The Car Accident

It happened three months ago, and it pressed the "Pause" Button on my Life.

I was out running errands when apparently I ran a red light.

I do remember part of it: I remember seeing the light turn red just as I was passing through it, and I remember a black car rapidly approaching on the right.

I had that "Oh, fuck!" moment where I realized that I was not going to be able to avoid impact, and squeezed my eyes shut as I heard the screech of metal on metal. I think I felt the impact, but everything else drifted as my consciousness swept it all from view.

An older woman with white hair and large brown eyes was tapping on the window.

I stared at her for a moment and then pressed the window control. As it was scrolling down, I thought, "Why is she tapping on my window? My car is still running. I must have stopped for some reason..." My foot wasn't on the brake.

I looked at the dashboard.

The car wasn't in park.

The engine was running, though, and I wasn't going anywhere.

"Did anyone call 911?" the lady out my window asked.

I stared at her.

It felt like some kind of test.

"No?" I suggested.

I looked around.

I seemed to be sitting at an angle, right in the intersection.

Oh.

That's right.

This is an accident.

I ran the light at the four-way stop.

Right?

Maybe the lady was the person who hit me.

She went back to a black truck.

She apparently was calling 911.

The sky was cloudy but there was no rain yet. I left my window open so that I wouldn't have to roll it down again when the police came.

Wait.

It was a black car that hit me.

Where was the car?

I looked to the right, the direction I remembered the car coming from. 

The entire right side of my car was smashed inward, air bags deployed and seeming to make a hissing sound. Or was that my engine? The radiator?

I looked over my shoulder toward the back right, trying to see the other car, but then I saw the busted out back window and the smattering of hexagon bits of glass overlaying everything. 

I saw my  right red blinker pressed up against the back of my car. It seemed that my trunk had somehow folded back and broken the window...

I picked up my purse which miraculously was still sitting in the passenger seat and pulled out my cell phone to text my boyfriend and my sister and her husband: "I've been in an accident!"

"M'am?" 

There was a police officer bending toward me and peering through my open window. 

I pressed the "Home" button on my phone and shoved it back into the purse.

I put the purse back on the passenger seat.

He asked if I was all right.

"Yes?"

He seemed dissatisfied with this answer, because then he asked, "Do you know where you're at? Do you know what's happened?"

"Uh, in my car? There was an accident... It was my fault. I ran the light..."

"Do you know your name?"

I stared at him. Why was he asking me that?

He held up two fingers. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two?"

"Do you know what day it is?"

I considered this question for a moment, then said slowly, "It's Wednesday."

"M'am, there's going to be an ambulance here soon. Just wait for a few more minutes, and we'll get you some help." He took out a little notebook and scribbled something on a sheet of paper. Handing me the paper, he added "Put this somewhere where you can find it again later. How about your purse?"

He nodded at the passenger seat where I'd left my purse.

It seemed funny that it was still sitting there when everything else was so out of place. I opened the front pocket and slipped the piece of paper inside.

I waited, just as the officer said.

Soon there was an EMT peering in through the open window frame. "Ma'am? Are you all right?"

There it was again.

"I guess so...I think I am."

"Can you tell me your name?"

Oooh! Oooh! Wait a minute... I know this one!

Um...

"Heather...Hockin?"

"Do you know what day this is?"

Oh, what a relief! I knew this one; I'd just answered it a moment ago...

"Wednesday?"

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Two!"

Oh, wait. 

Wait, that was the other guy...

"Three."

"Ma'am, you've been in an accident. Would you like to be taken to the hospital?"

All I could think about was the time my ex thought he was having a heart attack and called the ambulance, and then found out that it was just an anxiety attack, only now he owed a huge bill for the ambulance ride.

"Um, I guess so? Do you think I need to go to a hospital?"

"You've been in an accident, ma'am. I would recommend that you go to the hospital to make sure you're not seriously injured, but I need to know if it's all right with you that we take you to the hospital. Would you like us to take you to the hospital to get yourself checked out for injuries?"

I hesitated.

I didn't want to owe a huge hospital bill.

I didn't think I was hurt.

But the EMT seemed to think it was a good idea.

I glanced over at the air bags dangling down on the right, quivering in the breeze from my open window and the broken window in the back. 

"Okay. You can take me to the hospital."

They had me open my door and then they rolled me onto a stretcher. I remember seeing the faces of the EMTs silhouetted by the clouds in the sky, and little drops of rain falling onto my face as they encased me in a neck brace. I tried to roll my eyes back toward where the other car must be surely sitting, but they hoisted me up and carried me to the ambulance.

Inside I had one EMT on either side of my body. One was putting in an IV while the other was holding my arm and checking my pulse and blood pressure.

"Ma'am, do you know what your name is?"

For some reason that question was getting harder to answer every time someone asked it.

I waited for the answer to float back up from the murky depths of my Magic 8-Ball brain.

"Heather."

"And your last name?"

Shit.

Okay, just a minute...

"Hockin..."

I remember being taken out of the ambulance and rushed across a parking area. I knew it was a parking area because of the grey cement ceiling and then the sensation of stepping into an elevator and going up. We were inside the hospital, and when it opened into the hallway I saw that same confusion of passing under ceiling tiles and florescent lights that they show in the movies when someone's had an accident and are being pushed through the halls toward the Emergency ward. 

Then I was in a room with machines and lots of people, all speaking Hospital Language more quickly than I could catch most of the words.

There was a woman in a breath mask and dark blue scrubs talking to me. I could see her great green eyes and the freckles on her nose, and wisps of blonde-highlighted hair. "Ma'am, can you give us your name?"

It came in really slowly this time. 

I kept feeling as if I was getting a pop-quiz on some kind of test that I hadn't studied for.

Why did they think I had the answers?

"...Heather?"

I waited to see if I was right.

Then I remembered that I was the only one who knew the answer.

"Hockin?"

"Heather, we're going to check you for injuries now..."

I don't remember what else she said after that. The room seemed dim and the voices and shapes of people were like ghosts to me because I couldn't turn my head and see who or what any of them belonged to. 

At some point I was wheeled into some other room and rolled onto another stretcher. A table, I guess. Some of the people would talk to me, and some of them didn't. 

"Heather, we're going to do a CAT Scan on you now. Try to hold still. It will only take a couple of moments."

"She's got on a sports bra."

"Good. She can keep that on."

"Woah! It looks like she wet her pants."

That last voice felt too far away for me to be mortified over it.

They wheeled me down another hallway and into another room, brighter than the one I'd just been in, and then rolled me onto a bed and left me lying there staring at the ceiling. By this time I could feel that my pants were wet. I wondered how long they would leave me lying like that in my wet underwear.

Eventually doctors and nurses drifted in and out to check on me.

A male nurse in dark blue scrubs came in and said, "Good news! You don't have any injuries on your body, and your brain isn't bleeding out or swelling. You've probably got a little concussion there, but other than that you're good to go. If you lift up your head, I can take that neck brace off you now."

He reminded me of Tony Danza for some reason. Maybe it was his voice, or maybe his kind of dumb cheerfulness. 

It hurt so badly when I tried to move my neck that immediately I rested it back against the bed again.

"You're okay, ma'am; you're just a little sore. You can do it. Give it another try."

This time I got it up, but I was relieved when the brace was gone and I could lay flat against the elevated bed a little bit. I was suddenly really embarrassed about my soiled pants. "Can I get some clean clothes?"

He had either just offered me a hospital gown or had been just about to. He left and came back with a shirt and pants that matched the curtains around the bed, and then directed me to the bathroom. I moved slowly as he advised, and dressed slowly in the bathroom. When I came back out, he was gone.

I waited.

A man from a church came in and asked vaguely if he could do anything for me. I asked if he could get my purse off the counter for me so that I could find my phone and call my family. "Is it okay if I use my cell phone in here?"

"I don't really know," the man said with a smile, "If they say anything, just blame me for it."

He was a nice guy. He said he'd check back in on me later and left me to my phone call.

I got my sister on the phone. She'd gotten my message but then because I hadn't given any details she had nervously began her daughters' baths as she waited to hear further from me. Once she knew where I was at, she got the girls dressed and drove to the hospital.

The doctor told us that I had no injuries but did have a mild concussion, and that I would need to rest for a few days, and to follow up with my family doctor. 

When Thea tried to ask me about what had happened, I didn't remember. 

The doctor said that it was normal not to have any memory of what happened immediately before, during, or after an accident.

He hadn't seemed to notice that I don't do normal.