I watched my husband get in an accident yesterday.
It was scary as hell.
We'd left the house about the same time, me in the car and him on the scooter which he hadn't ridden in probably a month because of the cold weather. We pulled up to the left turn signal to get onto Mira Mesa Blvd. from our street, him in the inside left turn lane, me in the outside left turn lane.
Both of us were in the front of our lanes, and when our light turned green, we both started to turn left. At the same time, there were two cars on the opposite side of the street turning right onto Mira Mesa Blvd., and they both turned right on red, just as we were turning left at our green light. The woman in the outermost right turn lane turned across three lanes into the lane that Donovan had just turned left into, and she almost hit him. He managed not to get hit, but lost control of the scooter and went down, rolling over a few times after he hit the ground.
I watched all this happen.
I had seen the two cars turning right on red as I started to turn left, and I watched as the woman almost hit my husband, and then I watched as my husband hit the ground and rolled several times.
I doubt that I'll ever be able to erase that image from my mind.
I had no idea what to do, and was scared out of my wits. I stopped my car in the middle of the lane and just honked my horn for what seemed like forever. I watched as Donovan lay on the ground for probably no more than two or three seconds, but I'm telling you it seemed like an hour.
With the help of some good Samaritans, we managed to get the scooter out of the road and got Donovan and my car off to the side. The woman who had almost hit Donovan had stopped a few hundred feet down the street but never got out of her car to see what happened. After a couple of minutes, she took off. One of the women who had stopped to help us took off after her and said she would bring her back.
We did our best to assess the damage to Donovan in the meantime. His jeans had ripped at the knee, where he had a big abrasion, his right hand was all scraped up on top, and the palm of his left hand was banged up pretty good. The thing that worried me most was that he said his chest hurt right in the middle and he'd had a little difficulty breathing at first.
I rinsed out his wounds with my water bottle as best I could, and it belatedly occurred to me that we should call the police. Donovan wouldn't let me call 911 since it wasn't an emergency, so I called the local police number. I was waiting to get through to someone when I saw a cop turning right onto Mira Mesa Blvd. I flagged him down and explained what had happened. He wasn't thrilled at first since he had been on his way to respond to another call, but he stayed and helped us anyway.
Our good Samaritan did in fact catch the woman who almost hit Donovan and brought her back to the scene. A HUGE thank you to her because without her we didn't have so much as a license plate number. What an amazing thing to do for a total stranger!! I hugged her before she left and she told me that she has a husband too, and she couldn't imagine what she would do if she saw him get in an accident.
To make a long story short (too late!), we did eventually get Donovan to Urgent Care. They x-rayed his knees and his chest (all good), cleaned out some of his wounds, gave him a prescription for Vicodin and sent us on our way (after about three hours). He's sore, and has some pretty bad pain in the knee area, and we didn't sleep much last night (thank God for HBO on Demand!).
I'm clear that we were VERY lucky that nothing worse happened to him. And as traumatic and scary as it was for me to witness the accident, I'm SO grateful that I was there and was able to take care of my husband. Still, in the quiet moments when there's nothing else going on in my head, I can't help but replay the sight of him rolling down the street, and it's still really scary. Hopefully it'll stop soon.
