Laura Bush Speaks from the Heart

Dazed and injured, Laura says she saw another car drive up to the scene. A man got out and tended to the injured driver. She says she thought she recognized him as Mr. Douglas, the father of her friend Mike. "Judy, my friend, kept saying: 'I think that's Mr. Douglas. I think that's the father of whoever is [lying] there," she says. "And I said, 'Well, no, it couldn't be.'"

Laura says it never occurred to her that the other driver could be her good friend. "In my mind, I prayed the whole time: ... 'Please, God. Please, God. Please, God.'"

At the emergency room, Laura's room was separated from Mike's by a curtain. "I heard Miss Douglas come in, and I could hear Mrs. Douglas crying," she says. "I really knew then, but I just hoped against hope that that was not the case."

When she got home, Laura's parents confirmed her worst fears—Mike was the driver and he was dead. "Then I did what I think maybe people did then in West Texas, which is really sort of never talked about it again."