While Nicole and I generally keep this site updated with everything from the latest Apple announcements to what the best party games are, that’s not my focus today. If you’re looking for that sort of thing, you can read up on Nicole’s thoughts on Scribblenauts or my review of Halo: ODST. However, while it may not be in keeping with the theme of our humble corner of the internet, we’ve been known to occasionally post a more personal update here and there and that’s precisely what this is.
As most of you know by now, last Thursday Nicole was in a terrible car accident. That picture there on the left? That was taken of Nicole today while she was on the phone with her grandmother. You can’t tell that she’s suffered at all really. Despite a puncture wound in her left foot and a series of severe bruises covering much of the left side of her body, she is, per usual, in remarkably high spirits. She’s briefly touched on her experience with the entire debacle in a previous post, but I’ve yet to speak much of my thoughts on the entire matter.
The title of this post is Six Minutes. The reason for this is that after Nicole was t-boned at an intersection she called me while I was at work as I was the first person to enter her mind after the impact. It was a pretty standard work day for me and while it was unusual for Nicole to call me without texting me first, it wasn’t entirely uncommon. What was uncommon though, was hearing her very distressed and broken voice that she had been in an accident, her leg hurt, and there was blood. After coming to my senses trying to process all that, I immediately took off, ironically driving faster than I should’ve to the intersection she told me she was at.
It took me around six minutes to arrive to a very backed up stretch of bridge where I could see the flashing lights. During this time, she had blacked out and was completely unresponsive to my asking her what was going on. I could hear voices in the background, but no Nicole. After I finally made it to the crash site a very friendly fireman took me to the ambulance. I was mortified to walk in but even more so after I saw Nicole- she was on a stretcher with a neck-brace and head stabilizer with an IV in her arm and blood all over her face. I held her hand as we spoke briefly and though tears were in her eyes, she managed to laugh about having an IV in her arm despite how she hates getting shots. The EMTs assured me she was okay for all intents and purposes and I followed the ambulance in my car to the hospital where I spent the next few hours with her, as more and more people showed up to check on her. After an X-ray and a doctor’s examination we were more than relieved to find she’d sustained nearly no injuries at all despite being very rattled and banged up. No broken bones, no concussion, not even a single stitch before she was released.
I’m not writing this to ruin everybody’s day or be a downer in an otherwise upbeat blog/podcast. No, I’m writing this because while I’ve been fortunate to have not seen an abundance of these types of tragedies in my life, it doesn’t mean they don’t wake you up to how precious life is or how blessed you truly are.
I feel blessed that Nicole was hit on her passenger side instead of the driver side. I feel blessed that while the situation sounded, looked, and felt decidedly grim, in the end she escaped not only with her life, but with nary a scratch on her. I am blessed to have the kind of amazing friends like Jeff, Jake, Keith and Christy, Chris, Eric, Alan, Danielle, Joel, Kyle, Brianna, Tiffany and Sam, Josh and Marie, Anthony, Kevin, Dave, Kim and Jerry, and especially Jon, who scarcely left our side through the entire thing. I’m blessed to have a mother who upon learning that Nicole had been in an accident dropped everything and made a three hour trip (in just under 2 hours) to support us, and that Nicole’s grandparents wasted no less time in being there to comfort her. I’m blessed to work for a company that understands when I dart out of the office at 2:40 on a Thursday that there’s something more important I need to tend to than analyzing a SQL problem. But I’m most blessed that I don’t have to sit at this keyboard and think about how I’ll carry on without Nicole in my life.
If you’ve managed to read through this entire re-telling of what I’ve been through and what I hold dear, I’ll leave you only with this; Cliche’ as it may be, life is short. I’m not presumptuous enough to believe that none of you appreciate it, nor am I naive enough to believe that none of you need to hear it. So, keeping in the spirit of that middle ground, hug your kid a little longer when they get home from school today, mend that broken awkwardness you have with an old friend and give ‘em a call, or just take a moment to shift your focus from the things you want out of life, and appreciate what you’ve got.
Thank you, to all of our friends, family, colleagues, fellow bloggers whom we’ve never met and the many more who have kept us in your thoughts and prayers.
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