Thursday night

York had band practice on Thursday night. He usually stays late and gets home around 1am. He had taken his motorcycle to band practice in order to take advantage of the 50 MPG it gets. I was worried about tornado warnings and I get alerts on my phone, so I took my phone to bed--something I never do unless I am worried about tornado warnings.

At 2.30am my phone rang. It was a number I didn't recognize so I let it go to voicemail. I assumed it was a work call (we get a fair number of emergency calls at night, but since I am on maternity leave I didn't feel obligated to answer it) or a wrong number. The number immediately called back so I answered it. "This is (some name) from the Duke Emergency room. We have your husband here." That'll wake you up. Then she said, he wanted me to tell you he's ok. Then she probably said more stuff, but I don't remember it and then I was talking to York.

He had been driving home on his motorcycle, up Guess Road, the more rural way home, but the way with less traffic--which he had chosen because he figured it was safer. As he drove around a corner, in the 55MPH speed limit zone, there was a deer in the road. York managed to avoid that deer, but a second one jumped out in front of him. He said everything slowed down and he knew just what to do. He made a decision to lock up his brakes because he wanted to slow down as much as possible. When he locked up the brakes the bike turned and he started to slide. He slid right into the deer and hit it with his shoulder. York said he'll never forget the feeling of the fur and the deer's ribs; it was like hitting a brick and so much bigger than he was on his bike. He heard his shoulder pop. After he hit the deer he continued to slide and slid across the road on the back plate of his jacket. He was wearing jeans and they basically disintegrated on his legs. When he stopped sliding he was in the middle of the road, but there was no other traffic. He couldn't get his legs to move and one of his arms didn't work. He dragged his body with his one good arm to the side of the road to avoid being run over when some traffic eventually did come. He couldn't get his phone out of his pocket so laid on the side of the road yelling for help. He says for only about two minutes until some one drove up. The man stopped and called 911. The first responders cut off his clothes, but wouldn't take his helmet off, so he couldn't see much, but he knew the deer wasn't yet dead. The EMS warned him he was going to hear a rifle shot soon..

York took an ambulance trip to the ER at Duke. Once there, they xrayed and gave him some morphine. York said they took about 70 xrays of his legs, but they were fine. They put his arm in a sling and Emily eventually picked him up for me at 6am. Wiley was most panicked about hearing about his dad. I actually wouldn't have told him until after school or at least after I'd seen York, but he overheard me on the phone when I was calling Emily for help picking him up. Which I didn't even know he was awake, so what he heard was completely un-kiddified.

So after he was home, I took the boys to school, picked up his meds and came back home. York asked for some help getting to the bathroom and I was helping walk him across the room when he started to fall and pass out. I caught him and laid him down, but that was scary, because I didn't actually put together what was going on. For all I knew he was dying.

Once the perkoset kicked in he was sleeping, when a sherriff pulled into our driveway. He said the number the hospital had was wrong so they asked him to come out to our house to relay a message that York had to get back to the ER ASAP because of something they saw on his chest xray. I called the nurse to find out more. They saw some kind of shadow, but didn't know if it was a bleed in his chest or not. I tried and tried to get York out of bed. He'd say No he doesn't want to go then he'd fall immediately back to sleep I called the nurse and told her I couldn't get him up and she said I had to keep trying. So by 1.30pm we were back at the ER. I had Cora Bell and I didn't want her in the ER--because where are the sickest people?  I feel bad about that, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

So York calls and tells me they took the chest xray, but now they want him to get a CT scan because they think he might have an aortic tear. He was scared. Wiley, Archer, and I (now all picked up from school) went to Amelia and Andy's house to wait for more news. At 7pm, after threatening to walk out of the ER for not being given any information or water to drink, York was told his chest looked fine and was discharged. We went home.

I have feelings about all this but haven't quite sorted them out yet.