Crash

A small story:

I have been in four car accidents. Well, technically, I have been in more than that, but I only count the ones where the car I was in was totaled. I was behind the wheel one of those times, and was t-boned while waiting to make a left turn. The rest, I was a passenger.

Offer to drive me places at your own peril.

Anyway, let me tell you about the worst one. My then-boyfriend and I were driving from Orange County to Long Beach, which means the 710. Locals just winced. The 710 is a horrible freeway, filled with semis going to and from the port and tourists going to the aquarium.

We're heading south , following the elderly RV ahead of us at a safe distance. It's swaying gently as it drives, like a hippo. Bungee-corded to the back is a folding lawn chair, swaying at a slightly different beat. As we watched, the bungee-cord snapped open and the chair swung off the RV; it flew towards us like a tomahawk missile.

Patrick swerved to avoid it, but the chair had hit the ground at such at angle that it still ended up in front of us, then under us. For a second, I could hear it, ping-ponging between the front wheels, rendering them pretty much useless. We began to spin out.

I remember a few moments of this. I remember the spin-out because each time I saw the center divider, we were a little closer to it. I don't remember the impact. I do remember opening my eyes, and seeing that we were now facing oncoming traffic and a truck was bearing down.

I shut my eyes again and waited for impact.

Four seconds of non-impact later, I opened my eyes. This driver had, somehow, managed to react quickly enough so not only did he not hit us, he maneuvered his truck to land in such a way that we were protected from getting smashed by any less-talented driver behind him. Within minutes, I heard sirens.

I don't remember being cut out of the car. I remember saying, "My neck and my head hurt," and thinking, "Damn it, now they're going to tie me to the head-injury board.” As I said, I had been in a lot of car accidents.

The EMTs tied me to the head-injury board.

In a crisis, I am very calm but I always get weirdly adamant about one thing. The thing itself change changes, but there is always something THAT ONLY I REALIZE IS VERY IMPORTANT. This time, it was my insurance card.

I wouldn't get in the ambulance until Patrick a) Took my purse, b) showed me he had it, and c) took out my insurance card and showed it to me. I apparently asked him to do this several times. It was at that point everyone but me agreed I probably had a concussion.

In the ambulance, the EMT monitoring my vitals and seeing that I was upset said, "Cheer up. A concussion just feels like a hangover."

I then burst into tears and wailed, "But I've never HAD a hangover!"

I then asked to see my insurance card.

I'll say this about being tied to the head-injury board; it's not comfortable, but the ER doesn't leave you around to read magazines. The next thing I remember, I was in an MRI machine. I knew I was in an MRI machine because the tech kept yelling that at me.

"YOU ARE IN AN MRI MACHINE. STOP MOVING."

"STOP MOVING, YOU ARE IN AN MRI MACHINE."

"I CAN'T GET AN MRI IF YOU KEEP MOVING AND YOU ARE IN AN MRI MACHINE AND I LIKE THE MRI MACHINE MUCH BETTER THAN I LIKE YOU."

I said in a conversational tone, "I'm sorry I keep moving, but until I turn my head I can't vomit."

I have had more MRIs than is seemly for a person as boring as I am. Until that moment, I had no idea how quickly they could get you out of one.

Having determined while I certainly wasn't in the best of health, I probably wasn't going to die immediately, I was put in a room. My neck was still being stabilized, so I stared bleakly at the ceiling and felt sorry for myself. Everything hurt.

Past experience told me everything would hurt for a while. The last time I had hurt my neck this badly, I had been nauseated for months. God damn it, I had really liked not being nauseated. Tears trickled into my hairline. A face swam into view over me.

She had the taupe affect of a bureaucrat.

I hated her.

She opened her mouth and said something. Oh, this was new. My brain swelling against my skull had rendered all human speech as watery and distant. I asked her to repeat herself, slowly.

Nothing.

This wasn't my first hospital rodeo. I took a guess and possibly shouted, "MY BOYFRIEND HAS MY INSURANCE CARD." She smiled. She then said something else. I played it back in my head, over and over.

"Parents...phone...number?"

As luck would have it, my mother had gotten out of the hospital the day before with sepsis. She couldn't walk down stairs right now, let along drive. She wasn't going to hear about this accident until I called her. I tried to look at threatening as I could at the bureaucrat.

"If you call my mother, I will check myself out and I will die on your front steps," I hissed. Or, I thought I said this and just rage-gargled at her. Either way, she swallowed nervously and asked me another question. I thought I heard it but that couldn't have been right.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"What religion are you?"

I didn't realize I was at a Catholic hospital. I thought she just wanted to convert me, because I was dying. In that second, my pain, my fear and my self-pity burnt up and out of the ashes rose the cleansing phoenix of scorn. My tears dried on my skin as I stared at her.

"I," I said slowly and carefully, "I am Druid WHAT POSSIBLE DIFFERENCE COULD IT MAKE."

I was pleased to note the sound of her footsteps. She appears to have run from the room. Don't say stupid things to me, I thought righteously, and then rang the nurse, because before I vomited again I really wanted to look at my insurance card.