A black Nissan Rogue pounded the pavement on the highway between Syracuse and Tecumseh, Nebraska. The car’s driver was going home from a friend’s going away party. Music blaring, but their speed was appropriate, right on the limit. Pouring rain blanketed the Nebraska countryside, and the driver’s sight. Behind the wheel was senior Cutter Harris.

Just as a deer leaped onto the highway, Harris swerved off of it. 

He took a nosedive into the nearest ditch. Harris recalls one of his favorite movies: “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”, before landing into a ditch and flipping his car three times.

The bumper was gone. The hood was beyond repair. The front driver-side wheel was lodged into the body of the vehicle. The back seats were completely exposed, the left side of the trunk wasn’t there, and Harris’ Lincoln Southwest Show Choir bumper sticker was ripped in half. 

“I got absolutely totaled,” Harris said. “If I had been in the passenger seat, I wouldn’t have gotten out of the car.”

Not only did Harris get himself out of his totaled car, but he also walked himself to the ambulance, three car lengths away. Harris’ mind didn’t race, the shock in his body carried every step.

“I don’t remember what was going through my head during the crash. My first thought  after was ‘Mom is gonna kill me for crashing the car!’”, Harris said. “Followed by me getting the answer to the life-long question: Does the radio stay on when you crash? The answer is yes.”

Harris was rushed to the hospital. He was shocked by his own awareness. After an hour-and-15-minute drive from Syracuse to Lincoln, Harris docked at Bryan West Hospital. After being declared stable, he was sent back to take X-rays. 

The X-Rays revealed what was, at the time, a massive relief. Harris only suffered a compression fracture on his L1 vertebrae, it seemed Harris’ vehicle took nearly all of the damage he could have sustained. Harris was out of the hospital a day and a half after the crash. He was left with a back brace and hope, then sent on his way. One question remained: Should Cutter Harris be alive?

“Honestly, no. I shouldn’t. I think the impact alone between me and the steering wheel should’ve caused some brain damage,” Harris said. “I was lucky enough to hit my chest with the steering wheel. Plus every airbag, except for the one in the steering wheel, went off.”

Fate aside, Cutter Harris was alive. He was temporarily without movement in his back, but alive. The damage that caused the severed bumper, bent hood, and ripped trunk could have been inflicted on Harris. Instead, he was in a brace. Life with a brace was no pleasure cruise, but it was better than what could’ve happened to Harris.

“The brace really opened my eyes to how hard it is to go about my daily life without my back,” Harris said. “I couldn’t even bend over to pick anything off the floor, not to mention how hot it was in the brace.”

The crash was only the start of Harris’ troubles. He’s gone through countless visits to the doctor’s office to monitor his spine, and multiple time extensions with his brace that stretched his time from six to 11 weeks.

Finally, on Oct. 30, after 77 days, Cutter Harris finally got his brace removed. With free movement in his back, and a temporary ban from driving his mother’s car and a new Ford Bronco, life returned to normal for Harris, as in his words:

“You just gotta move on.”