I jumped up, pulled on some clothes, and was sprinting out the door in about thirty seconds. As I left the house, I looked over at the answering machine in the kitchen and saw that it wasn’t on at all. Strange.
By the time I pulled out, I could already tell traffic was being diverted down the side streets around our house in order to circumvent the accident. And like a bumper car going the wrong direction against the flow, I headed toward the mess rather than away from it.
I turned east on Hollywood Boulevard and could see what looked like a film shoot for a disaster movie just a couple of blocks away. The street was completely blocked off; fire engines, police cars, and ambulances were randomly parked in the middle of the street; helicopters circled in the sky. I still couldn’t see the actual accident, so I drove toward the mayhem while everyone else was doing whatever they could to avoid it.
Reaching the point where the street was blocked off, I turned left up a side street and miraculously found a parking spot. I jumped out of the car, ran down Hollywood Boulevard, approached the scene…and that’s when I saw it. A city bus was parked going the wrong direction on the far right-hand side of the street. And in front of it were the smashed remains of Susan’s BMW. It literally looked as though the bus was trying to devour it, the front end of the car completely consumed—either not visible or nonexistent. I couldn’t tell.
My hand immediately went to my mouth, and I remember uttering out loud, “Oh, fuck.”
I couldn’t even comprehend the scene. What was the bus doing on the wrong side of the street? Every way I looked at this, I couldn’t see what Susan could have done to contribute to this bizarre configuration. This was not the first of her accidents, but they usually fell into the category of an “oops” involving immovable objects like signs, dumpsters, garages, bicycles, concrete posts….
“Where’d the scrape on your bumper come from?”
“Oh, I backed into a dumpster.” And then she’d give me a guilty little smile…oops.
“How’d you get that dent in the trunk?”
“Oh, I backed into a post.”
My favorite driving story of Susan’s, though, if I can digress from the main drama for a minute more, was when she was a teenager and worked at Hickory Farms in Shopper’s World in Massachusetts. She was leaving work for the day, got into her dad’s gigantic Pontiac, backed up, and started heading toward the exit onto Route 9. As she was driving through the parking lot, she looked in her rearview mirror and saw a VW bug right behind her, the driver waving her hand. Susan didn’t immediately recognize who it was but gave her a friendly wave back, figuring it was someone she knew, and then continued on to the exit. A couple hundred yards farther on, she again looked in the rearview and saw the same woman behind her, still waving, now a little more frantically. Susan thought it was strange that this woman was following so closely behind her, but she nevertheless continued on until she was just about to turn onto busy Route 9. That’s when the woman behind her began leaning on her horn. Susan finally stopped the car and got out to find out what was going on. The woman jumped out of her car and shouted, “Your trailer hitch hooked onto my bumper when you backed out of your parking space! You’ve been towing me around!” Susan looked at the two cars, and sure enough they were connected. Oops.
However, there was no oops to this accident, and looking at it even from fifty yards away, I couldn’t conceive how anyone could have possibly survived it.
I immediately searched the area for Alyce and finally saw her on the corner of the street amid a number of passersby and bus passengers. She was standing there crying, a stranger comforting her.
I ran up to her and pulled her into my arms. As she buried her head into my chest, sobbing, I looked beyond her to the car and thought, Oh, my God, how is she even still alive? She was covered in tiny shards of glass, in her hair, on her clothes, but uninjured…and she had been in the front seat! I held onto her, unable to believe the miracle of her. I remember thinking, Am I really holding on to my baby girl? Or have I gone crazy and she’s actually still in the front seat of the car and I’ve slipped into some other reality where my brain created this alternative universe, unable to cope with having lost her? I held her tighter. Still, I couldn’t imagine if I had run up to this horrific scene and found her body, limp in the front seat of the accordioned car.
I brushed the glass and tears off her cheeks, bent down, and asked her if she was okay. Did she hurt anywhere? She shook her head no.
Inconceivable.
As I held her, I could see the emergency crew cutting the roof off the car to reach Susan, still trapped in its crumpled frame.
“Wait right here, baby, okay? I want to go check on Mommy.”
She nodded, still crying, afraid of what I was going to find in the driver’s seat.
I let go of her and walked toward the car. As I approached, I first saw the passenger side, the deflated air bag, the destroyed interior, the door completely popped off, strewn on the sidewalk. I again shook my head in disbelief that Alyce had walked away from this.
And then I saw Susan inside.
She was conscious, but pinned under the dashboard and steering wheel, her air bag also deployed and deflated. There was no front windshield—there was no front end, for that matter—but by some miracle she was conscious and reaching with her left arm for someone to help her. There was some blood on the air bags, but I couldn’t see the source. Honestly, I couldn’t see much of anything.
She blindly called out for someone to help her, anyone, her eyes not focused. I shouted to her, but she couldn’t hear me. I yelled again, but I was too far away. I tried to move closer to let her know I was there, but a policeman or paramedic held me back. “You need to clear the area, sir.”
And that was my cue to recite my line in this surreal movie scene. “I’m her husband.”
The officer was compassionate but continued to usher me away. Susan still didn’t know I was there, didn’t know Alyce was okay. She was alone in her hell, and I was helpless.
I returned to Alyce, who asked if Mommy was okay. I told her that I didn’t know but that she was conscious, so that was a good sign. And then I looked down at my watch. It was 8:25; my conference call was due to start in five minutes, not that I intended to be on it. I remember thinking as I dialed the phone, the absurdity that Disney would be the first call I made regarding the accident, not family or friends. Disney.
My producer answered the phone, and I began to shakily speak. “Dave, it’s Doug. Listen, my wife was just in a car accident, so I won’t be able to make the call.”
“Oh, okay, no problem,” he replied. Thankfully, he didn’t press for any details, just continued, “We’ll let you know how it goes. Hope she’s okay.”
“Thanks,” I responded and hung up. With my phone still in hand, I thought, ‘I should take a picture of this…to be able to identify the bus and document the scene. Even though it was for good reason, I still felt guilty for taking a picture—that somehow I was exploiting the situation. How could I be thinking of making business calls and snapping pictures at the scene of my wife’s accident? It was all so confusing, so I only took the one photo.
Later, when I asked Alyce what she remembered about the accident, one of the things she told me was that when she got out of the car, she saw a river of blood running down the street. I’m pretty sure it was engine coolant, but it’s easy to see why she would think that from this scene of horror.
My phone buzzed. From the caller ID I could see it was Tracy, our former neighbor, who lived right around the corner from the accident. I answered, and all I got out was “Hi” before she immediately began speaking.
“I’m watching the news. Please tell me that’s not Susan. Tell me that’s not her in the car.”
I really wished I could have been able to say it wasn’t, but, instead, through tears I confessed, “It is.”
Her response was a sharp exhale, like a punch in the gut, the result of someone who had been praying to God
to please let it not be true having her worst fears confirmed. “Oh, my God, I knew it. From the helicopter, Mike and I saw her floppy hat in the back of the car. Oh, my God. Okay, we’re coming up there.”
I had to hang up because Alyce and I were then approached by a slew of firemen and police officers. Some took information from me while a paramedic placed a collar around Alyce’s neck.
“We need to take your daughter to the hospital to get checked out. Do you want to come with her or stay with your wife?”
I looked back at the car; Susan was still trapped inside. There was now a winch attached to the rear bumper, and they were trying to pull the car out from underneath the bus so that they could get her out. The motor whirred, the chain tightened and groaned against the weight, straining to separate the two vehicles, until either the chain snapped or the bumper gave way. I don’t remember which. All I know is that the two vehicles were still fused together.
“Sir, are you going to stay here or go in the ambulance with your daughter?”
I looked into Alyce’s crying eyes as she pleaded, “Stay with me, Daddy. Please.” I looked back at the car again, faced with this impossible choice, and despite the guilt of leaving Susan behind, I nodded that I would.
I followed Alyce and the paramedic to the waiting ambulance. They laid her on a gurney and lifted her into the back. I stepped in through the side door and sat down next to her, and as I looked out the rear doors, I could see the team of responders still cutting away at the roof of the car, trying to extract Susan as she continued to wave her one free arm, desperately reaching for someone to please help her.
And then, as I held my daughter’s hand, the door of the ambulance slammed shut and we were gone, leaving my wife behind.
We were just a few miles away from the hospital, so with the ambulance siren blaring, it took us only a couple of minutes to get there. They brought Alyce out on her gurney and wheeled her into the emergency room. I walked along by her side, holding her hand as she was whisked in.
They rolled her into the ER, and immediately a swarm of doctors and nurses descended. They cut off her new red leggings and began examining her, asking if she had hit her head, if any part of her was in more pain than another, could she move her legs, could she stand, one question after another, which Alyce answered through scared tears.
They were encouraged, initially seeing only the cuts and scrapes from the glass, but they still wanted to take X-rays. For that, they needed some additional information from me.
“How tall is she?”
“About five-one.”
“How much does she weigh?”
I turned to her for the answer. “Baby, how much do you weigh?” She looked at me and shrugged, and I thought, God, just like your mother. You’re not going to tell me how much you weigh.
I guessed, figuring it would be close enough.
And then, just as we were heading to the X-ray room, they wheeled in Susan. They parked her right on the other side of Alyce’s curtained area, just a thin piece of fabric separating mother and daughter.
She was conscious and screaming over and over, “Help me! I’m dying! Help me! God, help me!” Again, the hospital personnel asked me if I wanted to stay with Alyce or Susan.
Alyce gripped my hand tighter.
“Baby, they’re just going to do some X-rays, but I’m gonna go check on Mom, okay?” She nodded, realizing that she was going to be fine on her own for a couple of minutes. And she, too, wanted to know how her mother was.
Inside Susan’s trauma room, there must have been about fifteen doctors and nurses crowded around her gurney. They were preparing to move her onto another examining table, but she was thrashing around so much and yelling so loudly that it made it difficult to hear anything over her wailing.
“Ma’am, we’re trying to help you. What’s your name?”
“Suzanne! Help me! Please!”
“Okay, Suzanne. We need you to calm down so we can help you.”
Now, because they had no idea what her name really was and since she was screaming “Suzanne, help me!” they assumed her name was Suzanne. However, I could see she was in shock and was screaming for our neighbor Suzanne to help her.
Okay, let’s stop here for a minute. Here’s my wife of twenty-two years. We have two beautiful children and what I consider to be a good, healthy marriage. But is she screaming for me in the emergency room to help her? No, she’s calling for our neighbor Suzanne.
There was no “Doug? Where’s my husband? Please get my husband!” I was suddenly confronted with the harsh realization that if she was going to be stranded on a desert island and could bring just one person, I would totally be dumped. “See ya, sweetheart! I’m taking Suzanne. She’s more capable. You understand, don’t you?”
So, as the doctors and nurses continued to attend to her, asking questions like, “Suzanne, do you know where you are? Suzanne, are you allergic to anything? Suzanne, please relax so we can place you on the table,” I finally turned to one of the attendants and flatly corrected them, “Her name’s not Suzanne. Suzanne’s our neighbor. Her name is Susan.”
In the background, Susan continued to thrash around on the gurney.
I then added, “If you let me near her, I think I can help calm her down. If she sees me, I think it’ll help.”
“Sir, we need you to stay back while the doctors are working on her.” And then a doctor turned to Susan and shouted over her hysterics, “Susan, you have to calm down! We’re trying to save your life!”
They finally managed to move her from the ambulance gurney onto the emergency room table, but she was flailing around so much that she nearly fell off. When they finally got her into place, I could see that her left leg was dangling at an impossible angle off the table, and she was still struggling to get up, continually waving her left hand and screaming, “Help me! I’m dying!”
They began checking her vitals and cutting off her clothes. In a matter of seconds, she was lying naked on the table, bodies hovering over her. You know that old piece of advice, Wear clean underwear. You never know if you’re going to end up in the ER. That one’s a fallacy. The ER team couldn’t give a shit whether you’re in a thong or granny pants. In that moment, you are just a broken body, a piece of flesh they’re simply trying to keep alive.
The next several minutes were a blur of providing insurance information to hospital personnel, statements to police officers, continued screams from the emergency room table, until they finally wheeled Alyce back from her X-rays and parked her back in her space. She, in contrast, rested quietly, listening to the screams from her mother on the other side of the curtain.
“Is that Mommy?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“I think so, honey.”
I actually did think so. There were no crash carts, no shouting “Clear!”—just professionals doing their jobs, moving quickly and efficiently.
For the next few minutes, I bounced back and forth between my two girls, each on an ER table and separated by just a few feet, but worlds apart. Alyce was feeling nauseated, which concerned the doctors that she might have a head injury, but she hadn’t eaten anything all day, so hunger might also have been the cause. They brought her a little turkey sandwich (the one I was still holding in my hand hours later in the waiting room) and gave us the results of her leg and neck X-rays. Miraculously, there were no breaks.
Meanwhile, they began to move Susan out of the ER for X-rays of her own. As they passed, they said to me, “She’s got some broken bones, an arm, a leg, but she’s going to be all right. We’re just going to take her for some other tests.”
I remember heaving a big sigh of relief from this bit of good news. And that’s when I first called Susan’s mother, explaining that both she and Alyce had been in an accident, that Alyce was okay, and it looked like Susan was going to be as well. She asked if she should come out; she’d get right on a plane. I told her not to just yet. Let me hear back f
rom the doctors first.
We hung up, and I stayed with Alyce. By that time, friends had started to arrive in the emergency waiting room, but I hadn’t gone out to see them yet. I had also decided I wouldn’t tell our son, Michael, anything about the accident just yet. Since it seemed like it was just going to be a few broken bones, I’d tell him when he got home from school. I didn’t feel the need to interrupt his day and concern him when there was nothing he could do about it anyway.
That’s when a doctor arrived and pulled me out of Alyce’s area. He explained that they were working on Susan, and she was currently undergoing an angioplasty. He told me she had suffered a broken pelvis, which was causing excessive and dangerous bleeding. They had also discovered bleeding in her brain from the impact.
And now, just like Alyce, I too felt like puking.
He looked at me and solemnly declared, “Your wife is very sick.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Your wife is very sick,” he repeated.
“I hear you, but I don’t know what that means.”
Again, he said, “I’m saying she is very sick.”
At this point, I was getting annoyed. I asked him again, and I think he could tell that if he gave me the same answer, I was likely going to punch him in the face.
“What are you telling me? Are you telling me that it’s dire?”
“If we can’t control the bleeding in her pelvis, she’s going to bleed out. If we can control it, we’ll then X-ray her brain to determine how bad the bleeding is there.” He would keep me informed, and then he left.
A twist to this surreal movie I was living.
I returned to Alyce’s side; she had heard the entire conversation.
“Is Mommy going to be all right?” she innocently asked again. I looked at her sweet face, and though I could desperately hope for Susan to be okay, for the first time, I couldn’t answer that she would be.
“I don’t know, baby. I think we have to prepare for the worst.”
That naturally got her crying again, and, next to her, I leaned over the emergency table and laid my head against my arm. I immediately flashed back to my childhood, remembering the doctor who came to our house when I was a boy and told my father that his father, my grandfather, had died. I watched from the stairs as my father took in the information. And then, after nodding to the doctor, he leaned against the doorframe with his head against his arm, much in the same way I was doing now.
Struck Page 3
