You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The lady in the passenger seat.
Shot, injured, in pain, she stood before me.
“Instead of being discharged from the hospital, my family could be planning my funeral.”
The woman is still in shock. She is strong, but I can tell she is amped on adrenaline and hospital pain meds.
Dressed in blue hospital scrubs the 34-year-old mother of three climbs out of the car.
She is wearing yellow socks with no shoes.
“I’m in pain,” she says, favoring her left side.
The woman tells me she wants to tell me her story.
“He drove up beside us and he held the gun like this,” she says extending her right arm slightly.
I see her face .She winces. She is in pain.
“I’m on Demarol,” she says.
I look at the four door sedan .The rear driver’s side window is shattered, where the 40 caliber bullet reportedly tore through the glass.
She will show me the blood stained seat belt, and a tiny hole where the bullet passed through the fabric before entering her left breast.
“The bullet traveled under my skin and now I got a bullet lodged in my right shoulder.”
“They left the bullet inside you?” I query.
“They say it will damage my nerves if they take it out,” she says again wincing in pain.
The ordeal for this reasonable woman takes place 6 hours earlier.
She is with her friend, who is the president of a local car club.
Apparently the car club has booked a big show for June 27th, the same day that a rival car club has booked a big show.
Two shows in one mid-sized city on the same date?
Well them is fighting words, apparently.
The woman says they go to the other club to talk things over, but thing quickly escalate.
The next thing she notices is a cream-colored four door driving beside them.
A man hangs out the window with a 40 caliber and opens fire.
BLAM BLAM BLAM.
Bullets rip into the window, the door frame, the fender.
One of the bullets enters the woman.
I’m amazed that she is all ready out of the hospital recounting this story.
You are lucky to be alive, I tell her.
“I know,” she replies emphatically.
“You almost died over a date on a calendar for a car show?”
“yes. I have 3 kids .Ages 17, 14, and two. My kids could be motherless, right now,” she says.
She is in pain, and I can tell she is a little fuzzy because of the medicine she is on.
But her words are powerful, poignant.
Police track the shooter of the other car club a few miles away. He is taken into custody without incident and charged with attempted criminal homicide.
Two pistols are recovered.
“I heard the popping and the back window shattered ,then I was hit and I felt the burning.”
The woman is perplexed that something as dumb as a similar date on a calendar for a car club show could end her life on planet Earth.
She hugs her children, who have gathered on the sidewalk in front of the modest house.
She remains strong.
“Some people need to get a life,” she says.
Simple. Poignant. True.
Life’s Crazy™