Expanding Our Writing

Today in class we worked on expanding a moment in time from our memoir essay. I took the sentence "we rushed to the hospital as fast as we could" and went into detail of the car ride and the emotion that was felt inside of the car, how the weather seemed to fit the occasion, and how each car passed by as a blur. I used the clustering idea to expand my thoughts and discover new details that I believed to be lost in time, but one thing lead to another, and it all began to flow much easier.
"My mother asked us what we wanted to do, clearly non of us were stable enough to attend school for the day. "I want to go to the hospital" I stated. My mother agreed with me, she wiped the tears from her eyes with the wadded up Kleenex that she was holding tightly in her hand. She turned the key in the ignition and the engine came to life, breaking the depressing silence. We took a left out of the church parking lot, and headed towards the interstate. Cars passed by like blurs of color, the gray clouds grew darker and heavy rain drops began to fall on the windshield. Our hearts were racing, and each moment felt like an eternity. Caution was thrown to the wind as my Mother rushed through yellow lights, weaving in and out of slower traffic racing to the hospital hoping for a miracle to see our Grandmother one last time. Finally after probably the longest twenty minute car ride of my life, we made it to Gaston Memorial Hospital. The tops of the huge grey buildings seemed disappear into the clouds that hung low in the sky, resembling some type of "stairway to Heaven". We searched for a place to park and quickly found a spot near the front. I flung the door open faster than the car was shut off."