Let me set the stage for you:
It was May 16, 2004. (I am freaky with dates like this; don't know why, just always have been.) Shawn and I were young (he was 29, I was 28), youth leaders at the church we attended, and had already gone through a miscarriage the year before in August. I was 16 weeks pregnant, and it was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning. The day before, we had been with our youth group all day; we picked strawberries, cleaned them and made strawberry syrup out of them. We canned them with the purpose of selling the jars for a fundraiser. Shawn and I were going to church early that Sunday morning: him to teach Sunday school, and me to finish preparing the jars for our customers. (I was going to put pretty ribbons and fabric on the tops, you know? Make them cute.) I had all the orders in a metal cash box in the backseat of the car.
What we had forgotten was this: The bridge was closed that weekend. We lived in Virginia Beach at the time, and traveled over that bridge every time we went to church, or to my parents house, or anything. We had just been at church the day before, and we had remembered that the bridge was closed, so we went the other way, over the other bridge. But Sunday, we remembered too late to go the easy way. By the time we remembered, we had to go down Elbow Road.
For those of you that don't know this area well, Elbow Road is what one might call a death trap. It's a long, winding, narrow road with no shoulder to be seen on either side. Many people have lost their lives in crashes on this road. Shawn had never driven down this road before, nor was he very familiar with the car he was driving, because it was the car I usually drove. So when we went around one corner and he caught the gravel on the non-existent shoulder, that was it. The car fell down into the ditch, we hit a culvert head on, and then the car flipped back up into the road, upside down. We spun around like a top for a minute before coming to a stop, facing the same direction we were traveling, just upside down. We never crossed the center line, and we landed right in between two driveways of the church across the street.
When we stopped moving, I could hear my husband crying out, "I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry..." over and over. I think he was in shock. For some reason, I was very calm, almost peaceful (I later realized that I had been hit in the head, most likely the console piece where the air bag comes out, but we'll never know for sure) and I remember hearing what I believe to be God speaking to my heart saying "The baby is OK. Get out of the car. Now." You don't need to tell me that twice! The problem was that I was hanging upside down in my seat belt. My right hand had been badly injured (though I didn't really realize it at this time) and I couldn't use it to push myself back into the seat so I could unhook the belt. Shawn was trying to get out, too. His driver's side door was jammed, so he put his seat back to get out the back door. I needed him to help me get out of the seat belt, and by the time he'd done that (and we were both on our hands and knees in glass shards and whatever else <shiver>) men from the church across the street had come and pried his door open and were pulling us out.
At this point, I lost sight of my husband. I knew he was OK; I had seen him walking around. People flocked around me. They walked me a safe distance away from the car and sat me down in a grassy spot. I couldn't figure out why everyone was fussing over me so much. I was pleading with someone to call my parents. They were at church where we were headed by this time. I was hollering out the number to the church (I still have it memorized; I told you, I'm weird that way!) begging for my parents to come. All this time, I remember a beautiful lady with white blonde hair kneeling beside me, using a water bottle to try to wash off my badly mangled hand. She was shaking so badly that I wanted to hold her had to calm her down! When we had started to crash, I had reached out the window to hold onto the roof of the car. My right hand had been crushed between the roof of the car and the asphalt. It was not a pretty thing to look at. One of the men told me that I also had a "pretty big goose egg" forming on my forehead.
By the time the ambulances arrived, my parents had gotten there. They were putting me in the ambulance when I heard my Mom's voice, telling me that Shawn was in the other ambulance and that he was going to Chesapeake General. I asked them to take me there, too, but Chesapeake refused me. I was hurt worse (not to mention PREGNANT!) and had to go to the big hospital in the city, Norfolk General, and their trauma center. My Mom rode in the ambulance with me while Dad stayed at the site and
When we got to the hospital, I was hollering out that I was pregnant, because the EMT hadn't told them that over the radio as we were headed in. The doctors and nurses immediately began working; cutting my clothes off, ultrasounds, x-rays, sent me for a CT of my head, the works. I insisted that they check the baby first. When they did the ultrasound, there he was, be-bopping all over as if to say "Mommy, that was fun! Let's do it again!". It was obvious that he was fine.
They did an x-ray of my right hand right there in the trauma bay. The doctor saw it and I know he immediately thought "surgery practice!" because of how bad it looked. When the first x-rays came back and revealed there was NO damage to the bones, he made them do it again. He didn't believe that my fingers weren't at least dislocated or something! But nope, just badly skinned. Each finger on the side, from the bottom knuckles to the tips of each finger. The doctor called it my "hamburger hand"". I had complained about my backside hurting, and the thumb on my left had was turning all shades of purple and black and hurt like the dickens, but he didn't seem concerned about those. I did find out a couple of weeks later that my thumb WAS broken. Quite a few years later I found out that my tailbone had been broken, as well. Since I was pregnant, they didn't want to expose the baby to more x-rays than were needed, and there's nothing you can do for a broken coccyx anyway!
They kept me overnight for observation in the Labor & Delivery unit so they could monitor the baby and my head injury, and then released me the next day, Monday. Shawn and I went home and rested for a while (because let's face it, you get no rest in a hospital!) and then I placed a call to the church where we crashed, Bethel Baptist church. I wanted to thank them for all that they did and let them know that we were ok. What happened next is the next part of this story. It was one of the biggest blessings in our lives.
Come back tomorrow and I'll finish the story!
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