This Is My Season

A competitive athlete's season is cut short in the blink of an eye, a flash of white, a jolt and a crunch of metal hitting metal.

All I can think about is this coming weekend. More specifically, Saturday. Even more specifically, Saturday evening. Saturday evening is Association Championships at the Armory in Washington Heights. I'll have to get the Q64 bus to the E or F train. From there... well, I'll figure it out Friday night, or perhaps Saturday morning. Needless to say, I do not frequent uptown Manhattan. My friends and I are more disposed to go to Flushing Main, the Queens Center Mall or Forest Hills, or other places around Queens. When we venture to Manhattan, we're usually downtown, whether in St. Marks, Greenwich Village, East Village, Union Square, Chelsea or someplace midtown.  Maybe I can persuade people to come with me so we can explore uptown? It's a problem that I've been in school nearly three years and still sometimes have to look up what train to take. So many adventuring possibilities in a new neighborhood!

 

As for racewalking… this is my season. I’m determined. This will be the season I qualify for Penn Relays. I’ve finally been consistent in my training- and I had that massive PR, a 28:30, back in December! I just need to break 28 in the 5k racewalk or perform the equivalent at another distance- surely I could do that by April!

 

As for now, I'm home from school in Riverhead, a small town on Long Island's East End, visiting my mother for Presidents' Day weekend. We're the car, a silver 2012 Kia Soul. 

 

She scrimped and saved for fifteen years to get this. The only reason she was able to get it nine months ago and not  several years from now when I'm a thirty-something is  that my father, if he even deserves the term died. After four years of red tape, I know it's heartless and dreadful of me to not feel inclined to mourn him, but I'd basically be mourning a stranger. He's got more in common with a sperm donor than anything else. I have no clue what he looks like. He left my mother when I was three months old and never once looked back.  Oh, by the way, she was NOT a woman with several babydaddies as many disparagingly say of single women who receive TANF (or did in the past.) In fact, for the information of all the judgmental buffoons in the world who do not bother to get their facts straight, my parents were married nine years- and he never filed for divorce- though he acquired a second wife in Florida, ironically a woman who shares a first name with me. Anyway, his drug and alcohol abuse despite or perhaps because of serving in the military aside, I'd hazard a guess that part of the reason he left and fell so deeply into self-destruction (and the collateral damage to my mother, me, and everyone around him) was he couldn't handle my mother's family, most of whom would register under the spectrum "evil" if placed under one of the nine alignments of Dungeons and Dragons, Edition 3.5. Think I'm exaggerating? What else would you call people who force any disabled mother and a 4-year-old child, let alone ones related to them by blood, into homelessness? We had to flee for our lives with only what we could carry on our backs- not much. A woman with rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, osteoarthritis and fibromylagia cannot carry much of anything, even if she is only 34. The Luerssens are scum- at least, the Luerssens who perpetrated that monstrosity on us. I may be a strong advocate for women's rights, but I'm glad I got the male biological parent's last name. The only thing he ever gave me, other than my existence.  I don't know if I have any other relatives around the United States, nor do I know anything about the Luerssens in Bremen, Germany, the city from which my ancestors on my mother's side originated other than that sometime in the past the family had a ship-building company. I digress. Whoops. No wonder my 12th grade English teacher said I'm an extremely divergent thinker- tangents are very much a thing for me. The past is the past. It's over. It's done. Now, present.

 

 Ahh, there's where I used to get off the bus on Election Day. We just drove by our polling place.

 

For most of my life, we've relied on the very unreliable Suffolk Transit buses- hence going to school in the city and taking the bus or subway everywhere being a smooth transition for me whereas most from my area are subject to culture shock. I was also no stranger to witnessing issues such as poverty and homelessness when I started at QC. Both those travesties of the world are nearly invisible where I live. People around me think the poor live like royalty. They have no idea... well, this is why I supported both Bloombergville and the Occupy Movement and support the plethora of actions taken by Anonymous. Besides, some of them are fun- such as that time we sang arguably impolite renditions of Christmas Carols at the Times Square establishment of the "Church" of Scientology. Utterly hilarious, in fact. Keeping a straight face was impossible... anyway. Back when I started school, I was also very much NOT overwhelmed by shock that such things exist the first time I encountered a schoolmate who'd run out of money for food. 

 

Oh, right. Association Championships. Or perhaps I should come back to earth from my ADHD tangent and think about the present and be down-to-earth and not cogitating how much I'd love to eliminate all the suffering in the world- perhaps  like a normal person?

 

We're on our way to Walmart to return the more hideous of the professional clothes. I hate that I shop at Walmart given the atrocities they have perpetrated against my own social class, but it's the only thing we can afford. I still cannot comprehend what possessed her to get floral patterns. It was really nice of her to buy a bunch of clothes for work after I graduate this semester, but flowers? Seriously? When  have I ever expressed anything but fervent antipathy for flowers? I'm not a flowers or pink kind of girl, thank you very much. She was annoyed when I said she could return the floral ones and the ones that were too frilly for my taste. My mother's a hard person to understand. She says to tell her when she buys something I don't like for me because she'd rather have the money than whatever I don't like collecting dust in the back of my closet, going untouched. Yet when I tell her, she gets offended. Can't she make up her mind- or perhaps be more observant of what I do like? I understand most jobs expect me to doff the athletic gear and my edgy clothes in favor of clothing like dress pants and buttondowns, but she could at least get something like plaid or pinstripes that I'd easily tolerate. Those places are too picky, anyhow. As far as I'm concerned, clothes shouldn't matter as long as you do your job right and do it well and do right by your clients, customers, students, patrons or whoever else you're working for- I don't mean the boss, I mean the public. Others should come before you and especially before the rich person sitting at the top of the institution. 

 

We're approaching the Hess station where my mom usually fills her gas tank. She doesn't need to go this time, though, judging by the fact that we just bypassed the entrance. I have my earbuds in. I'd had a song on called something along the lines of "One Hour Epic Music." I downloaded it from YouTube to my laptop, then linked my Kyocera phone to my laptop with a USB so I could transfer the song to the phone.  After the Two Steps from Hell songs "To Glory" and "Protectors of the Earth" have finished, however, I want a different song now that I'm no longer hearing songs that inspire muse for the stories of the characters Xenia, Kiran and Folco and inspire muse for the Dungeons and Dragons campaign with Brittany, my best friend of eighteen years and one of the third and fourth "best friends" I had since the now-deceased girl named Alyssa from the now-defunct Good Shepherd, the first homeless shelter that had my mother and me for more than a day, and Sara from the days I lived in Copaigue.  I like the song that came on, "Prayer" by Disturbed.

 

We have the green light, so my mother is going south on Ostrander towards the King Kullen/Walmart shopping plaza. We are starting to go through the 58 intersection. I glance up from texting someone, either Brittany, my boyfriend, or one of my Queens College friends. The car coming on the northbound side wants to turn but cannot because it is blocked by traffic on 58. 

 

Suddenly, a car going north materializes on my mother's side of the street. It's a sedan. It is only just dawning on me that the vehicle is not on the correct side of the double-yellow-line when it suddenly slows down. At least, I think it is.  Thank goodness. Oh, wait, but it's still in my mother's path... I can see its front bumper... now the bumper is gone, blocked by the hood of my mother's car, and the front grille is disappearing from sight, obscured by the same blind spot... my mother is yelling something... I'm not sure what...

 

WHAM. There is an explosion of white. I feel like I did that time I got in a fistfight with another girl in ninth grade after school. My face, anyway. Particularly my nose- oh, CRAP! Did I just get punched in the nose? I hope I don't have a nosebleed... or that my face isn't bleeding where I got hit, if the person who punched me has a ring on... 

 

My hand moves to touch my face. I withdraw it. No sign of anything other than the slightly dry skin that bears testimony to the fact that it's winter. Good. I gingerly touch my nose. Feels normal. Good.

 

But wait... what's up with the white? Oh, wait... this wasn't a fight. I'm too old to be involved in such things unless I actually feel my life is threatened.  I'm in a car, and that other car.... oh God. Did what I think just happened happen? I straighten in disbelief. The airbag has deployed. The windshield in front of me is broken, spiderwebbed in one spot in particular, though it looks fine on my mother's side. The windshield broke? My mother is going to flip a s**t- she's so particular about her car's appearance she washes the whole thing at the faintest sign of dirt. 

 

And why is the car stopped all the way through, right past the Peconic Diner corner? Weren't we in the intersection when that other car hit us- I'm assuming that's what had happened. I remember the six other accidents I've been in, though none encompassed a broken windshield. The worst- or more accurately, the worst for a car with me in it since the worst had uncontestably been the one where the 7-year-old boy on a bicycle, Shawn Conklin, had been killed after riding into the camp van that I'd been in when on the way to a Camp DeBruce field trip- had been the one with Angie when the entire back of her car got turned into an accordion on the Cross-Bronx when the buffoon behind us mixed up the gas pedal and the brake. Now that I think about it, did that jolt feel as bad as what I just felt now

 

My mother's outside talking to the other driver. He's saying he's really sorry and that he didn't see us- I'm not sure how, given that it is two in the afternoon and a clear day, neither too sunny nor too cloudy.

 

Smoke is spewing from the dash, but on my side only. My eyes widen. What the... is the car going to explode? I think of all the movies I've watched with car explosions and know that if the smoke does mean potential fireball, I'd better get out of there or else I actually would be dead. 

 

The other driver is on the phone. Through the agony-induced haze, I hear him say something like "I'm in trouble... got into accident... the girl's hurt." What girl. Is he talking about me? I'm fine, I'm in pain... but I'm not bleeding or anything... I gingerly put my hand where the pain was concentrated in my chest. 

 

A man runs over. He says that he owns the car dealership on the corner and that he saw the whole thing. I can barely hear him. I'm now ensnared in a coughing fit because of the smoke and chemicals spewing from my airbag where it had been torn off the dashboard. Each cough is causing another jolt of pain. Each jolt of pain causes another cough. It's an agonizing, self-perpetuating snowball effect. I know I'm not dead because there's no way I'd be in this much pain if I were. It's not just my chest either. My left shoulder hurts too. My head, even though it struck the windshield (thankfully cushioned by the airbag) does not hurt that much. I feel dizzy, but I prefer lightheadedness to pain in a third part of my anatomy. I'm also vaguely glad my legs feel fine and that i'm able to walk around on them. It means that they're not hurt and that I'll still be able to race on Saturday- if I'm still sore from today then, it might present a nuisance but I'll still be able to compete- right? 

 

The man tells me I shouldn’t be on my feet since I’m hurt. I try to straighten and tell him I’m fine, but am assailed by another stabbing flash. My mother chimes in with the same thing. I grudgingly humor them both- she in particular is livid enough as it is. I'd normally be obdurate and remain standing, but I don’t feel like being yelled at very much at all. Normally, I wouldn’t even care- I’d tune out- but it might compound my anguish. I then remember the smoke and comment on it through my continued hacking coughs that are positively torturing me. He says it’s just chemicals from the airbags and that I wouldn’t be as irritated by them in the backseat- but I really needed to be out of the cold.

 

The police and ambulance show up and start asking questions and where the injured person is. I’m pointed out. I’m asked if I was wearing my seatbelt. I said yes. I get questioned a few more times and answered them but can barely speak.

 

The EMTs then move to me. Much to my surprise, I know one of the EMTs. He went to high school with me. He was also the same EMT that was there when my mom got very sick a few months ago! They tell me to lie back on the backseat so they could get me onto the stretcher. I acquiesce, scarcely believing the situation as they strap me down so I cannot budge an inch. They then fix the head and neck brace to me. I'm not sure why. My neck doesn't hurt at all. Oh, right, I didn't feel the whiplash from that accident Angie and I got into on the way to Six Flags until the next day...

 

It has not even occurred to me that the vehicle for which my mother had put aside money for a decade and a half had been utterly destroyed in one fell second just yet.  I'm in too much pain. All I could think about was that it actually would be rather nice if I fell unconscious. The pain would stop then... right?

 

I wince at the bump as they put me inside the ambulance. This is just too much. I almost wish I had hit my head harder. Almost. I wouldn’t fancy brain damage or death- just something stopping me feeling this pain. They assure me that it’ll only be a short ride. I overhear one comment that he supposes I won’t be running for a while. I open my mouth to correct him on what I compete in, then shut it as horror strikes me as I realize the doctor just might ban me from competing. No! I need to be there! I need a qualifying time for Penn!

 

My mother comments that she doesn’t like how I’m breathing. The EMTs ask if I can calm it. With a lot of grueling effort, I can. I have to use one of the tricks I use towards the end of races though.

 

The ride seems a lot longer than it really is- ironically only about a quarter mile. A very convenient place to have an accident, right down the street from the hospital, I think with a wry smile at the irony.

 

They wheel me through the corridor to a wall and move me onto one of those gurney beds but do not remove the straps or backboard. My mother is not there; she had to stay to talk to the police. I feel annoyed with myself but I wish she were here, if only to distract me from my pain until the doctor comes in to do something. it’s not like I can do anything else. Normally, I’d pace or fidget but I’m tied down.

 

I wait and wait.

 

She comes in. I ask if she has my phone. She says yes and that I’d have it back later. I groan with indignation and pain but then remember I can’t exactly text in my present state anyway.

 

I wait and wait.

 

Doctors and nurses come. They ask me a bunch of questions about my pain, then say they’re going to X-ray my shoulder and chest but in a bit.

 

I wait and wait.

 

They  come. They remove my straps, brace and backboard before wheeling my gurney towards where they do X-rays. To my surprise, one of the assistants in the X-ray  room went to Sachem, also known as racewalk high school. After we briefly discuss the sport, I ask whether she thought I’d be able to race Saturday since I still compete. She averts her eyes, then says she’s not sure. I don’t like that at all, I think it means no but she doesn’t want to say it.

 

I’m able to stand for the Xrays so they wouldn’t be as cumbersome for both the hospital people and myself. I feel a wave of dizziness as I stand, but I stand. They do them, then wheel me back. I tell my mother I was able to stand, though felt dizzy doing so.

 

When they come in to discuss the result- that they saw chest contusions- apparently bruised ribs- but nothing for my shoulder on the X-ray, my mom said I was dizzy. They have me sit up, and I am  hit with more dizziness. They order a CAT scan. Last time I had one of those was after I fainted in the subway.

 

Turns out I have a concussion. Awesome! After they talk about how I apparently need to come back if I become unresponsive- I don’t intend to if I can help it, thanks- I ask if I can still race on Saturday.  That’s when I find out I cannot go to school or work, let alone race, for over a week.

 

I’m just glad I did not pay the race fee yet. Nonetheless, I’m angry. Of all the times to get injured in a car accident…

 

My mom asks if I have to stay the night. They say no. Good. I have those eight miles to do… oh CRAP! They said I can’t do anything athletic for a fortnight!

 

Then they give me the sling and the prescription for Percocet and warn me that the pain will be a lot worse when I wake tomorrow. I cringe. How could it possible get any worse? Apparently it’s a narcotic pain medication, and a step down from morphine. Jeez. How is it that bruised bones cause more pain than broken bones. I know it’s my ribs that are bruised whereas it was a pinky toe I broke three years ago, but still. I hadn’t even needed aspirin with the toe.

 

~*~*~

 My mother calls Jessica, my friend since fifth grade, to ask for a ride and to tell her I'm the hospital because of being injured in a car wreck but about to be released. Jess comes at once. She expresses her sympathy and how glad she was that I'm okay- other than the sling they'd given me because of my shoulder- and joked that at least I didn't hurt a leg too so I'd be out two limbs. I smile wryly, thinking of a character from me and Brittany's roleplaying and my writing that experienced that very situation. In fact, Folco also had the bruised ribs- I can almost hear my fictional character snarkily commenting “there, now you know how I felt when you made me go through that!” I certainly never envisioned coming even this close to accurately describing how a character would feel experiencing such a thing.  We stop by where the battered car remained in the parking lot- it hadn't been towed yet- and my mother gets the stuff in it. She says I'm to lie down the rest of the evening on the doctor's orders, whether in bed or on the couch in the living room.

 

After I'm settled on the couch under blankets, I remember my phone I check my phone, relieved that it had not been wholly destroyed even though the screen is partially detached from the keyboard. It looks bad, but at least it turns on, and at least it wasn't ME split nearly asunder. To my grim amusement, the first thing I see is the song I'd had on. A song by the band Disturbed. Its title? Prayer! No joke. My life has a tendency for getting stranger than fiction. I then see all the text messages. My boyfriend had sent a volley about how worried he was because I wasn't answering, there's a bunch of others from people at school, and Brittany had said she wanted to visit the next day. I read them all and reply to make sure everyone knows i'm not in a coma or something.

 

To think earlier today I was fretting over a few stupid shirts. Now I'm lying here on the couch, in pain despite the Vicodin they gave me in the ER, wishing the Percocet prescription I’d been given would materialize so I could end the sensation of an elephant standing on my chest, or perhaps an equally heavy animal with claws given the stabbing aspect of the pain, and terrified of what this might mean for the rest of my racewalking season if I'm missing two weeks of training. I'd be fine though, right? What harm could a concussion, bruised ribs and an injured shoulder mean- right? i'm still mad though. To missed weeks, and especially one missed meet, could cost me my chances of a qualifying time for the Penn Relays.

 

Nonetheless, I'm glad to be alive and that in just over a week I can see my friends and boyfriend again. I'm glad I had on my seatbelt. Had I not, I might be in the morgue now and in the ground in just over a week. 

 

Instead, I survived.

Author's Note

Based off actual events. The rambling and tangential aspects of this writing are deliberate and intended to show my actual thought process through that afternoon.

Reviews

[NoelHC]

I can relate to this so well, a seemingly normal day, all of those thoughts going through the mind, random, yet related, and then suddenly everything changes in an instant.

A few capitalization issues, and this:
We're (in) the car, a silver 2012 Kia Soul.
An interesting write.

[Nusquam Esse]

I remember several years ago being in a really bad car accident, I was hit directly on the drivers side by a large truck going around 75mph; the impact was strong enough to sheer off the axle of the car. After my car went off the road, and into a gully I just lay there for several minutes, unable to move at all. At the time I thought I was paralyzed, because I couldn't even move my fingers. One of the more terrifying moments of my life. If anything, your writing seems too coherent; I know that the impact messed me up good, and I was definitely not as lucid as you show here (But then people couldn't understand my writing about it beyond single words). However, I never had a hospital visit like you; I was wary of hospital fees since I was uninsured at the time. The paramedics, amazed I had survived the collision checked for internal bleeding, and then I popped my bones back in (I had about a quarter of my bones popped out). And then, not trusting the cops, I decided to walk home, it was about a mile from home; and let me assure you, none of them were okay with the idea, but I was more stubborn than usual. Took a bath and slept for three days, woke up, and realized I had missed popping in a few bones. Hahaha, I had joint issues for years after that, but it is not so bad anymore. I do remember how hard it was to drive again after that, fear is a nasty thing.

[Dan Bright]

That's an amazing piece of writing... It's so descriptive and well structured. It is the first story I've read on here. It's clear that you're writing about something that means so much to you. Good job!

[Cryingkate]

Amazing... If you get an A= for this I will be very disturbed.. LOL I wrote one in school that was purposely jumpy so that the reader could feel what I was writing about and got an A - for jumpy lines.. I argued and said that was my intention of coarse but the idiot still wouldn't change my grade.

Loved it and stayed with ya all the way... Ps Hows your headache now? Wow what a ride. Glad your alive to tell about it.
You get an A+ from me though:-)

[FlatLineBeauty]

Wow Cher! You are very descriptive. I felt like I was right there with you and also I was able to get to know more about you on a personal level. I am happy you survived, because you are a wonderful person. Someone I enjoy talking to and getting to know. xo Winter

[SpeedyHobbit Armstrong]

Thank you so very much! I certainly am glad to have lived as well. It was definitely a.. memorable... experience!

[SpeedyHobbit Armstrong]

http://raleighwalkers.com/news/news.htm Letting a car accident bring me down? Ain't nobody got time for that!