Nurse Pinned in Fatal Texas Pileup Climbs Out, Goes to Work

A pediatric nurse whose SUV slid into the 130-plus-vehicle pileup near Fortress Value, Texas, final week crawled out the again hatch, walked virtually a mile, and hitched a walk with a coworker to earn to her job.

The enormous pileup killed six americans on February 11, per several news reports, when vehicles spun out on an cool bridge on I-35.

Rebecca Benson, RN, a nurse for 6 years at Cook dinner Kid’s Clinical Heart in Fortress Value, advised her story in an interview with the media team on the successfully being facility.

The roads had been dry as she left her north Fortress Value house on the slow nights for her 7: 00 a.m. shift, she acknowledged. But when she chanced on the Trinity River Bridge, she started to if truth be told feel the grip of her tires dart away and looked as a lot as look the wall of mangled vehicles and cars forward with no approach around.

“I put my foot on the brake, acknowledged a prayer, and I actually thought to myself, ‘I would maybe presumably very presumably die in 2 seconds,’ ” she acknowledged.

She would maybe presumably thought an 18-wheeler beverage truck and a vehicle-hauler semi in the wreckage, their cabs touching in a V and she aimed the guidance wheel on the center of the V between them, thinking the impact would maybe furthermore very successfully be softened.

Peaceable, she acknowledged, “I hit so laborious my ponytail holder came out of my hair.”

Then she looked in the rearview contemplate and noticed the headlights from semis sliding in direction of her, their drivers about to experience what she proper had.

She heard and felt the jolt of every rupture in the again of her, however she acknowledged she guessed proper that being wedged in the center of the V supplied some protection.

“It was so unbelievably shocking,” she acknowledged. She waited till she stopped feeling the crunches because the crashes constructed up farther and farther in the again of her.

Her entrance doorways had been pinned shut however in the waste somebody strolling from vehicle to vehicle opened her again hatch to look how she was and she was in a spot to climb out the again.

Benson took this photo as she stood in the again of her vehicle after crawling out the hatchback.

A coworker texted her as she surveyed the scene to warn her about delayed site visitors with out gleaming Benson had proper lived by scheme of the pileup that was causing it.

Benson requested where the coworker was; he was stuck a few mile in the again of the rupture on the nonexpress facet of the dual carriageway in the site visitors congestion. She walked alongside northbound 35 till she chanced on him, climbed over the barrier and into his vehicle.

She called her husband, Ryan Benson, and advised him she was sore however stunning. She advised him she wished to clock into work where she would maybe presumably again others as an alternate of continuously replaying in her mind the sequence of occasions that day.

“It was the option that made essentially the most sense to me,” she acknowledged.

Ryan Benson advised Fox News the following day, “On the present time, it’s the truth, the conclusion that I virtually lost my total world the day past,” he acknowledged. “I’m so unbelievably soft with her. So proud. And so grateful. Now we had been married for over 18 years, and we accept as true with two children, and we accept as true with a lifestyles.”

Benson and her coworker went to Cook dinner Kid’s when the site visitors thinned and Benson worked a partial shift earlier than she gave in to her husband’s pleadings to let him come by her up and dispose of her to the successfully being facility to earn checked out.

She acknowledged she is eternally grateful however acutely attentive to what others suffered.

“I even accept as true with survivors’ guilt already,” she acknowledged. “The truth that I’m no longer severely injured or slow is nothing attempting a miracle.

“My heart breaks for the total of us that lost loved ones and accept as true with loved ones in severe situation,” she acknowledged.

Marcia Frellick is a freelance journalist primarily based in Chicago. She has previously written for the Chicago Tribune, Science News, and Nurse.com and was an editor on the Chicago Solar-Conditions, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the St. Cloud (Minnesota) Conditions. Follow her on Twitter at @mfrellick.

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