Sobering: February 28, 2004

Sobering (Part I)

Earlier today (that is, Friday, February 27th) I was reading about this accident in the newspaper, and I thought about what it would be like to be in the van that was hit, in which the father was killed. Thinking about what it would be like to be that man, to see that truck spin out of control ahead of you, and in a split-second, realize that you were going to die.

Then I put the newspaper aside and went on with my day.

This evening, while at a restaurant with a friend, another friend called me on my cell phone: I knew one of the people who was critically injured in the accident, one of the people in the pickup truck. Oh God, listen to me: I know one of the people...he sang with me in my gay and lesbian chorus.

At one time we had been pretty good friends, but we had had a falling-out over his plans to start up a separate chorus, and our friendship had never really recovered. There was also a clash of perspectives: Joe thought he was funny; I thought he was cruel. I thought I was principled; Joe thought I was fixated. The truth, as always, was somewhere in between, and neither of us would budge to meet it there.

I called the hospital to find out his status; the patient inquiries department did not have a status on him, and said that he was in the operating room. Then I called someone who was a closer friend to him, and found out that his injuries, while severe, were not life-threatening. Oh God. Thank you God.

Just the evening before the accident, I was driving home from Regina; it was near freezing point with wind-blasted snow, the roads were very slick, and there were three or four cars who had spun out of control and were now sitting, temporarily abandoned, stuck in snowbanks to the sides of the highway.

I could have been the person in that pickup truck; I could have been Joe. In a split-second my life would have changed...

What a sobering thought. And I remember thinking today, before I heard the news about Joe, just how lucky I was, how I had come through the darkness and made it out the other side (relatively) unscathed.

I don't know what else to say...maybe there are no words. Or maybe words will come, but not yet.

Sobering (Part II)

I'm at work on the reference desk, but I can't focus. I called the hospital again today and was told Joe was in Surgical Intensive Care (family visitors only). I called Joe's friend Linda, and got more details. Linda had gone down to the hospital and had spoken with Joe's parents.

Things are still very serious. Joe underwent a ten-hour operation in which bone from his hip was used to replace two neck vertebrae. This is such a new technique that, if this had happened five years ago, he would have died (according to Linda, this is what the surgeon told Joe's parents).

The fact that he had had a second person in the truck, relatively uninjured, who could loosen Joe's seatbelt (which was strangling him), and hold Joe's head until the Energency crew came, also saved his life at the scene. If he had been alone in that truck, he would have died.

Angels were watching over Joe.

Linda is sending around a mass-email to let everybody know what's happened; this is called "doing a Ryan", because in the past I had been (in)famous for my mass emails. Today, I'm going to leave that up to her. I'm feeling that there's just something unreal about of this, that it's a mistake, that someone's gonna turn me around and tell me "Kidding!".

But it's not. It's not "kidding". It's real.