So I get to work early this morning, for a change, to prepare for a fundraiser luncheon for our staff. A couple minutes after I walk in the door, I hear our secretary tell our assistant principal--our head principal for the day--that they needed to call 911. Someone has reported a wreck at the bottom of the high school's hill. Thinking little of it, but wanting to be sure Brennan isn't involved, I call home as I go down the hall to help our lab manager unload the cart so I could take it.
No answer at home. I start to get a clod in my stomach. My friend says, "Don't panic yet."
Then I call his cell phone. He answers with, "Mom, I've been in a wreck."
Somehow I have the presence of mind to 1) potty (I figure we'll be a while and who knows WHERE we'll be before it's over) and 2) tell my friend/lab manager to take care of our assistant principal's laptop that I left next to my desk. Our attendance clerk tells me to be prepared because there are several cuts--lots of blood. I grab a sweater, then run out the front door, through a parking lot, and into the middle of 27, where Brennan's Buick sits catawampus, almost 180 degrees in the direction opposite the one he was going. In see him in the car, looking pretty much like I'd left him at home--minus his glasses. I check him over, not seeing a cut, but seeing a little trickle of blood on his neck and a little on his jeans. A lady comes over to me--so upset I ask her if she was involved--and tells me, "DON'T look at the back of the car." I don't. I figure out in a moment that she's stayed with Brennan until I got there. I don't know her name, but I'd know her face if I saw her again--and I sincerely hope I do. My feeble "thank yous" aren't enough. Our DT stands next to me, barking orders for the buses and such while our assistant principal comes over and asks if I'M OK. I think I am. Then the kid who rear-ended him, our cousin, comes over to apologize and tells me he "got him out of there." I don't know until later that Brennan was essentially trapped in the car for a few minutes until he kicked the door while Jason pulled.
EMS comes in a moment and checks Brennan, bandages his head, asks him basic questions like what his name is, who is president, and leaves. Brennan complains his glasses are gone for like the third time. I finally have the presence of mind to ask if they were broken. "I don't know." (Humor here for those who know him.) I crawl into the car, amidst glass shards, to realize the driver's seat is reclined into the back seat and the back seat is half-way into the front because the backend of the car no longer exists as anything more than scrap and the windshield is no more than millions of starry glass fragments scattered along the road and through the car. That's when our DT says, "Carolyn. Look here." He point to the floor of the passenger side door and there, resting between the seat and the door frame is a perfect pair of glasses, lying there just like Brennan folded them and put them there.
After about a half an hour, a time when the main highway of our area is shut down due to four cars scattered along the road, but not one "real" injury, Tim loads Brennan's car and I verbally thank it for being a "good one." We've fussed about it enough, but this morning it has done all I could ask it to do. It has taken the brunt of an impact that should have critically injured, if not killed, our son.
And for that one time I thanked that hunk of metal, I think I thank God a hundred times. As I drive Brennan to the ER "just to be sure," David Crowder's "Oh Praise Him" comes on. I sing.
And I sing.
I took several pictures. I've posted about half of them.
