You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
What can happen in the blink of an eye.
The mother was making lunch for her child who has down syndrome.
It’s a small home. It’s on a hill. There is a steep driveway. At the bottom of the drive, a busy 4 lane highway.
The mother tells me she left her two children outside for two minutes. Two minutes! 120 seconds. Less time than it takes to sing the Star Spangled Banner.
A lot can happen in 2 minutes. Life can happen. Death can happen.
All in the blink of an eye.
The mother is somewhere between wiping peanut butter off a knife and folding a paper napkin getting ready to call her girls into lunch, when suddenly her 5-year-old runs into the house and screams, “momma call an ambulance.”
Troopers will later tell me the 11-year-old girl, with Down Syndrome, chased a ball into the highway. A car hit her and knocked her into the ditch.
The speed limit on that road is 50 mph.
The mother rushes down the hill. She is crazed, peanut butter still on her fingers.
What does a mother think in that blink of an eye?
She is looking for her daughter at the base of the driveway. Her daughter is nowhere to be seen.
Cars are stacked up in the highway. There is smoke and confusion and high intensity angst.
The mother sprints 40 yards down the highway to the ditch.
There she finds her little girl, unresponsive.
By this time, a highway full of people have stopped. It was noon. An ordinary day. The sun is out. The day full of possibilities. There is so much to do. There are so many options.
Then life blinks its eye and everything changes.
The momma will tell me that motorists jump out of their cars and help and pray. Some of the drivers are nurses who just happen to be driving by. They immediately begin rendering 1st aid on the street.
1st responders will arrive. A helicopter will land. The child will be flown to Vanderbilt Medical Center.
A single text to an obscure contact yields this tip.
Lawrence County is far away. We don’t hear this on the scanners.
“what’s Up?” I text.
“Child hit by a car,” comes the response.
I check with the assignment desk. “Do we know this?”
The response: “no.”
By the time I arrive, almost 3 hours later, the scene is cleared. A bad situation for a news man needing video.
The accident is in Lawrence County, some 100 miles out of Nashville.
We find orange paint on the highway and little pink boots on the side of the culvert. Powerful symbols of something bad.
We interview a neighbor who heard the collision, heard the screams, helped comfort a momma who was simply making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Tuesday I tell the story of the crash. I don’t know much about the child or the family except they just moved here and the little girl is critical and has special needs.
I struggle to learn more about the driver. He is arrested for driving on a revoked license. His record indicates he has a history of driving on suspended license and quick brush with some marijuana.
He is easy to vilify according to his own THP records.
The next day, I go to the hospital.
Children’s Hospital is a wonderful place. It is an oasis of healing in the middle of Hillsboro Village.
You walk into the facility and the flavor is ice cream and moon beams. Kids push cancer carts by murals of sunshine and bunnies.
The sickest of the sick come to Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. But the energy in the building is bright and hopeful. It’s hard to feel sick in Children’s Hospital. It’s like not wanting to finger paint in Kindergarten.
When we enter the ICU, the child is asleep. Her mother is in a rocking chair beside the bed. Little Gracie, the 5-year-old who watched her sister’s tragedy is in bed with the 11-year-old.
The child’s face is swollen like a rotting pumpkin. Her eyes are black and blue, her nose dented, perhaps broken.
The little girl’s mother will tell me that her clavicle is broken, bones in her lower back are broken, her skull is fractured in 3 places.
The special needs girl is lucky to be alive, but she is. I will watch her move and open her sleepy eyes multiple times.
The man who hit the little girl could never have stopped in time. He was simply driving north on a four lane highway. He was driving along at 50 mph, doing what we all do. He might have been on a phone. He might have been listening to the radio. Then life blinked its eye and suddenly a child darts into the road in front of him.
Two family’s, two very unconnected families suddenly become very connected.
By day 2 on this story, I am learning much more about both families.
I learn that the little girl before me loves puzzles. I learn that she is fiercely independent. I learn that she has a favorite song. Her mother tells me that when the child was lying in the street, unresponsive, she sang the song in the little girl’s ear. In that blink of life’s eye, a mother’s song reached a little girl’s soul, and she woke up, fought for life, and cried.
By day 2, I will also learn more about the driver with the grainy mug shot.
I call the man. His wife answers.
When I say I’m the news guy, I expect to hear CLICK.
Instead I hear her yell “James. News on the phone for you. They want to talk to you about the accident.”
and I am shocked when he agrees to a phone interview.
He is soft-spoken and earnest. He says he is relieved to hear that the child is doing well. He says that he was in shock when he hit her. He tells me he his over whelmed when he watches motorists get out of their cars and put hands on the child to pray for her till an ambulance arrives.
He says he has been praying for the child non stop and it has made him appreciate life as a special gift.
I ask the mom about the man who hit her child.
She too surprises me.
She says she prays for him and she can’t imagine how he must feel, how guilty he will always feel. She says she feels for guilty for taking her eyes off her baby for the time it takes to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She says God has a plan for everyone and everything and for some reason this man was supposed to come into the family’s life.
She says if it took her daughter getting hit by a car for his life to turn around, then that is God’s plan.
I thank the man and tell him that I will get his words on TV.
I thank the mom and tell her that I will generate prayers for her baby girl who has many more weeks of recovery.
The mom smiles and tells me that the child has all ready stood up and walked to the bathroom.
She doesn’t know how long the child will be in the ICU, but she knows that she is a tough child and she will over come this adversity.
The story makes me appreciate what I have right now.
I know I must plan for the future, but I try not lose sight of the immediacy gift that we get that can be snatched away by simply chasing a ball down a driveway.
A driver and a mother will remember that gift tonight.
It only takes a blink of an eye to be reminded how fragile it truly is.
life’s crazy™