As I drive through the heavy rain my mind travels a different path. I reflect on the events of the last week and try to make sense of them. It is unbelievable how a seemingly normal life can turn around in a second and then flip again in the next. Things that were certain are now full of doubt, and others that at first glance seemed unfathomable are suddenly within reach. At the end of it I feel like a whole new woman, or at least a different one.

A week ago I had what seemed like the worst work catastrophe of my career. The rug was pulled out from under my feet and thrown aside like a disposable bag. My biggest project was stolen and handed to an undeserving prick, and I was told to be happy about it. But not all bad comes without some good. That same day, when I was at my lowest, a guardian angel came to my rescue in the form of a gym personal trainer. She understood what I was going through and supported me with warmth and good advice. She was a sweet girl, and what happened in the showers after the workout was my fault. I should have told her I was married with two children, but I still don’t regret it. I should have stopped her. I had plenty of chances. I let it happen. The truth is I had always carried a quiet curiosity about being with women. That same hyper-sexuality that had defined me since I was a teenager had the potential to jump genders, but I had never exercised it. In that moment, wrapped in the heavy mist of the steaming water, I let Reena kiss me. I allowed her to take me completely and bring me to ecstasy. It was exactly what I needed then. That is all it was.

Now, a week later, it feels like a distant but vivid dream. I still fantasize about it when I am alone in the shower, yet I have made the resolution not to let it happen again. I changed gyms the next morning to make sure I never bump into her. Either way, I have more pressing matters. Marc, my husband, seems distant, and it started the same day. He works later upstairs. Sometimes he takes a second too long to answer when I talk about the kids or the weekend. Once I caught him standing at the living-room window after dark, looking across the street at Katherine’s house with an expression I could not read. I wonder if he can somehow sense that I was unfaithful, or if my own demeanor toward him has changed. Regardless, I will not let this slip affect us. I will fix it. I have planned a romantic getaway with him next weekend, a ski resort in the mountains. There is nothing that three days of skiing, candlelit dinners, and a hot jacuzzi cannot mend.

I was turning back to my strategy for reclaiming the Nikon project when a sudden flash of lights yanked me out of my own head and into the car I was driving through the downpour. Two huge white circles were approaching fast. All the air left my lungs. I gasped and only had time to steer hard right at the last second before the vehicle behind those lights struck. My car left the pavement and dropped into the ditch. Good thing I drive an SUV. The front wheels hit the inner bank, bounced, and the momentum carried us forward until the vehicle jammed between two trees and into a thicket of brush.

When I opened my eyes, white dust floated everywhere. The airbag had punched the breath out of me. Sharp, white-hot pain flared in my right thigh, a deep, pulsing throb that made my stomach lurch. I reached down and felt warm wetness spreading under my fingers. The thick branch that had punched through the windshield ran the full length of the cabin. Another few centimetres and it would have taken me. A thinner side branch was still buried in the meat of my thigh. Cold rain poured through the cracked sunroof, plastering my hair to my face and soaking my clothes until the fabric clung like a second skin. My nipples tightened hard against the wet top from the sudden cold. I couldn’t stop shivering. The tremors ran from my shoulders all the way down into the injured leg.

I ripped my top sideways into a long strip and tied it three inches above the wound. The pressure of the tourniquet was immediate and ugly, a tight, burning band that made the pain sharper for a second before the bleeding slowed. I stripped off the sports bra, wadded it against the puncture, and used the straps to bind it hard. The fabric was already soaked with rain and blood. My torso was completely bare now, skin tight with cold, every breath making my chest rise and fall against the wet air.

I was trapped left and right, without a phone. At the moment I felt most desperate a different guardian angel arrived.

I heard knocking on the trunk. Through the fogged rear window I saw a figure. The person tried the trunk latch, then began hitting the glass in frustration. I reached for the button by the wheel and pressed it. A click sounded and the hatch began to rise. Cold air rushed in.

I yelled toward the back. “Help me! Please! I’m injured and trapped.”

The voice that answered was familiar. “Clara, wait, I’ll try to go around.”

I knew that voice. “Katherine? Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me. Wait, let me get around.”

“No, the doors are blocked and there’s a tree branch inside the car. I’m stuck in the seat.”

She paused. “I understand. Okay. I’ll crawl through the back then and get you out. Wait.”

Katherine climbed into the trunk of the SUV. It was not graceful. She was sixty-one, the space was narrow, and the car sat at an awkward angle. She cursed softly when her knee hit the seat frame, then scrambled over the rear seats with visible effort and settled behind me. I do not know how she managed it, but I am grateful she did.

It took her time to reach me. There was no space to see her, but I heard her in the seat behind me and then felt her hand squeeze past the side of my head and wrap around me, across my bare breasts. Her palm was warm, almost hot against my rain-chilled skin.

“Are you sure you’re okay? Does anything hurt?” she asked.

“I’m bleeding. A branch punctured my leg. I need to get out of here, Katherine. I’m so cold, I must have lost a lot of blood.”

I heard her testing the doors without success. She looked around the cabin.

“I have an idea. Recline your seat all the way back. You’ll be able to slide out flat and we can both get out the same way I came in.”

It was a solid plan. I felt foolish for not thinking of it myself instead of panicking like a child.

I pulled the lever but the seat would not move. The car was tipped forward. Katherine counted to three and together we forced the backrest flat. It was clumsy and took longer than it should have.

I stretched my arms back. Katherine pulled. When I looked down I saw the dark pool of blood where my leg had rested.

After more struggling and pulling I was free of the wreck and inside Katherine’s car, stretched across the back seat with my injured leg extended. The bleeding had stopped.

She climbed in beside me and told me she had already called the police. They were on their way. She had been behind me on the road, she explained, coming home from a late coffee with a friend. She knew my car. When the rain got heavy she started following, assuming I was heading home. When she saw the swerve and the sudden absence of my lights she continued only far enough to stop safely, then reversed along the shoulder until she found the broken brush.

Suddenly I felt exposed, naked from the waist up, my large brown nipples hard from the cold rain. Katherine noticed and offered to hold me for warmth. She had no extra jacket or blanket.

“Katherine, you saved me. How did you even know I went off the road?”

She repeated the short version while her hands moved over my arms and shoulders, trying to rub circulation back into me. I was pressed against her, skin to damp clothing.

“You’re still shaking, Clara. Come closer.”

“Katherine, you’re my hero. I was so scared. I thought that was it.” My voice broke and the tears came.

“It’s okay, dear. You’re safe now.” She held me tighter.

I did feel safe in her arms. Because of that I let everything out, crying, sobbing. She kept murmuring that it was all right, rubbing my shoulders and arms to keep me warm.

After a few minutes the panic eased. In her effort to calm and warm me, Katherine’s hands moved from my arms to my chest, then to my breast, and began circling my hard nipple.

I noticed.

For a second I went completely still inside. Is she aware of what she’s doing? No. It couldn’t be. She’s a sweet grandma. That would be terrible. I’m imagining things. This is involuntary, just the same comforting motion she was using on my arm, only it landed somewhere else.

Her voice stayed exactly the same, soft, soothing, grandmotherly.

“It’s okay, dear. You’re safe now. Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

But the circles didn’t stop. If anything they grew a little firmer. The pad of her thumb pressed more deliberately, rubbing the stiffened peak, then giving it the lightest pinch between thumb and finger before smoothing over it again. The rhythm was no longer absent-minded. It had purpose.

The stimulation did not match the sweet, comforting tone of her voice at all. That mismatch made my head spin. Confusion flooded me. This is wrong. She’s helping me. She’s being kind. I should stop her. I should say something. Guilt and regret rose hot in my throat. I was taking advantage of her kindness, twisting an act of rescue into something it was never meant to be.

And still the pleasure kept building, sharp and clean and undeniable. Each slow rub and gentle pinch sent another pulse of heat straight down between my legs. My body didn’t care about the guilt. It only cared about the warm, wet pressure of her fingers and the solid heat of her body holding me up.

I freed one arm from around her back and let my hand settle lightly over my pubis, needing just a little more. She felt the movement and must have taken the soft sound that escaped me for pain, because her other hand pressed gently against my lower belly while the first kept up those slow, devastating circles and pinches on my breast.

“What is it, Clara? Are you hurt in your thigh?”

“Uhmmm...” was all I could manage.

The climax arrived fast and almost violent, less pure pleasure than a sudden, full-body release of everything locked inside me since the impact. My thighs tensed hard against the seat. A sharp, high sound tore out of my throat before I could stop it. The orgasm was short, intense, and left me trembling harder than the cold had, every muscle in my core clenching and then going slack. For a few seconds the only things I could feel were the residual pulses under her still-moving fingers and the solid, steady heat of Katherine’s body holding me up, along with the heavy, confused weight of regret sitting right beside the pleasure.

She froze for half a second when the police lights hit the window, then simply tightened her arms around me, still mistaking the aftershocks for another wave of pain or shock.

When they helped me out of the car and into the ambulance I gripped her wrist. My voice was raw.

“I dont know how I could ever repay you, you saved my life, Katherine”.

She replied. "Nonsense, this is the least a good neightbough can do, besides your family has always being so good to me, specially Marc, and you are so sweet."

But I insisted. "Katherine, there must be something I can do for you. Yo know what, next week, when I am all settled, come over for dinner and bring whoever you want, I want to sit with you and my family, and tell them how you came to me rescue, and before you say anything, I wont take a now for an answer"

She nodded, rain still running down her face. “I’ll be there, Clara.”

As the ambulance doors closed I lay back, the double weight of almost dying and of what my body had just done settling over me. I closed my eyes and told myself the evening would be simple: thank the neighbor who saved me, share a normal meal, and close the strange chapter.

As the ambulanced moved forward, I could see Katherine trhough the door glad, a smile had formed on the face.

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