Isn't it funny how quickly life can change.On Saturday afternoon I had just finished having tea and Valentines cupcakes with my family out on the patio, when I went to get ready for the Valentines Ball.
I was in the bathroom about to start make-up when my mom rushed into the bathroom as pale as a ghost. I have never seen my mom like this and worry immediately set in."Um, um, um, um.... Where is the portable phone? We need to phone an ambulance
immediately!!"
WTF?
I walked around the corner and nothing could have prepared me for that. It's amazing how many thoughts can run through your mind in a fraction of a second. It looked like a massacre had occurred in my home.
There was blood everywhere, on the walls, puddles of blood on the floor, matter in the blood and just horror. There were two thoughts that entered immediately.
Someone in my family has had a terrible accident or someone has attacked my family and my mom got away.
I had my phone in my hand, already dialing the ambulance and I cancelled it to call the police. My dad had consequently called the ambulance and I cancelled the call to the police when I walked into the other bathroom. Lying in my bathtub was a young 18 year old girl, with her 19 year old boyfriend in the bath hovering over her.Her face was a bloody pulp. It was like something out of a disgusting horror movie. Flaps of skin were hanging down, her face was broken and the blood...
The blood.
The two of them had been driving around our estate as Learner Drivers looking for their dog.They had been coming up our road travelling really slowly, when 3 ten year old boys on their bicycles had picked up the dog and were riding down our road looking for the owners.They stopped their car and the boys handed the dog to them through the drivers window. What happened after that is completely a freak accident. The dog jumped down onto the floor and onto the guys foot on the accelerator. They drove full force into a tree and this poor girl went straight into the windshield.
I ran around trying to get towels, but not really being able to use them because we couldn't stop the bleeding by adding a pressure on a broken face and skull. I mixed up sugar water and tried to get them both to drink it. Her parents finally arrived and we tried to warn them not to get a fright (yeah right) when they saw her. They freaked out and rushed her to the hospital before the ambulance got there. There was no point in waiting! We've been feeling guilty, because in the terror and adrenaline of everything, we didn't think to do that ourselves.
The most surreal thing of it all was that half an hour later, I was in my evening dress off to the ball (I was working.)It was crazy.
We've been getting updates of this poor girl and it is just horrific. The flaps of skin? Her eyelid and they had to reconnect that. She broke her eye socket and left side of her face. She lost all the skin and tissue on her face and is going to need 5 or 6 reconstructive surgeries.
She is a model and now her face is never going to be the same again. We hope that the plastic surgeons will do the most amazing job, but she needs so many skin graphs that it's going to be difficult for her face to not have scars.
Her poor boyfriend is riddled with guilt because of the accident; he is in his first year Medical School and he kept saying that he did everything wrong for the situation plus he was wearing his safety belt and he should have ensured that she was too! Poor things!
Life can change so quickly and it's just another reminder that even if you're driving around the block, wear your safety belt!! I was in a horrific car accident in 2001 and the only thing that saved my life was a safety belt (something that I never used to wear - terrible habit that changed very quickly when I got a second chance at life....we'll leave that story for another day!)
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