Some years ago, I wrote a book about my ten days in an eating disorder treatment center. It was never published, but now I feel like sharing some of it. I’m going to post random chapters to be enjoyed in little servings like this. –Juliana
The clock on the dashboard reads 11:00. They’re expecting me at noon.
I put on my left turn signal and wait for an opening in the long chain of cars approaching me in the opposite lane.
I tap the wheel nervously. No one’s moving. All the cars are idling, stalled in traffic. In the rearview mirror I see a line of cars waiting for me to turn left so they can continue forward. I can feel their collective impatience directed toward me, the car blocking their passage up Beacon Street out of Inman Square.
Finally a space opens up in the opposite lane. I have to act quickly or I will lose my chance. I grab the wheel, press my foot on the gas pedal and turn ninety degrees toward the Walgreen’s parking lot. I let out a big breath of relief and mouth “Thank you!” to the driver who has stopped to let me through. Right at that moment something slams into the front passenger side of my hood with a horrible metal crunching sound. Immediately there is an equally horrible and heavy WHOOMPH as a full-grown male human body—which has flown into the air off its bicycle (which has rammed the front end of my car at high speed) —hits first the hood and then the windshield and then rolls over and off and is gone, onto the pavement (I presume) beside my driver’s side door. And the glass I’m looking through is now, instantly, expansively, cracked in a spiderweb-like pattern.
At least this is what I think has happened. The whole collision seemed to take only half a second, like the tail end of a speeding reel-to-reel tape flying off its spool or a bullet whizzing past my ear in a rush of air.
I am strangely calm.
I don’t panic.
Slowly, I pull into a parking space in the drugstore lot, out of the roadway so the traffic can pass.
The bike-rider is now standing. He is alive. Displaying no immediately visible injuries. I get out of my car and approach him. Thoughts race through my mind: Oh my God. Thank God. He’s not dead. Is he going to sue me? Was the accident my fault? Should I have stopped? Should he have stopped? I didn’t see him! He came out of nowhere, no warning at all.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He is lifting his bike from the sidewalk where it landed after it hit my front end. He looks stunned but unhurt, and more importantly, not freaked out, not angry. Like me, he is calm, trying to process what has just happened, trying to assess the situation, the damage.
“I think so,” he says, as he inspects himself and his bike. He pats down the length of his canvas jacket, on one arm, and then stops to feel a spot near the inside elbow. “There’s a little cut here where my jacket ripped but I think that’s it.”
“Are you sure?” I say. “Do you want to go to the hospital?” Cambridge Hospital is really close; you can see its back side through this Walgreens’ parking lot.
He assures me he’s fine. His bike is mostly okay, too, though it’s “a little bent here.” He points to the spot as he crouches down and looks closely at the frame. “I work at a bike shop. I can fix this myself.”
“I didn’t see you coming.”
“I didn’t see you, either. I was going pretty fast.”
A woman appears from the direction of the drugstore’s entrance and hands me a business card. “I saw the whole thing. If you need a witness, here’s my number.”
“Thank you,” I say. And then, I automatically plead my case (but also the bike-rider’s case) to this jury and judge of one: “I didn’t see him coming—we didn’t see each other. He was blocked from my vision by the line of cars between me and him, and I didn’t see him and he didn’t see me. One of us would’ve slowed down if we had seen the other coming.”
No one is at fault. Or both of us are. Either way the fault (or no-fault) cancels itself out, leaving us both innocent. We simply smashed into each other.
I turn again to the bike-rider. “Are you sure you’re okay? I could drive you to the hospital.”
Again he assures me he’s fine. “Sorry about your windshield.”
“It’s okay. I have insurance. So I guess no one is at fault?”
“No, no.”
“We should probably exchange information. I’ll go in to the store and get a pen, okay?”
I walk into Walgreen’s and buy a pack of ballpoint pens, and some toothpaste and Polaroid film (the things I had come here in the first place to buy), still shaking, trying to breathe, a little bit giddy—like I’d just escaped a big disaster—and very awake, for the first time in what seems like a long time.
We’re both okay, both blameless, there’s an unbiased witness, insurance will pay to replace my windshield, he has the tools to fix his own bike. And I’ll still make it to the treatment center on time.
Nothing has really changed from ten minutes ago except that two things have become very clear to me.
First: This accident is an external manifestation—a physical illustration—of my inner state of agitation. The ever-quickening vortex of my anxiety. The trouble I am in. The cracked windshield is literally an in-my-face reminder of the destruction that is inevitable if I continue on the path I’ve been on.
Second: The accident has shaken me up but at the same time I feel oddly centered. I didn’t panic or crumble. And this is good—so good—to know. To know that when it really matters, when I need to be, I am okay.
I am going to be okay.
When I exit the store the bike-rider and I exchange pertinent information—names, phone numbers, insurance stuff, etc. —and then we say goodbye. He walks away, wheeling his bike to the shop where he works in nearby Central Square.
I drive the half mile home. The windshield is cracked but not so badly that I can’t see out of it. The glass will need to be replaced as soon as I’m out of treatment.
“Thank God,” I whisper all the way home. “Thank God.” We—the bike-rider and I—escaped the worst kind of damage, the life-threatening harm, the total calamity. I feel lucky. I may be coming apart but there is hope. Surely things are looking up.
I pack my bag.
Left turns against oncoming traffic, when a well-meaning driver motions you through, seem particularly hazardous. I totalled my car in a similar situation a few years ago and am glad I’m still alive. I tried to drive using only right turns for a while after that, but returned to my old ways soon afterwards, albeit with extra caution. I am glad your collision had a good outcome - sounds quite scary
Boy, what a day that must have been.