The Monkey Car

It was one of those dreams that was completely engrossing, yet not particularly interesting. Riding in a train car that was decorated as it were a fortune teller’s parlor, complete with fringes and velvet, I waited. Although it conjured a mysterious atmosphere, there was a good light within that put me at ease.

There was a smiling man with a pony-tail who engaged me in small talk- none of which I remember now. I asked where we were going but that didn’t seem to matter. Maybe, I thought, this was just one of those journeys where I was to let go and just let it be. Pony-tail man soon explained that we were In the “Monkey Car.” He must have used that name several times over the course of the next minute as I sat on the edge of my seat waiting for my enlightened truth. (Please, God- bring me the peace I’ve been seeking, was the hope I clung to.) It became apparent that there was a monkey in the ceiling, as I spied a filmy glass trap door up there. I wasn’t sure if I had seen the monkey running across the ceiling, or if they were just shadows from the bumpy ride.

He pointed up and away so I turned to see a plain, petite, blonde woman walking toward us. Her blank smile and eyes void of soul turned toward me. I saw her lips moving but could not hear her tell me that “something is going to happen in the Monkey Car.” Pony-tail man cleaned the table which I was leaning on, while asking her to repeat herself. “Something is going to happen…”

My alarm went off. I HATE it when that happens. Like I said, it was a dumb dream, but it consumed and intrigued me. I told the story to a couple of co-workers when I got to work, who laughed along with me. The monkey car? At lunch my boss asked how my day was so I once again told the story of the monkey car and got the same reaction.

It was about 2:00 and my phone rang. It was Lorri, telling me that Caity was in an accident. I asked if she needed me to pick up the boys. She was yelling to someone and I couldn’t tell what was going on. Then I heard her yell, “Oh my god, she’s on the ground.” She came back to the phone and said, “It was your Kaity.” She told me which road the accident was on. I knew better than to ask too many questions because I didn’t want to panic during the drive out there.

Every car in front of me was moving so slowly. As I got closer to home all of the cars coming toward me were flashing lights and signaling the oncoming drivers to slow down. I didn’t think my throat could sustain such a lump. As I inched closer in the unmerciful cloud of traffic I could see lights flashing. There were so many of them. I’m not sure if I was even breathing. My sweet monkey mouse, as I’d always called her, please let her be okay. When I finally got there I saw her car on the wrong side of the road- but I didn’t see any other cars that would have been involved. I had stopped in the middle of the road to try to find her, but the officers were yelling at me to keep moving.

I put the car in park and ran to the crowd of medics, gawkers, and people trying to help. I saw her and she was whiter than a ghost, laying on the ground. A dark haired woman came up to me and told me that she had pulled her out of the car. That’s when Lorri saw her fall. I don’t know how long I stared, looking her up and down, trying to see if anything was wrong with her.

The medics said she seemed okay but had to go to the hospital to get checked out. They were going to release her to me. Just as they brought me the release paperwork to sign, she started to get dizzy. Then she slowly became disoriented as the paramedics sat patiently, observing her. She was saying ridiculous things and was extremely agitated, saying some bizarre things. She yelled at me saying that she needed to get home. On the side of me was the other car which had veered off the road with the old woman who was driving it. The medics had kept her in there for a while and I was worried that she was hurt. She was having chest pains so while some of the EMTs were observing Kate, the others were strapping the old woman to a board, and loading her into the ambulance.

Kate suddenly started to feel sick and was becoming increasingly belligerent. Remembering a story that one of my sheriff friends had once shared with me about a child who had sustained a brain injury, it first crossed my mind that something might be wrong here. The police came to me and asked for Kate’s registration and insurance. They stopped the slow-moving traffic for me, as I headed toward the car to get the papers from the glove box. Her music was playing, her backpack was on the floor and her fresh Starbuck’s was splattered all over everything. It was amazing how the bright light shone on the beautiful white of the airbag which was hanging limp from the steering wheel. It just looked so pristine against the thorough spray of coffee splatter.

As I returned with the paper work, the medics informed me that Kate would be going to the hospital via ambulance. They strapped her to a board and headed toward the ambulance. I stood frozen, looking around, finally noticing all of the people who were driving by. School had let out just a little while before so half of the town was driving by, watching. Then I saw Jake in the back of Andy’s Jeep, waving to me with a smile. They told him it was a fender bender.

The ride to the hospital was horrendous. Not quite 30 years ago when I rode in an ambulance, it was to the hospital to watch my friend die from a brain hemorrhage.

The old woman kept chattering away back there as I sat up front with the driver. He was so sweet and kind. I heard Kate moaning in the back, getting sick to her stomach.

Once we arrived she was evaluated by a doctor and removed from the board. She kept getting sick. I thought it was from the ride downhill, strapped to the board. She was in so much pain, and yelling about her head, her arm, her legs, her chest… It seemed like an eternity, but it was probably just half an hour before they were x-raying her whole body. No breaks anywhere. The pain caused from the impact and seatbelt alone, were enough to cause major discomfort. She started to get sick- violently sick once the x-rays were done. It was just a matter of minutes before they were wheeling her away for a CAT scan. That was my first melting point- when I realized that this might be serious.

After a couple of hours of intermittent violent vomiting and screaming from the pain, she seemed like she was okay. The CAT scan was negative for bleeding. She was so terribly sore, had a nasty headache and was pretty irritable, but it looked like she was fine.

The whole time we were in the ER she didn’t even have her own room. She was stationed in one of those wall spots, across the hall from the loudest, most obnoxious, complaining, whiney, fart-infested man I’d ever seen. He kept yelling at everyone and would not shut up. I was tempted, a couple of times, to ram his IV pole down his throat.

As she slept for about half an hour I checked the messages on my phone. Apparently many of the people driving by saw me there and wanted to know what had happened. Word spread so quickly. There were so many good wishes that followed me through the next few days. I never realized how much it would mean just to know that people cared, and that they’d do anything to help me. Just hearing their voices helped.

She woke up groggy from her nap and seemed to be doing better. The doctor was considering releasing her, and was going over what I needed to watch for, do, not do, etc. He went to write the orders and while he was gone she started to get sick again. This time it was much worse and she was slipping in and out of consciousness. The doctor came running when the nurse called. He told me that her condition was rapidly deteriorating and that they had to take action. They couldn’t get an iv into her. After seven stabs, they finally got one in. She was crying in between the sickness episodes and I just couldn’t take watching it. Nothing that she said or moaned made any sense. My heart was never so broken.

They pumped morphine for the pain, sedatives for the brain, and anti-emetics for the stomach into her, for hours. After the first hour, her body seemed to be calming down. I was so worried that she had lost consciousness. The doctor said that she needed to be this way, to impede the brain from swelling any further. She must have hit her head pretty hard. I was getting sick just thinking about it. Several hours later she was awake and stable. She looked awful and apologized to me for everything. Then she told me how sad she was that she had no father to care about her. How her father never cared, and how Andrew just turned his back on us. My heart broke a little more.

In the middle of the night they moved her to a private room where she was finally able to get some peaceful sleep. They gave me a sadistically hard chair with no back, to “sleep” in. I watched her color-drained, mascara-drippy face, framed by some pretty messy hair, and thought how sorry I was that she had no dad. I felt guilty that I was feeling sorry for myself that I was doing this alone, with no one to lean on. I was so scared. What did I ever do to deserve this loneliness? And what could possibly be the reason that my beautiful children deserved this ridiculous fate that was handed to them?

They kept an eye on her for a couple of days. The doc who came in to release her listened to her gripes about the pain in her arm, re-examined the film and determined that her elbow was broken. Not sure how they missed it the first time.

Every day has been difficult. She’s still in so much pain, bruised all over and her headaches aren’t getting any better. This is day 8 of a very long and bumpy ride. I am so grateful for the friends who showed up, stopped by, brought dinner, entertained Jake, or just asked me how I was doing. Life is hard. I haven’t had a chance to doubt that for as long as I can remember. Frankie told me, just after we got home from the hospital, that our family could use a little good luck. Of course, finding out that I had never actually purchased collision insurance on her car was not the kind of luck I was looking for, but hey, it’s just another thing to get through.

You know, something really did happen when the monkey car crashed.