76-"A Split Second", life changing
Starting a normal day.
A Split Second
It is strange how the life of a person can be changed so drastically in ‘A Split Second’.
One day you wake up to the sun shining and the chirping of birds, flowers blooming and butterflies fluttering about. You get dressed for another day at work putting your pants on one leg at a time. Like the butterflies fluttering outside you have the thought flutter through your mind that this would be such a wonderful day to call in sick and enjoy this beautiful day. After all there haven’t been very many nice days lately and you should be able to have some time to enjoy this wonderful life you have been handed.
But, because you are a responsible person, you decide to go ahead and take a shower, go to work and take care of the things that have helped to make your life so great.
You trudge through the first half of the day and actually make it all the way to lunch time. You use your lunch period to contact some family and friends. You text instead of calling so that you can touch base with more than one or two. One of your friends invite you over for that evening. You agree to be there around 6:30 for dinner but let them know that you can’t stay too late for you have to work the next day. And you think to yourself what good friends you have and how lonely life would be without them and your family.
You make it through the rest of the work day with almost no incidents, at least none that can’t wait until the next day. You arrive home and start getting ready to leave for your friend’s house. Since you live alone and don’t have to involve anyone else in your little dinner excursion you are ready in no time.
This is not business so it is casual dress. You arrive around 6:15, after all you don’t like being late for anything, and you feel everyone should be considerate of other people. Dinner is good and your friend’s wife and two children are very talkative but polite at the table. After the meal you have desert and pay a very well deserved compliment to his wife on the dinner and delicious desert.
After sitting and chatting about some old friends and some old times too, you let them know it is time to head home. It is about 9:30 and you bid your ado’s and head out to the car. Your friend’s wife yells out for you to be careful because there are a lot of idiots on the road. You naturally call back that it’s only about a 15 minute drive and that you are always careful.
With that you slip into your car, fasten your seat belt and start the engine. As you drive you start thinking about how much you wish your marriage had worked so you could be with your children. As a matter of fact you are going to make it a point to make a special trip to see them this weekend.
About 10 minutes into your drive you suddenly have lights blinding you. You realize that someone has crossed into your lane and is heading straight for your car. You try to swerve but it is too late. The next thing you know everything goes black.
Two weeks later.
You wake up in a hospital with a nurse taking your pulse and before you can even say anything she says to you, “Just a moment and I will get the doctor”. In the mean time you feel like there is something missing and when the doctor gets there the first thing you ask is, “Where the hell am I and what happened?” and you don’t know if you really want an answer. As the doctor begins to speak your mind starts racing and you barely hear him when he tells you that you were in a bad accident two weeks earlier and proceeds to explain to you that because you were pinned in the car and they had to use the “jaws of life” to remove
you from the car they had no choice but to amputate your left leg. When he said that it brought you to your senses and you sat straight up in the bed. Well, that is, as straight as you possibly could. With that you started having flashbacks to that night.
All of a sudden you remember the music on the radio and how happy you were at the time. Then the bright lights in your eyes and all of a sudden you are lying here.
Your first thought is, “was this my fault and who else did I hurt?” You find out later that the headlights were from a car being driven by a drunk driver that had crossed the line into your lane. The accident was not your fault at all.
You ask; “What happened to the driver of the other car?” That’s when you are told that he had a few cuts, bruises and a bump on the head. He is sitting in jail.
This is when you realize that your entire life was changed in “a split second”. You won’t be able to run and play with your kids anymore. You are going to be limited to the work you can do for a living. You have to change your whole life, and for what? All because some jerk had to have that drink and then get behind the wheel of his car, because according to him, he wasn’t drunk.
