Small Miracles
In a roundabout way, I may have saved my 82-year-old aunt’s life when I drove over her foot with my Toyota Highlander last week. My Hot Mess Express was en route to a wedding in Florida with my aunt Marty and my sister, Kim. We drove part way and stopped in Florence, South Carolina for the night. In front of the hotel, we took the suitcases out, and I was about to park the car in the lot. I didn’t realize that Aunt Marty had opened the door for one more bag and I pinned her foot with my car’s tire. “MOVED FORWARD,” she yelled. I quickly did that and she fell back, bumping her head. I PANIC.
She was on the ground, in pain. I quickly opened the back door to get some ice from the cooler. It was 94 degrees that day so the ice was a puddle in the cooler. I grabbed the fizzy waters and put one of her bruised foot and one behind her neck. It was chaos and I was holding back tears, trying to keep it together.
I ran into the hotel lobby and asked for ice and a wheelchair. The front desk staffer had neither, but handed me a bottle of Sutter Home wine and said we’d need it later. I skulked back outside and when Kim and Marty saw that I had wine, they both started laughing. That was a good sign. She was going to be OK. One fizzy water started rolling away, and this idiotic scene gave us the giggles.
The Meat Locker Waiting Room
We get back into the car and meanwhile, my brother Bill who traveled from NC, pulls in and sees us but is confused when we don’t pick up his call. We were navigating to the hospital. Upon arrival at the hospital, which was exceptional, we get her checked in and into a wheelchair to wait for hours. The sun was up before she got a room. During the wait, we sat and paced in the freezing ER waiting room. Kim went back to her car and get a hoodie for herself, but I didn’t have anything. So, she brought me a beach towel with a pirate on it and I wore it like a cape pacing around the waiting room.
Hospital Tourism
The waiting room was packed with people who had clearly been there before. One woman had a McFlurry, and another brought a book, some had blankets. I had to wonder if they really had emergencies if they had time to stop for snacks. There was plenty of time to ponder the state of emergency health care.
From Zero to Hero
Long story short, Aunt Marty had no broken bones. The CAT scan of her head was good too. However she’d been experiencing some other pains, and while we were there they conducted more tests. The ER doc on call that night took the extra steps to find out that not only did she have diverticulitis, an infection of the intestines, but the deadly infection of sepsis, too. It seemed like a small miracle that they caught these things before they got worse.
The Wedding
Oh, my nephew’s wedding was beautiful. My brother JR was the officiant and did a wonderful job. We streamed the wedding from a restaurant and cried just as much as we would have if we’d been there in person. We made a phone call to relatives to update them on our misadventure. We laughed a lot. As Kim says, Aunt Marty’s funny bone is still intact. And so is her foot and her forgiving heart.
My Twin
The best of the trip for Kim happened when we were leaving the hotel to check Marty out of the hospital. Kim is a few years older than me and more than once people have asked if she was my mom. Not that day. The hotel staffer in the elevator asked how we enjoyed her stay only to end with, “Hey are you two twins?” Kim is still grinning from ear to ear.