OUR STORY

The Accident Part 1 - That Morning

As much as I would love to make this short and sweet, I feel like many aspects of this story will require some sort of context. It might also do me some good to take a breather at times and talk about some of the things that keep me going like family, beer, music, food and anything that doesn’t involve being pinned underneath a semi-truck while bleeding out. Bare with me now, this isn’t going to be easy.

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Thursday, January 20th 2022 5:45am I woke up to my alarm like every other morning. I’ve never been good with the simple daily routine of life but now that something like going to the bathroom is a big ordeal, I really miss the easy repetition. I got up, made my tea & bagel and headed out the door. Living in the country has so many perks and it is definitely the best move we’ve ever done but working for a brewery in Montreal meant an hour drive (not counting traffic) 4 days a week. As I left my driveway the roads did not seem bad. The thing was that it was extremely cold out, -30⁰C (-22⁰F) but there wasn’t much snow on the roads and visibility was fine. It was dark as night as it always is at 6:30am. I was on my regular route which is one of those little country highways that only have two lanes (one for each direction) and on both sides were ditches separating the road from the open fields that go as far as the eye can see. There was what they call blowing snow on the ground. They look like patches of dust sprinkled on the pavement, being pushed around by the wind and there was just enough of it to get stuck in the traction of your tire and then let the ice do the rest.

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The devil himself was with me that morning in the form of black ice, hidden underneath this drifting snow. Some people believe there was something else out there with me because frankly it is unbelievable that I survived what happened next. My tiny Honda Insight hit this patch of black ice and completely lost control at the exact moment a truck was passing in the opposite lane. I remember feeling my steering wheel go limp. If you have ever been driving in heavy rain and you hydroplane while over a large puddle or if you have driven in the mud and the car pulls you in a certain direction, this is a very similar feeling. Total loss of control and autonomy. I remember the bright lights of the truck and the sound of his horn and I remember the car dragging me into the truck and saying “Oh, fuck.” as everything went black.

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Everything after this point feels like a distant bad dream, one that you had many nights ago but left an impression that you will never forget. It’s blurry but still there. I was in a dark place and couldn’t move. I just remember being in excessive amounts of pain and groaning. One of the many factors that saved my life is there was a man who worked at a garage on this street and he heard the accident and came right away. He put blankets on me and tried to keep me awake while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He also took my phone and called my wife. The driver of the 18 wheeler was in shock and had this man from the garage not been there I’m not sure I would be here typing this.

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I wish this story gets easier from this point but I’m afraid it doesn’t. There were so many things that went wrong that day that had me staring death in the face but there were also just as many things that went right. I am so very lucky because even after all of these vital ingredients come together to make the perfect storm that will change our lives forever, I can wake up and say I’m still here.

The Accident Part 2 – “We’re Not Out Of The Woods Yet”

Since I don’t remember most of this part, my beautiful & brilliant wife, Éloïse will, as always, do the heavy lifting here and I will tell the story through her perspective. There is no way I could do justice by trying to describe her but I hope you will get a glimpse of the kindness and strength that keeps me going every day.

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She woke up that morning at exactly 6:58am to her phone ringing. It was my name on the screen but when she answered it wasn’t my voice and immediately she knew something was wrong. It was the man from the garage who was first on the scene and he told her that I was in a head on collision and stuck, but conscious. She asked where it happened and immediately got in the car. When she got to where the highway intersects with our street, she saw three police cars pass by her and she knew that this had to be for me. When she arrived, the police luckily wouldn’t let her pass. The officer kept face and told her that I was fine. She was told that I needed to be transported to the nearest hospital and should follow the ambulance. What we found out later was that while my car was pinned underneath the front of the truck, they used the jaws of life to get me out. All of this took about an hour and a half while I was losing quite a bit of blood.

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When she arrived at the hospital, she still didn’t know what was going on or the nature of my injuries. My mother got to the hospital as Elo anxiously awaited a doctor and more of my family waited outside. When the emergency room physician finally came to see them in the family room, he said the words “We’re not out of the woods yet” which shook through the spine of Elo all the way to her core. “What do you mean out of the woods? When were we ever in the woods??” she thought, in disbelief. After multiple hours they finally brought my wife to the emergency room and before they let her in she was told in passing that the accident was a head on with an 18 wheeler. No one had ever mentioned that the other vehicle was a truck. The gravity of the situation all seemed to dawn on Élo like a ton of bricks. It was becoming more and more evident that this event would forever change our lives.

After first asking if she was sensitive to blood, they let her see me or what was a bloody, cut up, black eyed, fragment of me that was heavily sedated but still conscious. “How do I look?” I asked, acting like a drunken fool. Then maybe I got a hold of myself and immediately asked how the other driver was. While we spoke, they were sowing up my face and giving me blood transfusions. They then brought me into the operating room and explained to Élo the risks involved for the upcoming surgeries..

As they worked on my two open legs, I was induced into a coma and given a breathing tube while they also fought to stabilize me. Élo, my mother, my two brothers & my sister-in-law came back to our house where they stayed and waited due to COVID-19 protocols. That night, they received constant phone calls with updates about my condition and I can only imagine what it must of been like sitting by the phone all night waiting and receiving one set of bad news after another dreading that the next phone call will be everyone’s worst nightmare. Sounds like hell on earth. But slowly they got the full picture of my injuries which I will get into later. Due to the expertise of the entire staff and the strength of my family, they found a bit of hope in each phone call and because of that, I’m still here.

The Accident Part 3 – My Father Saved My Life

I have little moments that I remember, of maybe waking up or maybe dreaming, it’s tough to say. One moment I saw my mom, but in my drug induced state she looked to me like an old man who had no hair and resembled Brad Pitt in the movie Benjamin Button. (Sorry mom!) Other moments where I had dreams that I was in extreme amounts of pain and yelling at the top of my lungs and a nurse told me “Zachary, all your doing is waking up the other patients, shut up and go to sleep. I already gave you your medication!” (Never happened, the staff was so kind and empathetic). What did actually happen was, at one moment I woke up and tried to whisper something in my mom’s ear and she said “I can’t hear you, Zack” and I responded “That’s because you’re deaf”. Everyone erupted in laughter but still, why do mothers always get the blunt end of it? My brother Dave also got a jab from drugged up Zack when at one point he said something to me and I very quickly answered “Shut up, Dave”. Sounds just rude now but I guess sometimes the most unexpected answer is the funniest of them, especially during really tough times.

After 4 days in an induced coma I regained consciousness. The first thing I said was “Where’s dad?”.

My father, Terry Heuff passed away in 2017 from gallbladder cancer. He was a strong, virtuous man who bravely fought for his life for four years. His strength and the way he held his head high, for his family, was absolutely inspiring and resonated to the point where today, while trying to persevere in my own struggles, I ask myself “how would dad handle this?”. But, those four years were also incredibly difficult and watching the head of our family get taken away in such a terrible way was the most difficult thing I ever had to go through. Every day after we lost him, I would wake up hoping that it was all just a nightmare and every day I was disappointed.

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It should be noted that I grew up in an atheist household. I am not a believer and nor was my father. Even at the end, he held his convictions.

When I woke up, the last thing I remembered was seeing my father with a bright light behind him. There was no one else in this place; we didn’t talk and he was about one meter from me. Then he said “It’s not your time”. That’s all. What strikes me the most is how different this was from all the other memories or dreams I had before or after the coma. Everything else I remember was so vague and distant, like reading a magazine in the dark. As your eyes adjust and focus, you can make out some of it but the picture as a whole is still far from clear. But this was crystal clear. I can remember seeing the details of his hair. He wasn’t sick, he looked strong and healthy with a full beard. The light behind him wasn’t blinding but warm and welcoming. Even after waking up, with all the drugs I was taking, nothing was this vivid.

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Through out my stay at the hospital, almost every doctor or nurse talked about how lucky I was and some said to me, “there must be someone looking out for you”. Most people don’t walk away from what I did.

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I don’t claim to know what any of this means and I know that I probably will never know. I was completely engulfed by this near death experience for many weeks after the accident and only now I’m starting to be able to move on and not think about it everyday. But the questions keep pouring in: Did I see my father as an angel? Since my body was in such a bad shape, was my brain working in overdrive and I just saw what I needed to see? Was this vision from the coma or was it while I was pinned in my car, bleeding out? Either way, real or hallucination, my father saved my life. Maybe a guardian angel is just someone who’s memory is so strong and had a personality that impacted you so profoundly that in a moment when you need that extra push more than anything, they are there. He was there, in some shape or form to bring me back to my family and he is the reason why, I’m still here.