*Please note that I share details about a traumatic event below and include a vivid photo when I was in the hospital, so please close this post if offended, and tune back in for the next installment in this series.*
It felt like a monster crushed me from above. My vision went dark, not blacked out, but a dark abysmal brown. I could feel the light and warmth of the midday summer sun trying to seep through my eyelids, and when the back of my body, the full force of it, struck against the windshield I registered what was happening, I was hit by a car, and it wasn’t over yet.
I was stuck to the windshield, my right shoulder pressed against the glass, my right and left arms through it; not yet in pain, I could see and hear the hum of the 5 Freeway just hundreds of feet to the east, and vowed, I will not end here, not like this. I used every ounce of energy and power in my body to throw the car off of me. I fought, believing it was possible to throw it over my head, but adrenaline didn’t make me super-human, instead it gave me the will to rip my arms free from the windshield, (or hood, whatever it was that pasted me in place), and as the car slowed, I peeled myself away from it, tearing my left arm to shreds in the process, lacerating every extensor tendon in my hand.
I stumbled off the car, my left leg and foot obliterated by the impact, yet functional enough to carry me to the ground, to safety, although dizzy, gushing blood from my limp left wrist, aware that my life had changed, I knew I was safe, alive, and not alone.
The man who hit me did not drive away. I asked him to call 911, but I called them, too, he couldn’t find his phone, and then a park ranger appeared, asked me questions, bleeding, cloudy vision, the operator asked me questions, bleeding, sirens wailed faintly and then triumphantly closer, bleeding, more people, more questions, saying my name, again, and again, cloudy vision, and then clear-sighted as the tourniquets strapped around my arms must’ve worked because I could see… Blood everywhere.
I stood up, barely, my legs cramping and in pain, swelling, but I was safe, bleeding, not alone, safe, carefully loaded into the ambulance and protected by beefy paramedics, driven slowly to the hospital on a stuffed Friday afternoon freeway, the trauma center ER, deformed, but alive.
I spoke to my mother, then to my husband, hearing fear and love in their voices while trying to convey reassurance in mine, I was hurt, but alive, and would be okay, eventually.
Before a lot of sewing up in the ER. Photo Credit: My mom, Madelynn Miller.
The song and video is the song I was listening to when the car hit me.