The phone call came at 6:15 AM on Thanksgiving day. A little girl, my granddaughter’s age, had been in a horrible accident on the Interstate. I had been in the twilight zone between asleep and awake, hearing the radio without listening, when the phone rang. I hurried out of the house.
“Hurried,” as I age, has become more and more a qualified term. Hurried this morning meant that I showed up with bed hair and with toothpaste stalactites at each corner of my mouth (no time to use a mirror, razor, or washcloth — you get the picture). It also meant that I shuffled across the icy parking lot. Again, the same weather that caused the accident in the first place, that denied us air superiority for transfer to a trauma center, caused our parking rink to become a skating lot. I learned that shuffle with a painful lesson five years, three surgeries, and a permanent disability ago.
The little girl will be fine after some recuperation. It could have been so much worse. I left her in the capable hands of those who during more pleasant weather would have arrived much more quickly with a clatter of rotor blades. By land or by air, they’re always a welcome sight. Angels don’t always need wings.
Oh — “hurried” also meant that I spent approximately thirty minutes in the trauma room with the fly on my jeans unzipped. Oh, well. Dress in haste, repent at leisure.
If my physiologic age is related to the number of times I forget to zip my fly, I’m an old man.