FYI, my sister was in an auto accident this morning. At about 6:35am, after dropping her BGF's off at the bus stop (I suppose if they were her BEST girl friend's, she would've taken them all the way to work, so we'll just have to settle for "Great" GF's).
She was heading home on Ella, crossing Airtex and the lights were out there, so the truck that was about to cross her at Ella didn't see his stop sign. He saw her too late, tried to stop and slammed into the tail end of the truck, causing her to spin a complete 360 degrees and then she rolled over twice. Jenn had her seatbelt on and the rolling caused her to slam her left temple into the driver's side window twice, hard.
Mom, who was at dialysis, called me twice at 7am, rousing me the second time. She informed me in broad strokes of what had occurred and said it so matter of factly that it didn't sound like she expected me to do anything about it. But I knew my sister was in an accident and her Karma had really sucked ass lately, so I knew I should be there. I called my assistant Teri while dressing (quick thinking had me grabbing my Justice League shirt in hopes that the image of Wonder Woman would inspire my sister toward continued life if things were indeed that bad) and she said she'd take care of the job this morning. I then fed my cat, got in my truck, called Dad FHI and took off towards the 1960 medical center.
If you've ever had someone you love involved in an accident, you know that the mind is a powerful thing. Without the grounding of facts, your mind can wander and like an artist, paint the most frightening, most horrifying pictures imaginable. The time it took me to get to the hospital, to park, to find the front desk, to realize where the emergency room was and to have a very sweet security lady escort me there as I was quickly losing control of my emotional output took what seemed like forever but was in actuality 20 minutes.
I was walked to the emergency room and instructed to wait as Jenn's name was still not in the computer, which meant (I was told) that I beat her here. This frightened me even more. Why the massive amount of preparation and what untold damage had been done that would prolong her trip here, I worried. Insanely, I attempted to call her. Honestly, it was a stupid thing to do, but I felt helpless not know where she was and what condition she was in. Did I really expect her to be able to answer given that she was either in the back of an ambulance or, pray tell, at the hospital, where cel phones were considered barely tolerable?! On top of that, who in their right mind would answer a phone while strapped to a gurney?
My mock answer: "Oh, yeah, hey, howareya? Me? Oh, I was just in an auto accident and my truck is totalled and I can't feel my head and I'm strapped to a gurney. But I haven't had breakfast yet, so I don't know, I guess I'm having an okay morning, how about you?" Honestly.
She answered, "Oh, hey, Mike, howyadoin? Oh, yeah, I had a little accident and I'm being brought in to the ER now and, oooh! The walls are beige!"
Good sign. She was not only talking, but joking too. (I found out later that she wasn't joking. The walls really were beige.)
So a few minutes later I (again) beat her to room 6A (damn that subconscious sibling rivalry)where I'm told she'll be brought in just a minute. So I sit down. I shuffle. I'm nervous and anxious and my stupid imagination starts to kick in again. So what if she was talking and joking. She could be in shock. She could be missing a limb, she could be...
They brought her in strapped to this stretcher type thing and if it wasn't for her aching head that she kept a hand to for fear of it falling off, she would be totally appreciating the bondage situation she was in. Worse yet, the "they" what brought her in was comprised of two of the most chipper personalities I've ever met. The two red shirted EMT's were talking, laughing, joking a mile a minute. It was like they were paid to be chipper, as if being in this surreal state of happy forced anyone around them to forget the automatic feelings of tragedy and helplessness they were stuck in and laugh with them. I later found out that they were so chipper because they've been up and at it for 14 hours collectively. I'm trying to keep my sarcastic comments to a minimum.
When it was just my sister and I, we talked about the accident. We simultaneously shed tears about how much worse it could have been. How she had considered bringing Nibby (one of her beloved dashund children) with her this morning but then changed her mind. And how horrible going through an accident it is. The unreal, dreamlike quality, the terrible rending of metal, the violence of being thrown and shoved about like a rag doll in an earthquake. And the pain. The pain she was in was intense and growing. A nurse returned, played pop quiz (hotshot) and rolled her off to perform a catscan on her already throbbing temple. (Hey, I could write porn!)
What came next deserves words spoken by the guy who does the intro for the Twilight Zone episodes. When she returned, a police officer also showed. He asked about her condition, asked what had happened and then asked if she had insurance. When the answer in the resoundingly negative came, he shrugged his shoulders and said that he had given the other guy a ticket for not obeying a stop sign and that he was going to have to give her a ticket for failure to maintain financial responsibility. I was outraged! Of course, I felt righteous indignation and offended as MY sister was just in an accident. Jenn, felt fine about it. Like, to her, it was simply the next natural course of action. The cop even apologized for it and she said, "Oh, it's okay, don't even worry about it!"
Then, while he explained the process, things got weirder. The guy that hit my sister, was suddenly there. He had come in to make sure she was alright. Jenn recongized him, saying, "Oh, hey, are you okay?" He answered "yeah" and reflected the concern back at her. I sat there, watching him, thinking... "Alright...., GAY!" because the moment felt eerily awkward. Then a nurse appeared, asking if he was family. He told her he had been involved in the accident that wound up with her here (pointing to my sister) and the nurse immediately, but politely asked him to wait in the waiting room. Something about conflict of interest. Then, after the officer was done with his explanation, he proceeded to instruct me to please follow him outside so he could process the ticket for her since she obviously wasn't going anywhere. My heart dropped and my fudge factory hole puckered at the prospect of this guy possibly checking out MY credentials. I wasn't even sure if I was in violation of anything, but being a "Murphy" I certainly didn't want to give Karma an easy shot at my boys, if you can dig the message I'm sending.
So I followed the officer to the coffee pot first (his suggestion) and then outside to his patrol car where I got to sit up front (kewl!). He proceeded to ask me a couple of questions and then did a great show of back and forth, cutting, pasting and data entry on his "tough" book (a laptop incased in stern enough material to protect it from wear and tear). He then printed out a ticket in Jenn's name with instruction that she show up at the Police substation in the Cypress neighborhood in the next 30 days to pay for the ticket. He said that they're really nice there and they would even make out a payment plan if she couldn't initially afford the ticket.
As I slowly and cautiously, the whole time smiling, left the police cruiser and made my way back inside the ER, I wondered if I was going to run into the guy that hit my sister. I walked through the waiting room glancing left and right for the bastard that everyone, that's the nurses, the EMT's, the police officer, the front desk lady and even the VICTIM (my sister) all thought was nice. He was no where to be found which was good because, acoustically speaking if anyone asks, I would've made a not so nice scene right then and there, but really in my head, I would've just ignored him.
So then, my sister was released. We left the ER with some paperwork, we stopped at a gas station at my sister's behest (for smokes, I'm an ashamed enabler despite my soapbox) and at Mickey D's for some breakfast. I then took her home and we talked and laughed at how we were gonna take pictures of her Frankenberry sized head and post them on the internet.
Thank you God. Enjoy.
