Mystery in the hills It was a bright and beautiful Sunday morning on the hilly plains of the cool suburban town of Mampong. I awoke to the sounds of birds chirping and crickets creaking from the bushes surrounding my two-storey bungalow. As I opened my eyes and managed to crawl out of bed, I had only one agenda on my mind: to make it to church that morning. It neither mattered that my musculoskeletal system was in defiance to this religious routine of mine; nor that each movement was a reminder of the fatigue and soreness of my muscles and joints. I quickly took a glance at the samsung phone lying on my bedside table. Thankfully I had not been called to attend to any sick child or adult during the night. That was a first! Then why was I so tired this morning? I bent down to pick up my stethoscope from the floor and toppled over three feeding bottles, the last of them, half empty. The sound startled the 18 month old chocolate-skinned boy still sleeping in my bed. I quietly dragged myself to the bathroom. Washing down took longer than usual. My mind seemed to join my body in the protest. “Just stay home and rest!” it seemed to yell at me. Having been trained to always lay myself aside to care for my patients' needs first, my body was used to constantly being ignored. Today was clearly not going to be an exception. “Going to church?” My husband asked as I walked out of the bathroom. He had just returned from morning rounds on the hospital ward, a walking distance from our bungalow. “Yeah” I replied. “Coming along?” I asked. “No” he replied. “I am tired.” The drive to the capital city was 35 minutes. Getting dressed became an ordeal. I could not seem to settle on any particular attire. The one I finally chose ended up being burnt under the pressing iron. It was time to leave. I stooped into the still new black ASX SUV, a gift from my parents for graduating medical school in a foreign land, to ensure the Baby was strapped down. Strapping down, I said a miniature prayer. We took off. The first sight to greet us was the coffin craftsman with his various coffins on display infront of his grass thatched, bamboo- pillared shop, situated just opposite to the hospital entrance. Next we bypassed houses of different structure, shapes and sizes: some made with concrete mortar, others with clay. There were various goods for sale on display in front of many households; most of them farm produce. The most unusual thoughts run through my mind as I was driving on those smooth asphalt roads. The first was more of a suggestion as we bypassed one of the many churches in Mampong: “Why don't you stop here, and attend one of these churches in spite of driving all the way to Accra?” I found this thought odd. Why would I ever want to do that? To begin with, I hardly knew these people. Secondly, I was an ‘Actionite', meaning I was a member of Action Chapel International, a rather prestigious, charismatic church based in Ghana. Furthermore, I rarely got the opportunity to attend Sunday services these days. I put on the radio to bring my mind back from ‘overdrive'. There was some cool, soothing music that just did the trick. Shortly after that came the voice of Bishop T.D. Jakes blasting through the air waves. We bypassed a pack of children walking on the roadside, being directed by two or more adults. Beyond this point, we were almost in Accra. An erratically moving taxi cab upstream from us caught my eye. It charged straight into a four by four land cruiser about 900 feet from us, missing it by inches as both drivers swerved to avoid collision. The land cruiser sped off. Upon the sheer blink of my eye, I heard a very loud resounding CRASH, within inches of my very face, and felt a great, quick rotating force that turned me through an angle of 90 degrees in the horizontal plane. Then another ‘crash', equally forceful,behind me. Then I heard the most sinister cry of laughter ever! A second voice screamed: “I told you not to go! It is not time! There are many more things to be done, books to be written, stories to be told, many more things to be accomplished!” I blinked a few more times before I came to. Our SUV had been knocked off the road into a nearby ditch, next to a cemetery by that uncontrollably spinning taxi cab! I got down immediately at the thought of the baby. The windscreen of the taxi cab had been shattered into a million pieces, but surprisingly, frozen in place! I rushed to the other back side door realizing that the door behind me had was disfigured.I slipped on broken pieces of glass scattered on the floor and fell to the ground, my hands trembling as the gravity of the situation dawned on me. But we were safe, including the heavily intoxicated taxi driver! A few pieces of glass from the taxi's shattered windscreen being embedded in our chest and neck or the sheer force from the abrupt rotation of the vehicle ripping our aorta is all it would have taken to make this story end differently. Yet we were spared!