Remember That Time a Truck Fell On My Head?
On the evening of Sunday, June 30th, 1996, after I had completed a series of jobs for a chiropractor, I was driving my pickup over to his house to deliver the bill. I was sitting at the red light in the northbound right hand lane at the intersection of South Rock Boulevard and Greg Street. I noticed a red 4X4 Chevy pickup coming southbound at a high rate of speed, approaching the intersection. I remember thinking, "That guy's going to run right through that red light." Then everything went blank.
The next thing that I can remember with any certainty was hearing a firefighter yelling, "Hey! I think this guy's still alive! Get over here!" From his point of view, I was sitting upright in the driver's position of my truck with my eyes and my mouth wide open, with windshield glass hanging out of my mouth. Someone had looked at me a moment earlier and assumed I was dead, so they were helping other victims, but this firefighter took a closer look and saw I was breathing, but unconscious. He began speaking to me, telling me not to try to move. As I awoke, I was spitting out glass.
According to the police report, the red Chevy 4X4 pickup had entered the intersection southbound, at an approximate speed of 50 to 60 mph, struck a 1996 Volkswagen, which sent the truck air bound. The truck went sideways in the air with its rear differential landing on the roof of my pickup, directly over my head. The roof was smashed down on my head, pinning me in the driver's seat.
The impact knocked me unconscious, damaged vertebrae in my neck and back, and jammed me down into the seat so hard it displaced the end of my tailbone by four inches and separated my pelvis. Five vehicles were destroyed and eight people were taken to the emergency room, including the driver of the red Chevy 4X4, Christopher Reed, age 20, who had a small cut on his left elbow. He was treated with a Band-Aid and released.
One of the attending police officers told the Reno Gazette-Journal, "It was the worst accident I've ever seen where no one was killed."
From the police report, Christopher Reed's passenger stated that they were on their way to the Scorpions concert and the two had begun arguing. Reed became agitated and, as they approached the intersection at Greg Street, where they should have made a right hand turn, instead Reed accelerated hard and changed to the left lane, entering the intersection through the red light.
At this point in the narrative, this sounds like thousands of other car wrecks that happen every day somewhere. But we have a slight twist here that I will do my best to explain.
You see, for quite some time I remembered one more memory that I haven't stated here so far. Or at least I once believed I had one more memory about this crash. Now I'm not sure what I believe about this next part of the story.
Originally, I thought I remembered that, in the moments right after the crash, I exited my pickup somehow and went up on top of the car beside me to look into the red Chevy 4X4. In this memory, when I looked into the Chevy, I saw a young man and a young woman, and the woman was screaming and cursing at the man. The odd thing was that, even though I somehow knew what she was saying, all I heard was complete silence. No sounds of any kind. The man slowly turned to look at me and his face quickly changed into an expression of shock and horror. I knew he was terrified of me. He was holding a small cut on his left elbow with his right hand. I spoke as calmly as possible and told him everything would be fine. It would all work out somehow. All this time, the woman never noticed me and didn't stop screaming at the man. Then, I had the strong urge to return to the driver's seat of my pickup. As I turned away from Mr. Reed, I saw a woman with a baby getting out of the vehicle that was behind the car that I was standing on top of. She seemed to be in a panic to run away. I thought it was strange because the car she exited was barely damaged.
None of that memory could have happened. It would have been impossible for me to get out of my pickup on my own power. And, had I done so, it would have been impossible, and quite stupid, to climb back into my seat and re-jam myself into place. It simply could not have taken place, so for lack of a better word, let's call this "memory" a "vision.”
Yet, there are some odd facts that make me wonder what really happened. For example, keep in mind, I had never seen Reed, the driver of the Chevy, ever before. And when he was approaching the intersection, he was too far away for me to see his face, nor could I have seen that there was a passenger. He was not in the ambulance that carried me to the hospital and I didn't see him in the emergency room. Outside of the vision, I had no idea what he looked like, that he had a woman passenger, nor could I have known the extent of any injuries that he may or may not have had. However, as I sat on a retaining wall near the main entrance to the hospital, waiting for my wife to come pick me up, Reed and the woman came walking out of the hospital. He had a Band-Aid on his left elbow and the woman was on his right, holding his right hand, talking politely but non-stop. Outside of the "vision", how would I have recognized Reed and his passenger?
Reed didn't see me right away, because he was looking back and forth from the woman to the ground as they walked towards me. As they walked by, Reed looked up at me and his face went white and his mouth fell open. He almost stopped walking but the woman yanked on his arm and said, "Come on, they're waiting!" By itself this can be explained in several ways. Maybe he climbed down from the wreck and saw me pinned in my pickup. Maybe there's some other reason he recognized me. But that doesn't explain how I knew him to be Reed.
Here's another fact. In my "vision", the lady with the child was clearly Hispanic. This is interesting because, about a week after the crash, I was standing in the lobby of the business located on the southwest corner of that same intersection. There was a man in that lobby telling the story of the worst car crash he ever saw. As he told his friend, he was standing on that very corner on the night of my crash. He described the crash and then said that a woman with a baby exited the last car back in the pile of cars and, with a man from that car, they ran away from the intersection. He believed they were undocumented, afraid of being caught by the police, and trying to avoid an immigration-related arrest.
Outside of my "vision", I would have no way of knowing any of that. Even if I were awake in my pickup, there would be no way of seeing that because it was not within sight of where I was seated.
Here's another odd thing about my "vision". Nowhere in the "vision" is the memory of the actual leaving of my pickup, the climbing I would have to do to reach the Chevy, nor the actual climbing back down. I seemed to float. Also the lack of sound in the "vision" is a bit odd.
The last odd thing was that we didn't get a copy of the police report for almost two weeks. That was the first time, outside of the "vision" and the witness' story in the lobby of the business, that it was verified that the occupants of the last car back were Hispanic, had no insurance, and the car had a fake license plate. As it turned out, the driver of that vehicle was hurt and was taken to the hospital, then taken into custody.
So what could this "vision" be? Perhaps a hallucination. I may have had an "out of body experience". I may have died momentarily, floated around like Casper, the Friendly Ghost, then re-entered my body and came back to life. Of these, a hallucination seems the most plausible to me. After all, I'm quite skeptical about out of body flotation, auras, ghosts, and other magical answers to difficult questions. But, if it was a hallucination, how would I know those details? I first told the story of the "vision" to the doctor who examined me in the emergency room, and at the time I thought it was an actual memory.
I like facts. Mystical things that can't be verified may be interesting and worthy of investigation, but I refuse to draw hard conclusions without hard facts. So I don't know how to deal with this "vision".
Not long after the crash two men came to our apartment door and rang our bell. I answered and they handed me a packet of papers. Christopher Reed, the wealthy son of a local business owner, had filed for bankruptcy and had named me as one of his debtors. I was told by my attorney that I could fight the bankruptcy, but I would likely lose. This means that I could not sue Reed and neither could his other victims. Christopher Reed was free of responsibility for his actions. That is how the legal system works if you have wealth. There was $40,000 in insurance liability to be split between the owners of the destroyed vehicles and the seven people Christopher Reed had injured. My ambulance bill was almost $12,000 and my insurance would only pay $500. And yes, Christopher Reed was his real name.
I spent the next three months trying to find a position to sit, stand, or lay, that didn't hurt. I was not only incapable of working, I was so filled with rage that I was afraid of going out into the public for fear that I would harm someone over some minor conflict. I struggled to maintain my sanity, because the rage was so intense. I was perfectly fine around my family, but I was furious with humanity in general. Just seeing someone walk by our apartment angered me.
Once, during this time, I watched a man walk across the apartment parking area eating a banana. He casually dropped the peel on the ground near my car. I ran out of the apartment and confronted him. He was afraid and humble, apologized and retrieved the peel and placed it in a nearby dumpster. Had he reacted in any other way, I don't know how bad I would have hurt him. But I was seriously out of control.
After three months of attempting to get my act together, I finally thought I was safe enough to venture out of the apartment by myself. I gathered the billing information that I had attempted to deliver to that chiropractor on the evening of the crash, and headed to his house. As I traveled northward on South Rock Boulevard, just a few blocks from the crash site, going just under the 35mph speed limit, a car going the wrong way on a one way street came out in front of me, into traffic from a side street. With pedestrians on the sidewalk, I couldn't swerve right, and with oncoming traffic I couldn't swerve left, so I plowed into him. He was cited by police for the accident, and I had another destroyed vehicle and a fresh new concussion.
This new concussion came with nausea, blurred sight, and heavy vomiting. That may have saved the life of the other driver. I exited my car and headed toward him with every intention of tearing him apart with my bare hands, but before I could reach him I found myself on the pavement heaving and throwing up everything that was in my stomach. I couldn't focus my eyes and I couldn't get to my feet. Fortunately for that other driver, the police arrived before I could gain control of myself. The cop wanted to call an ambulance, but I insisted he not do so.
A tow truck hauled my car away and I walked the three miles back home. It was another month before I left the apartment, and my eyesight never fully recovered. All of my childhood, I had incredibly good eyesight, so much so, that I worried that, at some point, I would become blind as a sort of pay-back for enjoying such good vision. I know that sounds stupid, but as a child I believed it. I even had dreams where I was old and blind. Now those silly childhood fears seemed like a very real future.
First post & table of contents
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