One minute, my 18-year-old son, Carlton, and I were in my husband’s brandnew Ford F-150 Super-Cab—Carlton thrilled to be behind the wheel—heading north in the middle lane of the interstate to pick up lunch from Babe’s Chicken Dinner House, chatting about a dream home he’d seen online. The next minute, the truck veered left toward the concrete center median.
I was about to tease my son about choosing one lane or the other when I heard him make an odd growling, gurgling sound.
“Carlton?”
His body started convulsing.
“Carlton?”
No response. Something was terribly wrong.
Only a few hours earlier, I’d been watching church online with my husband, Kevin, to start his fifty-seventh birthday. The pandemic lockdown had been lifted in Texas, but we still stayed close to home, not wanting
