Praying for Peace

We decided to travel to a neighboring town but I’m not sure where or what for. As I made a left turn the balloon drifted into to my vision. I raised my right arm to push it out of the way and in doing so took my eyes off of the road and turned the wheel with my left hand. Kisha was riding in the front seat and all she had time to say was my name. I turned a split second before crashing into a tree dead on. Kisha always wore her seat belt, but had removed it in order to reach something in her coat pocket and subsequently went flying into the windshield. I smashed my face on the steering wheel and crumpled down by the pedals. My seat had tipped over and our manager Shana was thrown forward and got lodged underneath my seat. The three other passengers, Amirah, Khadijah, and Stacey were injured as well, but not as severely as Shana and I. I briefly came to consciousness and realized I was trapped underneath my seat and the steering wheel. I’m claustrophobic and get very uncomfortable in tight spaces. I started freaking out. I was dripping with blood and in absolute horror. I began banging on the doors and trying to force my way out, but I was pushing my overturned seat back onto Shana’s broken leg. When I got out of the car I began walking around, completely unaware that my knee was busted open. My body was in a state of shock and for the moment I didn’t feel any pain. As the firefighters and paramedics tried to get me to lay down, I shook them off stating that I was fine. Then I collapsed. Word of the accident traveled quickly, especially within my family. My grandmother’s house was two blocks away and the whole family heard the crash. They all came out and stood horrified, not knowing who was in the car. My childhood friend Carla happened to be a few cars behind me and called my mother. A firefighter named Marc that cut hair with Jimmy called him. My brother was about a mile away when he got the news and sprinted the whole distance to the scene of the crash. Coach Citro got the call, picked up Sheniqua from her house, and sped to the hospital. Stacey and Khadijah were transported to Mountainside Hospital for their injuries, but Kisha, Amirah, Shana, and I were taken to the trauma center at University Hospital in Newark. The waiting room was a grim scene as my mother was informed that I wasn’t expected to live through the night. As my family held a prayer vigil, my father walked around brooding because he blamed Glenn. He even tried to go after him. His half-baked theory was that I was so upset about Glenn coming to the banquet it caused me to run into a tree. When I woke up I had no idea what had happened, but I knew I was in a lot of pain. My first question to my mother was, “What happened?” When she told me that I was in an accident my next question was, “Is everyone alright?” She told me yes even though Shana was in a coma. She didn’t want me to be worried, as I had a long road back to recovery myself. Kisha and Amirah stopped by before leaving to see how I was doing and let me know they were okay. I had annihilated the right side of my face. There were over twenty fractures in my jaw, cheekbone, and eye orbital. My right eye was swollen shut and my face was the size of a beach ball. My nose was broken in three places and I also had two holes in my knee, resulting from something under the hood going through it. Miraculously it passed through one side and out the other without damaging the tendons or ligaments, and the doctors had already done surgery to close the holes. I don’t remember a great deal of the next two days because I was put on a morphine drip to help manage my pain. I spent ninety percent of that period sleeping. My clothes were in a plastic bag in the corner of my hospital room. When I put them on, they were a black skirt and a green blouse. I had foolishly put on my new blue fleece as well, but now it was all a deep, crimson red. They were completely drenched in blood. In the next room Shana had come out of her coma, but had suffered a couple of seizures. She came to see me in a wheelchair when she was able, and was released that Tuesday. On Monday news of the accident was all over the school. Although we had broken up a month ago, Nate was on the first bus to the hospital when school let out along with Onaje, and a friend of ours named Michelle. Onaje tried to make me smile by riding up and down the hallway in a wheelchair until he was reprimanded by a nurse. No more than half an hour after they arrived my room was overrun with visitors. The hospital only allowed two visitors at a time but the policy folded that day. Khalea and Tia made a system out of returning the passes to the visitor’s desk and coming back up so that more people could visit. I must have had fifty visitors that day. Many people kept vigil over me during that period. My mother was there all day, every day and only went home to sleep and shower. Khalea, who took the week off from school, Cindy, and Aunt Claudette all took turns spending the night with me. I had tons of supporters, but no one would let me see a mirror. I wanted to know what I looked like, but everyone’s face would drop whenever I mentioned a mirror, and with good reason. Eventually I realized that there was a mirror attached to the bottom of my tray, and I pulled it out. I was devastated. I looked like Sloth from The Goonies. I had never thought myself to be a terribly attractive person, but I had completely disappeared. My face was gigantic, there were dark circles around both eyes, cuts on my nose, and I looked like my mouth was full of marbles. Would I ever be the same again? That week I received many visits from Dr. Rosen who was an ear, nose, and throat doctor, and Dr. Langer, said to be one of the best eye doctors in the state. They evaluated me and decided that I could not have surgery to fix my face until the swelling went down. They prescribed antibiotics, pain relievers, and muscle relaxers and sent me home. We hadn’t heard from my father the whole week, so Glenn brought my mother to pick me up. Jimmy showed up just as we were about to pull off and made a commotion, so I ended up letting him bring me to my mother’s house. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I gingerly sat on the couch and didn’t want to move, but my mother insisted. I was filthy, and needed to clean up. It was now Thursday and I hadn’t been washed since before the accident. I felt sick and really didn’t want to go up the stairs, but I was covered in dry blood and my hair was matted. She and Khalea brought me upstairs, undressed me, and sat me on a stool in the bath tub. Khalea held me up while my mother washed me. She turned the shower on to wash my hair and all I could see was red water running down my face. The smell of blood caused me to dry-heave, and it took everything I had not to vomit in the tub. It took her almost an hour to wash my hair and work through the tangles once all of the blood was out. They took me out and dried me off, then my mother put my hair in two braids and I went to sleep. I was scheduled for reconstructive surgery on May fourth, and my mother took that two week period off from work to care for me. I was still sleeping much of the time, but when I was awake I was miserable. It was a tremendous effort just to switch positions on the couch, and I had this gnawing, ongoing ache behind my eye. It was considerably painful to even attempt to talk, so I communicated with my mother through grunts and hand motions. For the next month all I ate was ice cream and fried eggs mixed into grits. That was pretty much all I had been eating anyway because I was just coming off of the tonsillectomy. I lost twenty pounds over an eight week period.