Anniversary for a What-Could’ve-Should’ve-Might’ve-Gone-Wrong

Growing up, I was always afraid to cross the street alone. Eventually I got over it and became a serious walker….but I have always been afraid of busy intersections. I’m also not much of a risk-taker, and have made it my business to know the ins and outs of my city — side streets, the safest place to cross in a neighborhood, and go out of my way to do just that. If I see someone on a cell phone about to cross, I wait till they’ve gone. If I’m not at the curb when the light changes, I wait till the next light cycle. I don’t walk during peak traffic hours (and time my walks meticulously). Not to mention that Nashville is one of the top 10 most dangerous cities for pedestrians.

Five years ago tomorrow, I was coming out of synagogue on a major local street. I’ve always been nervous about it and went about my usual hypervigilance — not just making sure the light read “Walk”, but that the lights on the cross-section were indeed red.

What I didn’t see was that a woman had run a yellow light and was blocking traffic. That must have been the reason her car appeared out of nowhere just as she was putting on the gas, then squealing on the breaks. All I had time to do was turn around slightly and, apparently all in a matter of seconds, tumble on and off the hood onto the concrete.

My first instinct was to get up and regain my bearings. Considering that I immediately felt a pain in my back, that could have been a very serious mistake. The long and the short of it is that I ended up going to the hospital on a spinal board that hurt like hell, lying on my back for what felt like an eternity, wondering if I was going to walk again, while I heard staff somewhere behind a curtain laughing and joking. I didn’t get anything softer until I was X-rayed.

And then, as quickly as my life flashed, it simmered down to an anticlimax.  Suddenly I was told I could get up and go home. Not only was it safe to move my spine, but it was also just fine to get off my ass and call my ride.  (Apparently the ER staff didn’t make good on their intention to inform my next of kin.  The aftermath that unfolded was this: soft tissue damage in the lower back and tailbone. It felt for a year like I was growing an iron tail, but luckily I only feel pain when it’s raining and I haven’t drunk much water.)

That scared the crap out of me. It could have been so much worse, combined with the fact that I spent years assiduously preventing an accident that happened anyway. A few days later was Thanksgiving, and the brother who spent all dinner long cross-examining me about the accident was himself killed in a car wreck almost exactly a year later. (That was the last time I saw him alive – when I was serving turkey on Lortab – me on Lortab, not the turkey – and the night was all about me, me, me. )

The one silver lining is that I was able to finish my much-prolonged education with the settlement money — although it wasn’t worth putting my life in danger. Anyway, tomorrow’s my, uh, Happy 5th Anniversary.