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Description
Bridgett just needed to reply to Meghan’s text about dinner. She only took her eyes off the road for a second, nothing more... but it was enough.
The impact was severe, the sound of wrenching metal deafening. It all seemed to happen in slow motion for Bridgett; glass breaking, then a terrible pain in her knees, more terrible pain in her shoulder, then a strange feeling from behind her...
Bridgett was awake when the emergency crews got there. They needed the jaws of life to extricate her legs from the wreckage. She couldn’t really see them, under the remains of the dashboard, but they didn’t hurt. She tried not to think about that. Besides, her left arm hurt plenty, it was twisted behind her and she couldn’t see her hand, but she could feel the pins and needles setting in.
When they were finally able to pull her out of the wreck, she didn’t look.
She woke up in a brightly lit hospital bed. The crisp white sheets fell flat to the mattress about where she would have expected her knees to be. She was in a large body brace, too. She looked around, starting to feel panic. A kindly older doctor entered the room with a nurse. She too Bridgett’s hand.
Bilateral above knee amputee and incomplete paralysis at the third thoracic vertebrae. Severe nerve damage to her left arm. Terrible, clinical sounding things, but Bridgett’s new reality. They talked about rehabilitation and relearning some life skills, being able to live a somewhat independent life with adapted equipment, but Bridgett kept thinking back to that text, shaking her head. She never did make it to dinner.

Description
Bridgett just needed to reply to Meghan’s text about dinner. She only took her eyes off the road for a second, nothing more... but it was enough.
The impact was severe, the sound of wrenching metal deafening. It all seemed to happen in slow motion for Bridgett; glass breaking, then a terrible pain in her knees, more terrible pain in her shoulder, then a strange feeling from behind her...
Bridgett was awake when the emergency crews got there. They needed the jaws of life to extricate her legs from the wreckage. She couldn’t really see them, under the remains of the dashboard, but they didn’t hurt. She tried not to think about that. Besides, her left arm hurt plenty, it was twisted behind her and she couldn’t see her hand, but she could feel the pins and needles setting in.
When they were finally able to pull her out of the wreck, she didn’t look.
She woke up in a brightly lit hospital bed. The crisp white sheets fell flat to the mattress about where she would have expected her knees to be. She was in a large body brace, too. She looked around, starting to feel panic. A kindly older doctor entered the room with a nurse. She too Bridgett’s hand.
Bilateral above knee amputee and incomplete paralysis at the third thoracic vertebrae. Severe nerve damage to her left arm. Terrible, clinical sounding things, but Bridgett’s new reality. They talked about rehabilitation and relearning some life skills, being able to live a somewhat independent life with adapted equipment, but Bridgett kept thinking back to that text, shaking her head. She never did make it to dinner.