The car accident
When the narrator is picked up by the family, the father says, "I'm not taking you anywhere very fast. I've got my wife and babies here, that's why." Ironically, while the previous intoxicated drivers all brought the narrator safely to his destination, it is this sober and careful man who ends up in a head-on collision.
The truck driver
After the horrific accident, the narrator tries to get help from an oncoming truck driver. However, the truck driver does not help at all; instead, “he poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos and switched off all but his parking lights.”
Hearing voices
At the hospital, a doctor asks the narrator if he is hearing unusual sounds or voices, which the narrator denies. The reader, however, knows that he does because he describes how he can hear the boxes of cotton scream "Help us, oh God, it hurts."
Georgie removing the knife
When the narrator worked in an emergency room with his coworker Georgie, they were on drugs most of the time. Ironically, when a man is brought to the emergency room with a knife in his head, and a number of specialists debate how to approach the surgery, it is Georgie who saves the man’s life without even knowing how he did it: “When Georgie came in from prepping the patient--from shaving the patient's eyebrow and disinfecting the area around the wound, and so on--he seemed to be holding the hunting knife in his left hand.”
Angels in a blizzard
During a road trip with Georgie, the narrator walks through a blizzard because their car has broken down. He suddenly believes to see angels “ descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity.” However, it turns out that the angels were actresses on the screen of a drive-in theater.
