Yesterday I was hit by a car.
A Police Car.
I was in a crosswalk.
I had looked at the face of the man behind the cruiser, and trusted that he saw me, that he was there to protect and serve, and so, the pregnant woman in the big floppy sunhat stepped off the curb.
About halfway across the lane, I realized he was coming and he was coming very fast right for me. I had a fraction of a second to sort of skip forward, and in doing so, got my body out of the bumper's way, and it was my leg that the tire grabbed and bounced off of.
He pulled over, I limped over to the side of the road, and leaned against the nearest building trying to catch my breath, trying to calm the torrent of tears that were coursing down my cheeks.
Fourteen weeks pregnant I kept thinking. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. I bent over double and told my heart to slow its roll, calm down. I can be as fucked up as I need to be, but that fist sized baby deep in my abdomen needs to know nothing about this. That baby needs to keep on doing its thing, growing bones, and figuring out how to make a trachea.
I looked at the huge raw patch on my leg where the black rubber of the tire now mingled with little dots of blood. The welt inflated as I watched. I threw my head back and said fuck it. Breathe.
The cop came over. He didn't apologize. He said he didn't see me. He said it again.
I said I looked at his face. I said I was in a crosswalk, and I thought because he was a police officer I could trust him. He said he didn't see me. He said my leg didn't look so bad. I said I'm pregnant. He said he'd call emergency, and he did, and then he walked away.
He never apologized.
When the ambulance arrived, they washed my leg. The saline burned like gasoline. They took my name. A Lieutenant showed up and began to question me about the accident. I asked for his name. I asked for the officer's name. He gave it to me, but not before correcting me. Sergeant, he said.
I realized the reason the police officer who hit me hadn't come near me was because he wanted as little contact with me as possible in case I claimed he did something he didn't. I realized he was already thinking about how to protect himself when he pulled over, before he saw my leg, before he knew how bad he'd hurt me with his car, he was worrying about himself.
I breathed.
I signed the refusal the EMT's gave me when I said I didn't want to go to the hospital.
The Lieutenant found me a police officer to give me a ride home. She was the first woman I saw since the accident. There had been other cars at the intersection when it happened, another pedestrian who'd just crossed before me. They had disappeared. Nobody came forward as a witness.
The female police officer gave me a ride. She chatted amicably about her three children. She tried to keep it light. She asked how far along I was. She might have been pretending, but she was the first person to ask anything about the pregnancy. When we pulled up in front of my building, she said she was pretty sure her sister had lived on the first floor apartment. That's where I live, I said. What's your sister's name. She told me. We still get her mail. I'm pretty sure the lady cop's sister is in pretty deep financial trouble, we've gotten some scary pieces of tax evasion looking mail, which I've returned to the post office, and wondered if the previous tenant had died. I guess not. She's just looking out for number one.
I called my ob gyn. They said I should come in as soon as i could so they could examine me.
I called my herrband. He didn't pick up.
I texted four friends for a ride, nobody was free. I didn't tell them why I needed the ride. I called a taxi.
I called my friend the paramedic, who I knew was working. She said she would come.
My mother told me today that at the exact time that I was sitting on my front porch with a bloodied leg incapable of getting hold of anyone that she had been obsessed with hearing from me. She wanted to write me an email so badly, but she couldn't think of anything to write about. She was startled out of her reverie by a student.
The taxi arrived.
The herrband called. I told him what had happened, where I was going. He said he'd meet me there.
The taxi driver was a sweet old guy. He asked me why I was going to the dr. I said I'd been hit by a car. He asked if it had been in Salem. When I said yes, he said, Bridge street? I said yes.
I just drove by there, he said. Who hit you?
A cop.
A COP?!
He drove me to the dr, and talked to me about Malamutes and wolves. He told me a story about a girlfriend of his with a Macaw. He made me laugh, and he wished me the best of luck when he dropped me off. It was a twenty dollar ride, easily. He charged me ten.
At the dr's office, the herrband showed up right when they called my name.
We went in, and the midwife was more concerned with my leg than the baby. I lay back.
I let them fuss. I let Beard tell her nicely to please get the fetal heartbeat for us. She did. She found it. It was nice and strong. One hundred and fifty beats per minute. I wept silently down the sides of my face for relief.
The midwife asked what happened. When I told her, she made me promise to go to the ER.
When we walked out of the office, I stopped before the door to the waiting room and I threw my arms around Beard, and I tried to breathe, and not cry, and he held me, and he said it would be okay, that I was okay, and I got myself together, and we walked out into the waiting room, where my friend the paramedic was waiting. Her uniform was open like she'd run all the way from Revere. I hugged her really hard.
She came with us to the hospital.
It's really cool to be escorted by a uniformed paramedic through triage and into a room. I highly recommend it.
She blew up latex gloves and made them into little elephants. Beard kept looking at my leg.
There was no fracture, no torn ligament or cartilage. My knee was tight. The wound wasn't even bleeding anymore just oozing plasma. The nurse bandaged me. The doctor told me I'd be all right. Another nurse gave me a tetanus shot.
We left the emergency room.
We got pizza.
A lot of pizza.
Later, we walked down to the ocean after a thunderstorm and watched gold shimmer on the water, and I thought about how grateful I was.
For trotting.
For taxi drivers.
For Moms with spidey-senses.
For Bearded Herrbands who don't lose their shit in front of you, and wait until you go for ice cream to do it alone in the house.
For ice cream.
For Paramedic Best Friends who know everything, and deal with bloodied strangers every day, who leave their job getting paid to sit in a hospital to sit in one with you for free.
For fist sized valkyrie babies who keep fighting to get into this world.
For my lungs that kept on breathing.
So grateful.
Later, I called my parents and sisters, and one of my sisters kept howling about how horrible it all was. What a terrible world full of awful people that this happened, and I stopped her.
I said, I can't look at it that way.
Today something really good happened to me.
I get a tomorrow.
