On a freezing winter day, when the world was covered in a thick layer of snow and ice. As the snowflakes gently fell from the sky, the quiet and lovely winter seemed fascinating.

But what was supposed to be a happy and delightful trip in such a scenic atmosphere, turned into a dreadful winter accident. It all started when my family and I visited Koh-i-Murree to see the snowfall. It was my first experience of seeing snow, so I was quite excited.

The first day of our trip was enjoyable enough. We wore thick, puffy jackets due to the freezing weather and jumped around, made snowmen and fought in snowball wars.

In the morning of the second day, my dad was taking us skiing. Since I had never gone skiing before, I was unable to contain my excitement. My father reminded me to buckle my seatbelt, but I ignored his advice as I found seatbelts uncomfortable. It was snowing heavily and my dad was unable to control the car over the deep snow, causing the vehicle to skid out of control. When the windshield shattered into a million pieces, causing the car airbag to open, hitting my dad’s head, preventing him from getting a serious injury, we all screamed out of fear. As I was not wearing a seatbelt, I slid forward from the back seat and my head got struck in the console that is in the centre of the vehicle. I felt dizzy and I am not sure what happened next.

When I came into a bit of consciousness, I heard voices and beeping noises. My forehead hurt a lot. I mustered up the courage to open my eyes and found out that I was in a hospital with plenty of white lab coat-dressed doctors scurrying around. There were also lots of beds with see-through curtains around them. The air smelt of blood, and my ears were filled with the noises of beeping of various machines, doctors chatting and newborns wailing.

A stabbing pain shot through my forehead, and fear gripped me. Where were my parents? Where was my sister? Why did I come here? Why did my forehead hurt so much? Then I had a flashback of what had happened, how I hadn’t listened to my parents’ advice about fastening my seatbelt, how the car had crashed and how my forehead hit the centre console.

Suddenly, a doc­tor came and stood beside my bed. She smiled at me and said, “I’m delighted to see you are gaining consciousness. Are you feeling any better?”

She was a sweet lady, with deep concern in her eyes. I nodded and she left. After a few minutes, she came in again, but this time with my parents and sister were with her. I was glad to see them and I hugged them tight. Other than a few bandages, my sister and parents were well because they had fastened their seatbelts, but I came to know that I was more seriously injured since I hadn’t.

For another two days, I remained hospitalised. There were stitches and a large bandage on my forehead. When I felt better, I was discharged and we took our trip back home, to Karachi.

This incident made me learn a serious lesson, that we should always follow our parents’ instructions and fasten our seatbelts since being comfortable for a short while is not worth being injured for a the time.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 30th, 2023