2010 Reflections p2.2 : People Look At You Weird When You Are Bloody

This is a continuation of the story of my truck accident earlier this year. You can read the lead up here. When I left off, my truck had just rolled twice on the freeway at 70 miles per hour, I was standing knee deep in snow, and really not excited about life at that point. As I stalked around trying to figure out what to do, a guardian angel coincidentally passed by - an ambulance stopped that was returning to base from a previous call. I may have thanked God at that point, it is all sorta blurry. Two blond haired medics around my age hopped out and helped me up into the back. They asked me if I had any pain or if I hit my head... no. Then they went to work figuring out the source of the blood. As they were getting me cleaned up, they spoke non-nonchalantly. They said they were just returning from another city when they saw the accident and stopped.  As I sat, I spit out some pieces of glass and picked glass out of my pockets. The source of the blood on my face was from rubbing my hands on my face. The source of the blood on my hands were two big gashes on the backs of my hands from where the caved in windshield must have struck as I was holding the steering wheel. Luckily, that was the extent of the damage. To this day, I have two stigmata-like scars on the backs of my hands as reminders of the day. They bandaged me up and I started to warm up, still in a bit of shock over everything. Was this really happening? The back of the ambulance was open and I had a clear picture of oncoming traffic. It was crawling along - partially from gawkers and partially from people realizing the conditions were bad. One vehicle must not have been either and hit the brakes hard. I saw it fish tail and spin into the median coming to rest in the snow just as I did, but without the roll. The ambulance guys called it in - "He'll be fine. He just went off the road. One at a time..." I messaged Arika on Gchat on my phone "Crashed my car. I'm fine. Probably not coming home tonight. I'll let you know more in a bit" Eventually a state trooper showed up on the other side of the of the freeway and trudged over. The ambulance drivers said I didn't need to go to the hospital unless I wanted to - which I didn't. After they finished bandaging my hands, I bid them farewell and stepped out with the trooper. He was a friendly enough guy. He was older - the kind of guy that you could picture having a failed hog farm, some grandkids in and out of jail, maybe fought in the gulf war - but wouldn't let any of this ruin his good midwest humor. We stopped at my truck and I grabbed my insurance cards tucked in the overhead compartment. I did a quick once-over of the truck to grab things. My selections were odd: my tire pressure gauge, a baseball, a old C programming language book I had been drawing in, a Altoids tin with random bolts and screws that somehow made its way into my truck. I got in the trooper's squad. He took my report of the incident and fumbled with the operating system in his dashboard computer making a diagram of the accident. It was the sort of awkwardness of when you are looking over someones shoulder as they try to show you a video they really want you to see they think is hilarious and you don't feel the same. He broke the silence, "The roads are bad tonight. At least nine other cars went in north of here. You're lucky to be alive looking at your truck". I think that was the first time I really realized how much worse things could have been. I was alive. I didn't lose any limbs. No one else got hurt. Wow. After a bit, the trooper gave me a slip with the incident number on it. He took me back to story city to a Super 8 hotel just across the street from the Casey's station I stopped at earlier for gas. I then realized, I had a full tank of gas when I flipped. That could have been bad - en flambe. I checked in with the little old thickly accented Swedish lady at the front desk. Once I was set, the trooper shook my hand with a smile and went on his way to go help some other poor souls. I had a "oh god, thank you" moment as he walked out the door. I didn't get a ticket. I had gotten a ticket for "driving too fast for conditions" when I was in high school for skidding in unplowed streets and hitting a snow bank that my front wheel drive car couldn't back out of. I challenged it and the judge thought it was bogus. However, if there was ever a time I was "driving too fast for conditions", it would have been an hour earlier. I also thought it was odd that I didn't even get asked if I had been drinking or using drugs. I wasn't, but it seems like a reasonable question. What a nice trooper. Thank you. I got into my room and before even taking off my coat, I called Progressive insurance. This was my first claim ever. I didn't know how it worked. Flo from the commercials didn't answer, but someone equally congenial did. They were going to take care of everything, but I had to drop off my keys at the auto body place in town at Story City where the car would be towed to in the morning. I looked it up on my phone and it appeared to be only a mile walk. Story City is tiny and there was no way of getting a cab. I was thinking of hitchhiking, but I welcomed the alone time to process everything. I decided to make the walk. Before I headed out into the cold, I called my roommate Caityee and told the situation and arranged to let Arika use her phone later so I could actually talk to Arika. I then called my folks. They didn't even know I was going for the job interview. I love my folks, but their reaction was funny and refreshing. It could be summarized as "so, you are alive and don't need us to do anything? Why'd you call?" I then posted something on Facebook about the accident because I apparently love to broadcast my life on the Internet. I then wrapped a white hotel towel around my head as a scarf and started on my way. By now, the temperature had dropped to below zero. I was freezing. Only a few cars passed along the main drag through the tiny town. However, every time a car did, I thought I might try to hitch with the the next car. At every intersection, I looked at the street sign and checked my phone to see how much further. It always seemed like it was just a mile more. I ended up turning off the main road onto some gravel lane. I passed a trailer court. I passed a closed down VFW. Finally, in the darkness I could see a run-down shack that was the auto body place. I checked the address with my phone just to be sure. On the front door were some envelopes for key drop. I filled out the information and dropped in my keys. I put it in the slot and walked away. In true Blaine fashion, I then tried to fetch the envelope back out to double check it. I worried I had filled everything in or if I perhaps put it in the wrong slot. I nearly had a panic attack. It was short lived as my toes started to get numb and I started on my way back. It seemed like it was getting colder still. I wasn't wearing gloves and I kept having to alternate hands I was using my phone with to navigate. The opposite hand was buried in my pocket until the other got cold. Doing this enough times started to peel off my bandages and my hands started bleeding again. While the warmth coating my hands were welcome, it wasn't really something I was otherwise excited about. I took my makeshift white hotel towel scarf off and wrapped it around my hand to soak up the blood. As I walked, I returned to the main drag and noticed a gas station up ahead. I hurried to it in hopes of getting warm and maybe catching a ride. I'm sure I was a sight - a near freezing guy wearing an ominous looking black wool trench coat holding a blood soaked white towel drinking coffee. I tried to make small talk with the older clerk to somehow seem less weird and threatening, but he seemed really uneasy about my presence. I'm sure it looked like a scene out of a Coen Brother's movie. For a second I felt like Steve Buscemi in Fargo. My toes were still numb, but I decided to avoid being awkward any further and ventured back out into the cold. Very shortly after stepping back out into the sub zero temperature I became extremely cold again and decided that I better hitch a ride or else I might get frost bite. I attempted to flag down a few vehicles unsuccessfully until a car finally pulled up. The driver was some high school kid. I told him I only needed to go up about a mile to the Super 8. It was a long mile for both of us. I think he noticed the bloody towel after I was in the car and was excited that I got out when he dropped me off. I pictured myself at his age. I had picked up hitch hikers before and it would have been just my luck picking up a hitchhiker who ended up killing and eating me.  I did no such thing. I'm going to assume it was a karma thing. Then again, most of the serial killers come from Wisconsin. Oh wait, that is where I am from. Hmm. I stopped thinking on the topic, thanked him, and walked into the hotel. Back in my room, I popped on my laptop to read all the words of inspirations from all my friends via Facebook. A few people called to check in. One of them was Mike, my old co-worker who put me on to the Webfilings job which I had been interviewing for hours before. He said he called the HR manager and they were going to do whatever it took to make sure I was squared away and taken care of. This was such wonderful news. Meanwhile, I started chatting with Arika on G-Chat. Apparently, Caityee had her door closed and Arika didn't want to bother her to use her phone to talk. I felt pretty badly about this. Even though Arika and I had been having problems, all I wanted at that point was to be at home snuggling with her and her dog. Even though she seemed really distraught over the whole thing, she didn't even want to bother our roommate to use her phone to talk. hmm. After some more emails and phone calls, I shed off my layers and took a long hot bath. I was a wreak. I just sort of lay there in the water staring at the suds chain smoking (it was a smoking room). I had come down with pityriasis rosea the week before and had nasty red spots all over my chest. Blood still leaking from my hands was mixing with the soap suds. I felt like shit and looked like shit, but was feeling so damn lucky to be alive.  Why would my hands not stop bleeding? How am I getting home? After just making the 11 o'clock closing at McDonalds across the parking lot, I ate a burger and starting thinking of what I would have to do in the morning with insurance and how the hell I was getting home. As I took the last few bites of my fries, I figured this was enough craziness for one day and turned out the light. Little did I know, the craziness was not over...