Eric Roberts: One Second, Please
You may have wondering what happened to me. A wedding and an almost funeral. It's been a crazy week and I am just now beginning to feel like looking back into my ancient history again instead of lying awake obsessing about a future that almost didn't happen.
When I started digging around in my past here, I did have a tiny niggling fear that if I was putting all these stories down that perhaps it was because I was summing up. I'm still not ready to sum up yet, folks, but on Wednesday someone almost made that decision for me.
And so it goes....
I was driving back from a meeting with a client. Let's just say that in these days of yoga pants, teeshirts, and messy toddlers, this was one of those times when had I cleaned up. Nicely turned out in a pink sweater, natty belt, swishy skirt and high heels, I was feeling pretty good. Even my hair had been coaxed out of my usual 'bad hair-day' pigtails and into a grown-up do with hairspray and everything. At that moment I was all business and, thankfully, alone. Thinking about my next stop to pick up Sweetpea at daycare, I was just minding my own business, driving down a fairly busy street in a residental part of Glendale when a couple of things happened within a few seconds' time. Life can change in just a few seconds.
Happens all the time.
I saw out of my peripheral vision a dark blue sedan come out of a sidestreet and in the millisecond that all your judgement comes into play, I knew that he was going to hit me. I was travelling around 25-30 miles an hour, a nice clip, and before I could do anything to react to the inevitable I heard and felt this tremendous, jolting bang on my left rear and after that physics took over and I was no longer in control of my car. It was like being on a surreal ride at Disneyland - in my one-person roller coaster I started to careen sideways and I must have tried to correct it because the police told me later in the second or two I had to react I did put on my brakes (and maybe even tried to stay in my lane or keep from rolling over) but I'd already been forced into oncoming traffic and and then I just smashed head-on into a car. I saw it coming before it happened - a white luxury sedan (I thought it was a Mercedes) - and a tremendous, muffled screeching explosion of grinding metal as we came together, and then there was dust and smoke and the airbag deflating and an awful gunpowder smell. After a second I realized I was still alive and I unbuckled my seatbelt, wrenched open my door and stumbled coughing out onto the street, my arms scraped and bleeding onto my new brown skirt and little strappy shoes.
Looking back I wonder why it was I didn't rush over to the car I collided with to see if everyone was okay. I can only blame my lack of empathy on shock because all I seemed to want to do at that moment was sit down on the curb and breathe. People, young, old, housewives, men in teeshirts, all shouting and confusion, converged on us from the surounding neighborhood and I saw an equal number of them surround the white car. Ice came with a clean cloth for my rapidly swelling and bruised arms, hands lifted me up to the shade of a nearby tree and lowered me onto the cool grass.
I realized at that moment that I couldn't see the car that had hit me. "Where's THAT car?" I shouted, panic rising. I looked at mine and couldn't see any damage to the place where I knew he'd hit me. "The other car, the other car!" I kept repeating but was greeted with a lot of concerned looks and shrugging shoulders. "Noooooo!" I cried, really getting upset. Ambulances were arriving, firetrucks, police cars, paramedics and stretchers. And through it all I kept reaching out to people, anyone, asking for the other car.
The paramedics were tending to my injuries when a policeman came up to me and I repeated my plea. "I think he's gone, I said, "he must have fled the scene." He looked at me skeptically and disappeared, and then I was taken into the ambulance and on my way to the hospital. Later he told me that because he couldn't see any damage at first either he thought that there hadn't been anyone else. "Happens all the time," he said. "The phantom car/cat/person who made me swerve excuse."
Since I had just come from this same hospital where I had been meeting with clients about some design work for one of their treatment centers, I called them from the ER and the two women (both in senior administration) came down to stay with me until my husband arrived. After they assured me the people in the other car were not seriously injured (all airbag and seatbelt compression-related as were mine) and then the police finally found me to take my statement.
I learned then that the other driver had not left the scene but in fact had been standing only a few feet away but had (perhaps understandably) not identified himself when I was pleading with the crowd to find him. His car was only minimally damaged and he wasn't hurt at all. It's always this way with people who start a chain reaction, the bang I heard made only a moderate dent in my driver's side passenger door as his car had actually hit my left rear tire, deflating it on impact and bending it backwards. It was enough to send me flying in an altered course into another innocent victim. In his statement (corroborated by an independent witness) he told them he was making a left turn onto this four-lane city street and although he had seen the white car coming towards him (the one I eventually hit), he hadn't seen me at all.
Obviously.
Here's the good news:
My daughter wasn't in the car
I was only modestly injured
The others were only modestly injured (except for a punctured eardrum from.....the airbag)
My daughter wasn't in the car
I went home that night to my family
It wasn't my fault
Here's what sucks:
1) My hospital bill will be around $6,000.00. Lots of paperwork to get the other insurance company to pay for it and if he doesn't have enough insurance to cover all of us we'll have to take a 'pro-rated' share. Which means we may have to pay for some of it.
2) My car, which was paid off and a dream to drive, is valued at $2,000.00 as a total loss.
3) Sucks to have to buy another car when you have enough in the settlement to buy a beater
4) I can't move, my arms, chest and legs are brusied from end to end and I'm popping pain pills like a veteran. Because of the bruises people stare at me funny and I'm driving the rental car like a 90 year old woman. I trust no-one.
But, in the end, the good far outweighs the bad and although I have trouble sleeping, reliving that moment over and over, I know that eventually the visceral memory of what happened will fade and life will go on.
..In a new car with 8 airbags, driver, passenger, side air curtians, crumple zones, reinforced frame, anti-lock brakes, rollover sensors, and extra cupholders.
And a new car seat.
.....the insurance company will pay for that right away.
Next: Continuing on with a backward look at Eric Roberts.
When I started digging around in my past here, I did have a tiny niggling fear that if I was putting all these stories down that perhaps it was because I was summing up. I'm still not ready to sum up yet, folks, but on Wednesday someone almost made that decision for me.
And so it goes....
I was driving back from a meeting with a client. Let's just say that in these days of yoga pants, teeshirts, and messy toddlers, this was one of those times when had I cleaned up. Nicely turned out in a pink sweater, natty belt, swishy skirt and high heels, I was feeling pretty good. Even my hair had been coaxed out of my usual 'bad hair-day' pigtails and into a grown-up do with hairspray and everything. At that moment I was all business and, thankfully, alone. Thinking about my next stop to pick up Sweetpea at daycare, I was just minding my own business, driving down a fairly busy street in a residental part of Glendale when a couple of things happened within a few seconds' time. Life can change in just a few seconds.
Happens all the time.
I saw out of my peripheral vision a dark blue sedan come out of a sidestreet and in the millisecond that all your judgement comes into play, I knew that he was going to hit me. I was travelling around 25-30 miles an hour, a nice clip, and before I could do anything to react to the inevitable I heard and felt this tremendous, jolting bang on my left rear and after that physics took over and I was no longer in control of my car. It was like being on a surreal ride at Disneyland - in my one-person roller coaster I started to careen sideways and I must have tried to correct it because the police told me later in the second or two I had to react I did put on my brakes (and maybe even tried to stay in my lane or keep from rolling over) but I'd already been forced into oncoming traffic and and then I just smashed head-on into a car. I saw it coming before it happened - a white luxury sedan (I thought it was a Mercedes) - and a tremendous, muffled screeching explosion of grinding metal as we came together, and then there was dust and smoke and the airbag deflating and an awful gunpowder smell. After a second I realized I was still alive and I unbuckled my seatbelt, wrenched open my door and stumbled coughing out onto the street, my arms scraped and bleeding onto my new brown skirt and little strappy shoes.
Looking back I wonder why it was I didn't rush over to the car I collided with to see if everyone was okay. I can only blame my lack of empathy on shock because all I seemed to want to do at that moment was sit down on the curb and breathe. People, young, old, housewives, men in teeshirts, all shouting and confusion, converged on us from the surounding neighborhood and I saw an equal number of them surround the white car. Ice came with a clean cloth for my rapidly swelling and bruised arms, hands lifted me up to the shade of a nearby tree and lowered me onto the cool grass.
I realized at that moment that I couldn't see the car that had hit me. "Where's THAT car?" I shouted, panic rising. I looked at mine and couldn't see any damage to the place where I knew he'd hit me. "The other car, the other car!" I kept repeating but was greeted with a lot of concerned looks and shrugging shoulders. "Noooooo!" I cried, really getting upset. Ambulances were arriving, firetrucks, police cars, paramedics and stretchers. And through it all I kept reaching out to people, anyone, asking for the other car.
The paramedics were tending to my injuries when a policeman came up to me and I repeated my plea. "I think he's gone, I said, "he must have fled the scene." He looked at me skeptically and disappeared, and then I was taken into the ambulance and on my way to the hospital. Later he told me that because he couldn't see any damage at first either he thought that there hadn't been anyone else. "Happens all the time," he said. "The phantom car/cat/person who made me swerve excuse."
Since I had just come from this same hospital where I had been meeting with clients about some design work for one of their treatment centers, I called them from the ER and the two women (both in senior administration) came down to stay with me until my husband arrived. After they assured me the people in the other car were not seriously injured (all airbag and seatbelt compression-related as were mine) and then the police finally found me to take my statement.
I learned then that the other driver had not left the scene but in fact had been standing only a few feet away but had (perhaps understandably) not identified himself when I was pleading with the crowd to find him. His car was only minimally damaged and he wasn't hurt at all. It's always this way with people who start a chain reaction, the bang I heard made only a moderate dent in my driver's side passenger door as his car had actually hit my left rear tire, deflating it on impact and bending it backwards. It was enough to send me flying in an altered course into another innocent victim. In his statement (corroborated by an independent witness) he told them he was making a left turn onto this four-lane city street and although he had seen the white car coming towards him (the one I eventually hit), he hadn't seen me at all.
Obviously.
Here's the good news:
My daughter wasn't in the car
I was only modestly injured
The others were only modestly injured (except for a punctured eardrum from.....the airbag)
My daughter wasn't in the car
I went home that night to my family
It wasn't my fault
Here's what sucks:
1) My hospital bill will be around $6,000.00. Lots of paperwork to get the other insurance company to pay for it and if he doesn't have enough insurance to cover all of us we'll have to take a 'pro-rated' share. Which means we may have to pay for some of it.
2) My car, which was paid off and a dream to drive, is valued at $2,000.00 as a total loss.
3) Sucks to have to buy another car when you have enough in the settlement to buy a beater
4) I can't move, my arms, chest and legs are brusied from end to end and I'm popping pain pills like a veteran. Because of the bruises people stare at me funny and I'm driving the rental car like a 90 year old woman. I trust no-one.
But, in the end, the good far outweighs the bad and although I have trouble sleeping, reliving that moment over and over, I know that eventually the visceral memory of what happened will fade and life will go on.
..In a new car with 8 airbags, driver, passenger, side air curtians, crumple zones, reinforced frame, anti-lock brakes, rollover sensors, and extra cupholders.
And a new car seat.
.....the insurance company will pay for that right away.
Next: Continuing on with a backward look at Eric Roberts.
posted by vallie at 9:46 PM
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