Bill was two thousandths of a second from running the first doorslammer five-second pass. The season was running short. In Virginia, he had already posted the fastest-ever mph. But the track was questionable for breaking the ET record. He went for it anyway. First round bye run. Nothing to lose. Everything to gain.
At about 800 feet, the engine dropped the crank. The flames were immediate. And they were not slowing down. The car was still moving. Through the finish line. Running in the 6.1s at around 215 mph. On fire. Bill could see nothing.
He drifted left. Scraped the wall. Came to a stop. Flames blazing. Building. Reaching high into the sky. The car was not going anywhere. Neither was Bill. Not yet.
His first thought was to get out of the belts cleanly. He did. Muscle memory. Thousands of runs. Thousands of times unbuckling. Even blind in a fire, the hands know what to do. Belts off.
Then the door wouldn't open.
In that moment, Bill was convinced the car was pressed against the wall. No room to get out. In reality, there was space. But the door was melting. The heat was warping the panel. The fiberglass was sticking. The door that was supposed to be his escape route was sealing itself shut.
Plan B. Climb over the transmission tunnel. Get to the passenger door. Get out the other side.
That's when his body stopped working.
No dramatic visions. No life flashing before his eyes. No tunnel of light. None of the things people describe when they talk about near-death experiences. Just nothing. His body quit. His mind registered what was happening. He was about to die in a burning race car at a drag strip in Virginia. Two thousandths from a five-second pass. And he accepted it. And he faded away.
Shortly after, Jeff Brozovich broke the door open. The same Jeff Brozovich. The friend. The competitor. The man who did what the safety crew wouldn't. He led the extraction. Pulled Bill out of the burning car. For the second time in their shared history, Brozovich was the difference between a funeral and a comeback.
Bill's next memory was the helicopter. He couldn't breathe and didn't understand why. His nostrils were burned shut. The air he needed wasn't getting in because the passages were sealed by heat.
At the hospital, a ten-day medically induced coma. Ten days of machines breathing for him. Ten days of the medical team deciding whether he would live or die. He lived.
Later, a flashback. Being on the stretcher. Looking back at the destroyed race car. The car that was two thousandths from the first doorslammer five. The car that burned with him inside it. The car he accepted dying in.
He didn't die. Because Jeff Brozovich broke a melting door open. Because one person refused to accept what Bill had already accepted himself.
There are no words for what Jeff Brozovich did. But there are three that come close: He showed up.
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