I can’t believe I have to write this again but my daughter has survived another emergency this week. Just two days after her car accident and ride to the hospital, Child Harbat was again in an ambulance after a horrific accident. This time she was walking home from school with her best friend and accompanied by her friend’s mother and younger brother. This happens almost every day, as this family is our best friends and the girls have known each other from birth. This day was like any other until a young inexperienced driver with no learner’s permit or license spilled a drink in her car. This caused her to get distracted, swerve the car, hit a fire hydrant, run up on the sidewalk, and plow into this group of three children and mother. Child Harbat ran like a little bunny and dove out of the way of the car. The car struck the other two children and then began every parent’s worst nightmare as a blur of emergency services, doctors, and specialists rushed to stabilize the children. Both children are okay, one with much more serious injuries than the other. I won’t say more for respect for the family’s privacy, but it is a miracle that all the children are alive.
I don’t think I’ll share more information on this, as it has become a news story in town and everything is too raw to discuss. Child Harbat is fine apart from some scrapes. Of the mental injury in being part of such a horrific accident I can’t say. Having gone twice in three days to the emergency room she now has two identical teddy bears given by EMTs from the same station, as the accidents only occurred within three blocks of each other. When I went to the accident scene last night I cried to see how close it had been for our daughter, how little space and time there must’ve been for her to escape an oncoming car. No child should have to run from a car on the sidewalk. No mother should have to watch as this kind of thing happens. Here is the scene:
I wouldn’t want to calculate the odds of such a thing happening but it makes me glad this week is almost over. I am thankful for our friends and for their children’s survival of this, I’m thankful for my daughter and her fast and clever reflexes, I’m thankful the accident was across the street from a fire station and EMTs were on the scene in seconds. I’m thankful for the bystanders who lifted the car off our friends’ daughter. And I’m thankful we all get to live to see another day.
Writer, architect, father, husband.
I’m glad everybody is OK. I can understand a little of what you are going through as a year or so ago an old man lost control of his car on the bend outside our local primary school. He ran over the kerb and crashed through a fence. This was literally a hundred yards from our house and right outside the entrance to the school where only hours earlier our children had been walking to school. It makes you even more aware of the dangers and in a way makes you worry even more than you do normally when you have children. I used to have black hair before I had kids and now I’m rapidly going grey, I put it down to worry! 🙂
i’m so happy to hear everyone survived! the crushed stroller on the news was heartbreaking.
my daughter, too, went to the ER twice in one week at around 4 y/o. i was so sad to see her hurt and terrified they’d think i was abusing her.
hoping everyone recovers quickly and child harbat quickly can orget these accidents and you are able to relax and not assume this is some kind of crazy pattern!
This reminds me too much of a little Australian girl, Sophie Delzio, who survived two horrific car accidents.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Delezio
Hope your daughter overcome the trauma of all that has happened and that all the others hurt also recover well.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. CH is doing okay though obviously the second accident is on her mind a lot. She wants to see her best friend and for things to go back to normal but that will be months away. Little children are physically resilient though I can’t tell what’s going on that little head. Hopefully she can walk down the sidewalk again without flinching every time a car drives by.