incredibly grateful

I passed the first patience test but possibly failed the second.
We'd been for a meal out, and had just got onto the M61 pulling into the central lane as we'd need to take that lane shortly. There was clearly some kind of incident ahead and the traffic ground to a halt. After a few minutes I turned off the engine and we waited really calmly for half an hour or so, enjoying the 80s music on the radio. There was no heating and it was only 1 degree so after a while we decided to put the engine back on so we could warm up a bit. Only it wouldn't start. The headlights are automatic and so had been on all that time and drained the battery. Numerous attempts and still nothing and now the cars in front were beginning to move.

I put on my hazards and rang, a bit panicky by now, my roadside recovery people. And at that point an angel pulled up and asked if we'd like help pushing the car onto the hard shoulder. I was, and still am, so incredibly grateful to her. My brakes are controlled electronically and there was a worrying few moments where we just couldn't get the automatic brake off, but somehow (and I'm still not sure how), we did and they pushed me onto the hard shoulder. My boyfriend currently has a cracked rib. I'm grateful to him too, it's not really what you need to be doing when you have a cracked rib.

For a while I sat there with my foot jammed on the brake pedal as otherwise it kept rolling backwards (scary much?) til my boyfriend suggested we just left it in gear, and then we clambered out. And then I shuddered as I watched car after car thunder round the corner at over 70 miles an hour. If we'd still been in that central lane I can't see how it wouldn't have ended any other way than disasterously.

The rescue truck came and quickly jump started it and we made our way back. I still haven't quite returned to normal levels of cortisol. But I can't stay up too late as I have blackpool work to get to in the morning. I do feel incredibly grateful tho.