Wednesday, December 28, 2011

City streets and car crashes 6/29/04

She had to call me three times in the wee hours this morning, before I finally struggled to enough consciousness to realize that the phone that was ringing in my dream was, in fact, ringing beside me. Looking back, I was surprisingly calm when I finally made out the caller ID, designating our town's big downtown urban trauma hospital. After a ridiculous attempt to call back the number that had called me, and of course only reaching a switchboard, I thought to listen to messages and heard the voice of Three's best friend's mom, assuring me that they were both going to be okay, but that there had been an accident. I dressed and headed downtown, leaving the house in the dark sometime after 4:00. Three is 16. His friend is 17. Friend had told his mother that they were staying here. They came by here late (and Friend called his mom from here), and got my sleepy permission to go stay at Friend's house, all the while, in fact, heading to the home of a buddy, whose recently divorced mother is out of the country. We got lazy (or sleepy), but, in retrospect, she and I should have spoken with each other, and, normally, we would have. They went to drink beer with some older boys, and Friend, who is a beautiful and high-spirited young lefty who will go far if he survives his youth, decided he was hungry and nothing in the fridge would do. Supposedly, Three tried to talk him out of hitting the rain-slicked streets after a six pack each, but after failing, "couldn't" let him go alone. Neither of them is sure exactly how the accident happened. They both remember going too fast down a hill and losing control. The officer told me they hit a pole, probably rolled and landed in some residential woods downhill from the road. Three doesn't remember how he got out of the car, but he feels certain he was wearing his seat belt, although judging by the bumps, cuts, scratches, bruises and abrasions that cover him from head to toe (he was somehow separated from his shoes, chockos), he could have been thrown. I want to write as many times today as I possibly can, what I've said over and over in my internal dialogue since the moment of hearing from the mom that they were going to be alright, "Thank you, God, for these two young men sill being with us today." Friend was not so lucky. It is not quite 3:30 in the afternoon and when I spoke with his mom an hour ago, he was still in Trauma Room 1 of the Big Urban Hospital, waiting for a bed in the Trauma ICU, at which time his mom can go bond him out at the police precinct housed inside the hospital, so that they can uncuff his ankle from the bed and let the nice officer who stands by his side, go on to more important duties. I have not yet heard his blood alcohol level but he is in police custody in the hospital. There were 4 Trauma Rooms (really one big room with four beds), and we could glimpse one or another of them as the staff came in and out of the two doors. Three was one of tens of patients lined along the halls as part of the imperfect triage system of this overcrowded, under-funded institution where angels work to tend the poor and the lost and the naughty. I observed at least three patients who had police attendants. His friend does not appear to be permanently injured, although the bruising to his lungs is causing him breathing difficulty and they are going to keep him for some days because of the risk of swelling of the lungs that is posed by his three broken ribs. As the Trauma Room doors opened and closed we saw the resident stitching his leg, his forehead and his ear, his face masked and bagged in an effort to keep him oxygenated without intubation. I was there for about five hours, I think. After the 7:00 shift change, this being a teaching hospital, the little crowd of residents came upon us making rounds (I was allowed to stay with him only because I was his mother and he was a minor), and only then did anyone realize that Three had not yet been "seen". He was released sometime after 9:00. We have slept and he has now eaten, sore and sorry and grateful. I woke up to watch the noon news with a cup of coffee while checking my email (ah, there is still a real world of unclear work with questionable possibilities), and, sometime in the wee hours, less than a mile from where they wrecked, another young man lost control of his mustang on the wet streets, but was not so lucky. He was 23. He died. May God grant peace to those who love him. Again. Thank you, God, for blessing us last night and protecting our boys from themselves.

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