Luck on the boulevard

At every red light, Mona reminded herself to stop clenching her jaw and release her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel. She couldn’t figure out if the almost unbearable anxiety during her morning commute in the last month was the result of the multi-car highway accident she was in shortly after passing her driver’s test, the time she spent as a volunteer EMT in, Roosevelt Boulevard specifically, or stress at work careening out of control to activate her fight-or-flight response. Last week she had finally decided it wasn’t worth the stress of negotiating the speeding, weaving drivers who treated the 40 mile per hour speed limit, heavily trafficked surface street like a highway and she had resolved to start taking only backroads through the suburbs. This morning though she left her apartment late after cleaning up cat vomit. She had an important 8:30am meeting with, and the Boulevard was indisputably the fastest way to get there even if it was awful. 

Driving the actual speed limit would have been suicidal, but she tried to stay only 10mph over the limit. She made sure to leave a safe distance behind the cars in front of her, which frequently led to another car zooming in to fill the open space. This was exactly what the scratched white utility van did before immediately braking as the line of cars in front of him stopped for a red light. Mona was able to stop in time but couldn’t hold back from screaming and furiously raising her middle finger, even though there was no chance the driver could actually see her behind him. Never again, she thought to herself, this drive was too stressful, and she was too emotionally labile to handle it. As she vowed to get up 15 minutes earlier so she was never forced to drive this route again, the light changed to green and the white van accelerated hard.

In agonizingly slow motion, Mona saw the ladder on top of the van shift in a strange way. In retrospect she would swear that she had time to see the ladder sliding out from under the red strap securing it to the roof, time to almost convince herself she was just being paranoid from being rushed and on edge all morning, and time to realize what was actually happening directly in front of her and react. The ladder slid straight back from the roof of the van towards her windshield, becoming airborne. Instinctually, she ducked down to the right behind the dashboard and over the gear shift, and simultaneously yanked the steering wheel to the left while squashing her foot on to the brake pedal. In a moment she came to a stop on the grassy median.   

Her foot still clenched on the brake, she tried to sit up and immediately banged the back of her head on the ladder, which had come through the windshield. She saw broken glass all around her in the front seat but nothing hurt. She wiggled her fingers and toes, pleased to find everything functioning. Not being able to see in front of the car and having a vague movie-generated notion of cars exploding, she awkwardly maneuvered into park and turned the ignition off. Her back was to the driver’s side door, but she heard it open and heard a man’s voice saying, “Miss are you ok? I already called 911. Let’s get you out.”

Mona started scooting backwards in the seat towards his kind voice and the open door. As she eased across the seat, she was surprised to see the gray fabric covered in bright red blood, although the right side of her neck did feel a little wet. She put her hand up to it and felt warm sticky oozing fluid from an oddly rough surface. Before she could panic, she felt the man’s big hands on her sides, gently guiding her out of the open door under the ladder and down onto the grass. An African American man in his 60s, he had a kind face to match his kind voice, which showed a flash of horror when he saw her neck. Suddenly, her EMT training kicked in. “Hold pressure on my neck” she barked. Without questioning her or hesitating, the man took his dark green Eagles t-shirt off, balled it up, and placed it on her right neck. “Press harder!” she begged, and he complied as the distant sirens grew louder. 

The ambulance arrived and her good Samaritan was brushed back in a flurry of activity before she could apologize for yelling at him. An oxygen mask was put on her face while another hand took over the pressure on her right neck, and someone’s forearms braced her head to keep her spine aligned. She felt oddly remote from her position as the patient while she silently tried to evaluate howe well the EMTs were following what she remembered of the trauma protocols. As she was logrolled onto the backboard – which was someone even more uncomfortable than the rigid, bright yellow piece of hard plastic looked like it would be – she caught a glimpse of her poor Toyota Camry, ladder protruding from the shattered windshield. 

“Ma’am you’re pretty lucky, that’s some Final Destination shit,” the younger EMT said as she was lifted onto a stretcher and slid into the back of the ambulance. 

After bouncing over the potholed roads with the sirens wailing, they arrived at a hospital, and she was unloaded and wheeled into the emergency room. Instantly, there were almost 20 people covered by face shields and blue plastic gowns surrounding her. The dull pulse of pressure on her right neck shifted but persisted. Simultaneously her clothes were cut off, an IV was started, and she confirmed she had no trouble breathing, she hadn’t lost consciousness, and nothing hurt. She said her name and date of birth.  Hands rapidly examined her head and face and moved efficiently down her entire body. The atmosphere in the room made her aware that everyone was worried she was more injured than she realized and was just in shock. After the poking and manipulating was complete, an authoritative female voice announced her spines were “clear” and an army of people rolled her off of the horrible backboard. A singled shielded face appeared over her face. 

“Hi Mona, I’m Dr. Zhang, the trauma surgeon. You’re going to be ok. I’m just going to take a look at your neck now.”

Mona felt the warm wet pressure abate from her neck as the soaked t-shirt was lifted. It still didn’t hurt, but also felt like it belonged to someone else’s body. Dr. Zhang appeared again, “It isn’t bleeding much now but there’s some glass in the wound. Before we explore it I’d like to get a CT scan to rule out a deeper injury.”

Her stretcher was rolled down a hallway and into a dimly lit room. She was lifted onto the CT table, glided into the donut of the scanner and back out, and carefully lifted back onto the stretcher. When she returned to her room in the emergency room, there was only one nurse there to meet her (it seemed like now that she had been deemed “not very injured” the crowd had dissipated. The nurse lifted the head of the stretcher a little bit so she could see her surroundings and checked to make sure the bag of fluid was still running into the IV in the crook of her left elbow. When she turned to the computer, Mona lifted her hand to her neck and felt stickiness and a little grittiness. 

Zr. Zhang returned, sans face shield and gown, and glanced around the room with a stricken look. “Mona, do you have family on the way? Is there someone you could call?”

Mona was confused – didn’t the doctor need to look at her neck? Surely family members weren’t supposed to be in the room for that? Was she supposed to have been calling people? She didn’t even know where her phone was but assumed it was still in her car. 

“Um, I don’t think so. I don’t have my phone. What is it? My neck doesn’t hurt and it’s stopped bleeding,” she said, belaying her confusion.

Dr. Zhang pulled her own cell phone out of the pocket of her scrub top and asked, “Do you know anyone’s number?” 

Like every other millennial, Mona relied on her cell phone boyfriend’s and roommate’s numbers, but she still knew her parent’s home landline, and gave her this number. 

Dr. Zhang pulled a chair over to the stretcher and lowered the bedrail before sitting down. With her phone on speaker, Mona heard her father’s voice say hello. Looking to Dr. Zhang with uncertainty, she said “Hi Dad, it’s me. I was in a car accident – well I got hit by a ladder – but I think I’m ok. But I’m here in the ER and the doctor wants to say something.”

Her father gasped and said, “Oh sweetheart, you’re ok though? Oh thank god.”

Dr. Zhang inhaled sharply before starting: “Mona, the CT shows that your neck is fine. There are superficial abrasions with some residual broken glass that will need to be cleaned out, but nothing deeper.”

This sounded like good news, Mona thought. Why had she made her call her father to tell them both she was fine?

Dr. Zhang continued, making steady eye contact, “The scan did however show a mass in the lower part of your brain. We’ll need to get a dedicated brain MRI, but it looks like a tumor adjacent to an area called the amygdala. There’s a fair amount of swelling around it which is concerning. I’m going to see if we can get the MRI done in the next hour. Neurosurgery is on the way in to see you. I know this is a strange thing to say but it’s actually very lucky this happened today and we found the tumor before it grew any more.”