” and Andi turned to tell the twins the good news, which only stoked their desire to go build a snowman before it got dark, which appeared to be happening. They settled for a story, so Andi promised them a story after she dug the exhaust pipe clear of the snow. She tried to open the door, but the car was at such a steep angle she couldn’t open the door. As a pulmonologist, she knew the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning far too intimately, so she opened the window and climbed out by standing on the side of the center console and pulling herself out of the window. She cleared the exhaust pipe, which luckily was on the driver’s side and not down in the snow-filled ditch, then clambered back into the car. Sandy handed her the thick story book from which Andi had been reading stories to them since before they were born.

As Andi drew to the end of the second story that she was reading to the girls, Madeline’s eyes shot open wide. “Sleigh Bells!” she gasped.

Sandy pulled herself up and started looking through the windows, “Sleigh bells! I hear them!”

Knowing how finely tuned the girl’s ears can be, Andi turned off the radio and sure enough a putt-putt-putt and a jingle of tire chains could be heard approaching them. As the sound of the ching-ching-ching of tire chains grew nearer, the girls cried, “It’s Santa Claus!”

Soon the dim glow of headlights could be seen, and suddenly a smallish gray and red tractor pulling a trailer full of hay bales appeared out of the swirling snow. As it pulled abreast of their car, the driver hopped off the tractor and began inspecting the situation that they were in. He ducked down in the front and was below the hood for a long time, then he rose, walked up to the driver’s door, and gestured for her to lower the window.

“You’re in that ditch good, ma’am.” He said as Andi lowered the window. He was wearing a Buffalo Bills stocking cap and his face was covered with a Buffalo Bills scarf and his glasses were fogged so she couldn’t even see his eyes. At least he was tall, but to someone as short as Andi, everyone was tall. “Can you get us out?” she asked.

“Not with this tractor, I’d be afraid of ripping off your bumper or something like that. I have another one that works a whole lot smoother. And if I did pull you out, where would you go? Route 39 is impassable. All roads south of Orchard Park are closed. But you’re more than welcome to wait this storm out in my cabin. It’s warm and dry and supper’s on.”

“Supper!” chimed the twins from the back seat.

“I don’t know...” Andi looked back at her girls, her babies. What if this was some pedophile? some rapist? Would it be better to wait out the storm right here in the car? The words “My Cabin” sent chills of terror through her heart. Hundreds of hours of slasher movies she watched as a teen flashed through her mind and the terror set in. “I don’t know you,” she said. “I can’t ... I can’t risk the safety of my girls.”

“That’s something I truly understand, ma’am. The safety of the ones you love is of prime importance, there’s nothing worse than seeing a loved one come to harm” He paused and looked around. It was snowing so heavily nothing was visible. All was gray and billowing snow. “Ma’am, this is a killer storm. Your car will be buried, you will run out of gas, when that happens you will freeze to death, when the snowplow comes it won’t see you and it will crush you. I utterly understand your fear, but your babies back there, I can’t ... I don’t want to see them die.”

“I’m sure there will be someone as soon as the snow stops.”