When I was 17, I was hit by a drunk driver.
It was a Wednesday night. Just after 10:00, I got in the car to drive home from school. I had stayed late to help with play rehearsals.
The crash happened so quickly that I didn't have time to brake. I didn't have time to move my foot off of the gas pedal. The curves were so sharp that I didn't realize it was happening until that pair of headlights was over the yellow lines less than a foot away. I only lost conciousness for a split second, long enough for my car to spin around 270 degress and back over a chain link fence. My windshield was a spiderweb and my rear view mirror was cocked just so I could see my forehead rapidly swelling.
I screamed. I have never screamed like that. Completely alone, I couldn't even see where the other car might have been.
A woman came up to my car. My window was gone, so she reached her hand in and held mine. She had called 911, and she asked me if there was anyone I wanted to call. I told her my home number. My mother answered and I told her I was fine, but that I'd been in an accident. When she got to the scene about ten minutes later, she crawled into the car through the passenger door and kissed me on the cheek.
By then, the paramedics were there. They pulled me out through the passenger side and taped me to a board. They cut my clothes off in the middle of the street. That's when the shaking began. My body went into shock and I didn't stop shaking for three hours.
In the ambulance, which I shared with the man who had hit me, the paramedics started my IV. They were using the biggest needle, just in case I needed a blood transfusion. The ambulance hit a bump in the road, and the blood spilled down my arm.
At the trauma center at Fort Lewis, Washington, I was poked and prodded and declared a miracle. No broken bones, no internal bleeding and no visible brain damage, despite the golf ball sized lump on my forehead. They gave me morphine through the IV, which was amazing, and the thing that finally stopped the shaking. I was bruised all over, stiff and aching.
We left the hospital around 3:00 in the morning. As we got on the freeway, we passed a sign that said, "Don't Drink and Drive".
As I fell asleep that morning, I had nightmare after nightmare about burglars, crashes, violence, and pain.
3 comments:
This one makes my heart hurt, but it makes my heart so glad at the same time, to know you were so carefully watched over, to know you would be forever changed, in ways that only Heavenly Father could orchestrate.
I remember bringing you cookies with Nicole a few days after it happened. You were still bruised and laying on a pile of blankets on the floor, maybe in your living room. I didn't know you that well back then, but one thing I remember is that you were smiling. You have always been one of the strongest people I know. Love ya.
I can't imagine how scary that must have been. Or how it could affect you even now. Sometimes I ask the Lord over and over WHY certain things in my life had to happen and why I'm paying for the mistakes of others even now. And I never get clear-cut answers that explain everything, but one thing I've been told time and time again is that my suffering, if I handle it well, will bless the lives of others because I will be able to aid them with compassion and an understanding they won't find elsewhere. I don't want that burden! But I'm reminded that that's the burden the Savior carries for us. And I'm supposed to be like Him. Thus the need to lift others' sorrows as best I can.
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