Heels Over Head

a real-life adventure

Read Part V here.

Now available in ebook format!

I assumed that meant I had sustained the worst injuries. I was thankful the people in the other car were all right.

The ambulance was the winner. A uniformed paramedic stooped to take the place of the woman at my side. He lifted my left arm to take my pulse, and I cried out in pain. He hollered the vital statistics across to someone I couldn't see, and the people who had been securing my right side moved to make way for the backboard.

I shuddered in the memory of the last time I'd been taped to a backboard. Two years earlier, nearly to the day, I watched as firemen cut through my driver side door with "the jaws of life," just inches from my leg, to free me from my first dream car. The car I intended to keep for the rest of my life. The car I loved so much, I bought another one just like it after that first ordeal. And now identical twin Dream Car II was upside down in the I-25 median, yet another shattered reality.

I knew my neck wasn't broken the first time, too, but the driver who had run a stop sign and broadsided me knocked my car 40 feet through a fence and into the front yard of a home owned by a paramedic and nurse husband/wife team. I kind of wonder now how it always happens that someone with medical expertise is close at hand when I get knocked senseless. Is someone planning this out in advance?

The paramedic at my first big wreck was quick to respond ─ he beat the ambulance by a good two minutes, and his RN wife was close on his heels. The fire truck took longer, coming from across town. The whole time we waited, the paramedic held my head against my headrest as the nurse tried to comfort me, even though I kept assuring them my neck was fine.

The crew freed me from my mangled vehicle by sliding me onto a backboard. What a tricky maneuver! They taped me down to keep me from moving during the 45-second ride to the hospital a couple of blocks away.

The thing I remember best about my first brush with an airbag is the shot the doctor gave me to "relax" my muscles. They don't tell you as that needle's sinking in what kind of bruise you're going to have the next day.

The thing I remember second best is the nurses peeling the tape from my hair. Or should I say, peeling my hair from my head?

And I thought airbags hurt!

I wondered what memories from this new deadly airbag encounter would haunt me most...


Read Part VII here.

Table of Contents

Copyright 2012 by Deborah and Brett AtkinsonAll rights reserved. No part of this book - prose, photos or graphics - may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without express prior written permission of the author.

Tweet

Pin It