The following is a recounting of events that resulted in the x-rays you may see in my pictures posted here.
On Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at around 3:50 pm, Amanda Andreyev and I were headed back to her house to drop off her CDs, and then to 7-11 to grab some Slurpees. We got to the northern corner of 16th St. and Straight Path when I looked left (south) to see a silver Ford sedan heading a long line of traffic, impeding our ability to cross the street just yet. As the driver of the Ford passed 16th street, she suddenly cut the wheel to the right without looking, sending the car straight in our direction. We were about a second and a half from our untimely (and untidy) deaths.
I barely got the words, "What the hell is she doing?" out of my mouth when my body instinctively moved me to the right, trying to get me out of the way as fast as humanly possible, though at that moment I would have settled for inhumanly and not asked questions. I noticed Amanda hadn't been watching, and in a flash moment of fear and desperation I pushed her ahead of me. Then, realizing that while she should be clear of the car I wasn't yet, I saw that the woman behind the wheel was not attempting to get back onto the street!
In horror, I began dashing in left to avoid being hit. Unfortunately, I only got MOST of my body out of the way in time. The right side of her front bumper knocked into my shin, sweeping my leg back and out from under me, and I fell forward and to the side of her car, catching myself on the pavement with my hands and my left foot.
I got up, having suffered only minor road rash on my left wrist, thinking, "She must not have been going that fast; it didn't hurt too much and I only got knocked down.” Then I tried to walk. I heard this weird, dull grinding inside my body, and when my right leg gave out I looked down. I had suddenly grown a second knee. My leg was bent in not one, but two places, the second joint located about halfway between ankle and shin. It was only about ten to fifteen seconds from the time I saw the car to the time I looked at my leg, though it felt like ten to fifteen minutes of shock.
Basically, both the tibia and fibula were broken clean in two. Neither was protruding through the skin, but the effect was still that the bottom half of my lower leg was hanging from the rest of the leg. Needless to say, I was a bit freaked out by this.
My next thoughts were, "Well, this is going to hurt soon. A lot. I need to get help. I'd better get over to check on Amanda while I still don't feel pain." So as I used the car to support myself and hopped back towards the curb where we had been standing, I started screaming for help: "Help! We got hit by a car! Help!" Then I dialed my house number, figuring my family would be there faster and more coherently than the ambulances, and Jackie picked up. I told her that my leg was smashed by a car and that she needed to get someone's ass down to the corner fast, in just so many words.
Before I could get over to Amanda, a man's voice said, "You'd better sit down now; you're gonna make it worse if you don’t." I calmly replied, "No, sir, I've gotta go check on Amanda, she was with me and I don't know if she got hit too." He informed me that he was a retired firefighter and repeated with urgency that I needed to get my leg elevated or I would be in serious trouble, so I obliged, sitting down on the curb with my back against the pole of a road sign, facing the street. I had repeated about six times that he should stop worrying about me and go check on Amanda when I finally found out that Amanda had been knocked unconscious and sent into the bushes. She was alive, talking, and apparently able to move, though, so that made me feel a bit better. Not much.
Meanwhile, the girl who hit us eventually got out of her car and began arguing with some guy. According to her, the guy cut her off, and they were fighting about whose fault the accident was. Neither of them seemed to care about the two teenagers that had been struck and left in anguish. I had begun dialing 9-1-1 when I heard a witness on another phone doing that very thing. I hung up and started dialing my mom's number at work, instead. I waited for the answering service to start rattling off nonsense. Then I dialed her extension.
"Hello?"
"Hi mom, it's Garrett. I got hit by a car, my leg is pretty broken, but I'm alright otherwise. I'm at the corner of 16th and Straight Path. There's an officer here trying to talk to me; I've got to go."
"Wait! What hospital are you going to?"
"I don't know yet. I'll call you back." I hung up.
Then the officer started asking me for all my information while the stretcher was loaded out of the ambulance and the EMTs all debated on how best to get me up there. By now, the pain had started to sink in, and it was BAD, so I braced myself for worse while they plotted my torture method.
A car pulled up, and out of it spilled my sister Jackie, her boyfriend (my awesome friend Alex), and my stepdad, Herby. Herby singled out the girl who had hit us and began a barrage of expletive-laced tongue lashings. Even though he has a terrible back and walks/hobbles with a cane, a spitting-mad 300 lbs. angry stepfather is NOT someone you want to piss off by hitting his son with your vehicle. I, of course, could look into his future and see jail if he continued on this path. I started yelling over his Tazmanian-Devil-spatter: "Dad, calm down! Just calm down or go home because you're only gonna make this situation more difficult!”
Guess what.
He ignored me. As I began repeating myself, the officer that was talking to me began telling my stepdad that if he didn’t calm down he was going to be in a bit of trouble – especially after the difficult-to-discern-through-the-angry-spew threats he was making. Finally, with the officer's and Alex's help, he relaxed from caged bull into seething stepfather.
It's a good thing Alex and Herby both showed up. If it was just Herby, no one would have been able to stop him from actually shoving this girl into her own tailpipe (I mean the Ford's tailpipe; I’m trying to keep this manuscript clean). If it was just Alex, he wouldn't have felt the compulsion to restrain Herby and would have landed himself in jail instead by beating the Ford driver to death. Jackie couldn't have stopped him; she was trying to help me out by calling my worried-sick mother back with the details.
When Jackie finished with my cell, I called Laura (my girlfriend at the time) to let her know my leg was broken and I was going to the hospital, and then I got off the phone before they lifted me onto the stretcher. I tried to help by using my arms and one good leg to lift my body up and slide onto the board. Then they strapped me down.
Every time I was moved, it was excruciating. It was like a little ninja was inside my leg, moving at lightning speed, having the time of his life with a shuriken.
They cut my shirt off in the ambulance.
I glared at the EMT. "I could have gotten that off for you. I liked that shirt."
"No you couldn't have. You're strapped down." He pointed to the straps.
"Good point,” I ceded. “You're not cutting my shorts off, are you?"
He shook his head. Then they removed my remaining shoe. They showed me the one that was on my right foot: the heel had been torn from top to bottom.
I gaped at it. "How did that happen?”
“You tell me."
"I'm guessing it caught on her bumper or something. I'm glad I didn't wear my new sneakers when we left the house. If you still feel like cutting, go nuts on that other shoe. There’s no way I'm wearing these again."
The EMTs took all my vitals and kept checking for a pulse in my foot. I wondered at this; I could move my toes still, so I figured I should be all right.
He noticed me trying to see better despite my inhibited range of motion. "Are you comfortable? I mean, as comfortable as you can be, anyway? Can we do anything for you?"
"Got any whiskey? I could use some of that right about now."
“How old are you?” he asked.
“…Nineteen.” I gave him the most awkward shrug in history from my pinned shoulders.
"Haha... no,” he laughed. “We don’t carry it here, anyway.”
Nevertheless, asking for alcohol quickly became my version of "Are we there yet?" And we all know that NEVER works.
Jackie had followed me into the ambulance and kept checking on me to make sure I was still doing okay. The EMT was saying something about how lucky I am to have a sister like her. Then he told me not to move my head.
I nodded and said "Ok, gotcha."
He repeated himself.
“Sorry,” I said.
This exchange happened again when I tried to look at the devices they were using. After I apologized again, he said, "If you keep moving your head we're going to have to pinch your sister every time you do, and she won't be happy about that."
"Listen, man, you lay a finger on my sister and, broken leg or not, I'll kick your ass."
He looked at Jackie. "You're lucky to have a big brother like that."
I said to him, "Damn right."
She smiled and nodded.
After that, I clenched my teeth and concentrated on not passing out from the pain during the rest of the ride to the hospital.
Finally, we got there, and I was painfully transferred to a hospital bed. There was more stupidity that followed on the part of the hospital, but that's a story for another time.
