Non-Fiction
"He was fast... He ran you right over" { Excerpt }
I heard a woman say, “She was hit by a car.” I thought: It sounds like she’s talking about me, but that can’t be right. I couldn’t see. I didn’t know where I was. But I wasn’t worried. I sensed that I was surrounded by purposeful strangers and that my partner, David, was by my side. Abruptly, I grunted and twisted. A nurse who understood my signals thrust a bedpan toward me. I dismissed the bedpan, leaned right and vomited blood over the bedrail. Still, I wasn’t alarmed or in pain – yet. I was only perplexed.
The last thing I remembered was leaving a grocery store and thinking these bags are heavy. That had been three hours earlier. Given the police report, doctors’ notes, and conversations with eyewitnesses, I’ve gathered some details from the time I lost.
On a Thursday afternoon in May 2021, I was walking across University Avenue in Minneapolis, when a black SUV turned left from an intersecting street. “He was going fast,” an eyewitness told me. “He ran you right over.” I asked people, even in the hospital, when my mind was muddled: did I have right of way? Yes. Was I wearing headphones? No one knew. Why did the driver hit me? No one could say. And the driver couldn’t be questioned because after stopping briefly, he had fled.
My left eye was purple, swollen closed and bulging. My skull was fractured in three places. A long, ragged gash that started at my left temple was stapled closed. I was in a neck brace because of a cracked vertebra. My right foot was sprained and my left shoulder was broken and torn. Bruises covered my limbs and face. But most concerning were my traumatic brain injuries, which doctors initially called severe. On my first night in the ICU, my brain was still swelling.