Dear Diary,
I have discovered the six words guaranteed to get you sent home. The words nobody argues with. I know these words because I said them today. First, I had told my boss I wasn't feeling well, and I was going home aound 1:00.
"Are you sick?"
"No...i'm feeling a little weird, and kinda anxious." Then I said the words: I got hit by a car.
"When?"
"yesterday."
"And you were in a car? Right?"
"No. I was out running."
Blink. Blink.
"You were hit? By a car?" [emphasis on HIT and CAR] "Are you okay?"
"Yes. Mostly. I think so. I mean, nothing's broken."
Since I was just standing there, and not in a body cast, I suppose it was a strange thing to hear. No, I wasn't in another car. No, I didn't hit my head. At least I don't think I did. I didn't black out, but wham, it happened really, really fast. What I was able to piece together was that the guy was stopped behind the stop sign watching for oncoming traffic--coming from his left--and since nobody was coming he gunned it just as I shuffled--from his right--into the intersection.
All I remember was one moment shuffling up the hill on #2 of the hill repeats. I had my head down, watching the ground, and suddenly a green bumper in my periphery. I put my hands out and had a split second of surprise when the car didn't stop. Then, THUMP: I was tumbling over the hood and I was on my right side in the road, looking up at the back of a green car, with the improbable thought, "does he know he hit me?" Then car stopped, abruptly, and the guy jumped out, running towards me, shouting.
I know he was shouting, asking if I was alright, and so was the passerby who happened to be an off duty EMT. I know that now and I knew it relatively soon after, but at that very moment... All I knew, there on the ground, was that something horrible and fucking scary had just happened and these guys were standing above me, shouting at me, and I WANTED TO GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE SCARY AND AWAY THE SHOUTING so I tried to get up but OW, OW, fucking OW MY LEGS so I lurched over toward the nearest safe looking place, the curb and threw myself at it and sat down.
And the scary shouting guys followed, still shouting. I told Dreadpirate the next day, if I could have run away, I would have.
Within a few seconds my head cleared and the terror faded, and I knew that I was pretty much okay, and those guys were wanting to know if I was okay. I forgot about the terror of that moment until the next day. I looked up and saw Dread Pirate running down the hills towards me. She had heard the thump, turned around, and saw me lying in the road. She ran to me, shouting, what the fuck happened?
Somewhere during all this I pocket-dialed Sweet Baboo. I didn't know I'd dialed him, and he listened, puzzled, hearing my voice and then people asking me about allergies, blood pressure, etc. The off-duty EMT called 911 and the police were there in seconds. The guy who hit me seemed genuinely freaked out, asking repeatedly about me, even after they cuffed him because, well, he had two warrants. The ambulance was just a few seconds behind them.
This, to me, was horribly embarrassing. It seemed like such a rediculous fuss. I was sitting upright. I didn't have a head wound. There was just WAY too many people there. For me. Or maybe I was just uncomfortable with all the people standing around me, so close.
They checked me over, and wanted me to go to the ER to get cleared, but I decided I would have Dreadpirate take me and then I would call Baboo to come get me. Not long after deciding that my phone rang. "I'm on my way." He'd heard everything. By this time the EMTs had bandaged a nasty scrape on me wrist, examined the growing bump on my shin--gonna be a nasty bruise--and checked me all over. I was lucky. Somehow I'd been hit in just the right way, tumbled over the hood just the right way, landed just the right way on the pavement, all without getting seriously injured.
My friend SWTriGal once saw me take a spill running down a mountain path and declared it perfect. It was the best fall I've ever seen. Maybe I have a knack for this.
At the ER, they asked me that pain question. Scale of 1 to 10 ? I don't know how to answer that. Mile 50 at Javalina 100, I wanted to say, I don't know...a 4? Later on, I read that was "mild". So I was fine. I was joking about it. There was a sense of unease, but mostly, I was joking about how now, I have a story to tell.
I even forgot about the terror of those five or six seconds after it hit me until around two in the morning when I suddenly woke up, staring at the ceiling, thinking, holy fuck did I got hit by a car? I had a growing unease until around mid-morning when it came back, mixed with a small sense of shame because, after all, nothing was broken, and I was fine, so SUCK IT UP, PRINCESS. Except, I was in a fog. I couldn't concentrate. I looked at stuff on my computer and it didn't make sense. I didn't want to eat. I started feeling panicky. And then I remembered those moments after the car hit me.
So I told my boss I was going home. She wrote down the number of our EAP and insisted I consider calling them. I decided I wanted some Panda Express, except that, I looked in my purse, right at my debit card, and couldn't find it. I couldn't see what was in my purse. So I went home, and took a hot bath. By then my shoulder and neck were feeling stiff and spasmy. My left leg, where the car hit, hurts like crazy if I try to perform any torque on it, but there's no bruising or swelling.
So that's my story of getting hit by a car.
For the record, Sweet Baboo has been hit by a car. And a city bus.
Even in freak pedestrian accidents, he outpaces me.
...
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