Moving On – A Shrew’s Rant.

So a couple Fridays ago we visited the chick with the broken leg. She’s fine. Had her surgery and is recuperating now. Now she’s a very pleasant girl and I honestly have no reason to wish ill upon her – and I don’t – but whenever I see her or whenever her medical condition comes up in conversation, all I can think is of how I was previously in her seat, and ergo how close I came to having a broken femur, various lacerations about the body and that pinkish scar tissue on my face (I do have my vanities.)

Now I’ve heard it said - by a couple psychology majors so I’ll take their word for it - that people tend to pull together after experiencing a shared traumatic event. I can dig that. So I can understand that while we were on relatively good terms before the accident, the group really became cohesive after the events of December 22, 2009. The problem is however that I personally think it’s high time we move on from constantly making reference to the bleddy accident already. Seriously.

I am a huge fan of moving on. Dwelling on happenings that have already occurred makes no sense to me. I don’t own a time travel machine, therefore I can’t do anything about what has already happened (and according to these guys I can’t anyway) and therefore I’d rather move on and deal with what’s presently taking place. The ‘shoulda, woulda, coulda’ laments irritate me to no end and are the cause of many, many arguments between Mama Shrew and me.

So there we were, chillin, yappin and playing with a small furry dog, when the driver of the vehicle pulled a flash drive out of his pocket and asked the broken legged chick if she was ready to see ‘the stuff’. Naturally I assumed ‘the stuff’ was either a movie or something pertaining to school. It turned out to be pictures of the wreck and video footage of the area where we ran off the road. I was the only one who made no effort to look at ‘the stuff’. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already had closure from the first set of pics he showed us. I mean really, how many times are they gonna marvel at the state of the car, or the pole that prevented it from flipping completely over, or any of the myriad factors relating to the accident? And how many freaking pictures does he have of these things?!

I am reminded of the time a couple weeks previously when I was having an MSN conversation with the driver. We were chatting about our academic performances. After about an hour or so I decided that I had had enough and told my usual lie about going to bed early due to fatigue. That is when Mr. Man decided it was the opportune time to draw references between our accident and another that had claimed the lives of the car’s four occupants: they were in a new model Toyota while we in an old model Toyota; their group consisted of 3 guys and a girl, our group was 3 girls and a guy; they were heading to the beach, we were coming back from the beach; their group originally had 5 people, our group originally had 5 people; they were celebrating a birthday, we were celebrating the end of finals. I don’t want to say that he sounded gleeful while checking off the list of similarities because I have been told that I over analyse people’s behaviour (I don’t). I will say though that the bugger sounded smug. Smug as hell. Like it didn’t even occur to him that four sets of parents have to bury their children. Like it didn’t even occur to him that we were almost in that same position. I am always disappointed when I realise how fucking insensitive some people can be.

Suffice it to say I now make myself scarce whenever the topic comes up. Heck it’s not like I don’t have other shit happening in my life that warrant my attention and at the rate they’re going, fifteen years from now they’ll be probably still trading memory accounts of the day.

Buss head '09.

So I’ve reconsidered, and now my idea of hell involves injections to my scalp purely for torture purposes. Trust me, if Satan’s minions wanna get with the times, they’ll revoke their pointed tails and pitchforks for surgical smocks and syringes.

On December 22, 2009, I blithely half-assed my way through a philosophy examination (the last one for the semester), frolicked on Maracas Beach with three other classmates and spent the night in Port of Spain General Hospital suffering from a head wound sustained when we ran off the road on the way back from Las Cuevas. And that’s because I consider myself luckier than the other backseat passenger who ended up with a broken left femur, a broken eleventh rib and a sizable swatch of skin missing from the left side of her face. Yeah…

Of course I’m thankful to be alive. Heck from what the nice doctors discussed while my laceration was being stitched up, nothing short of divine intervention saved us from the obituary pages. Blame the Catholic Church if you will, but it’s hard for me not to believe in an omnipotent being when I hear that the vehicle I was in skidded off the road, went down an incline and ended up against a pole with its roof ripped off, the front folded in and the back pushed in, with no resulting fatalities. Yet for some reason I’m still worried. It’s that niggling almost inaudible voice at the back of my mind that mocks: “you got off easy this time bitch but don’t you worry, I’ve a doozy waiting for you up ahead.” Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, right?

For what it’s worth, the staff of the accident and emergency department of the PoSGH are most efficient; particularly the nurses. The ward nurses on the other hand – those assholes should be all promptly fired and relegated to removing road-kill from the nation’s roadways as with their attitudes they should not be dealing with any living creature, whether animal or vegetable.

You know, in spite of the amount of stories you hear about people being misdiagnosed and given the wrong drugs and such, the ridiculousness only sinks in when you actually experience it. That’s why it came as little surprise to me when I was told that my file could not (and still can’t) be found. Heck I think I would have been more concerned if my stay at the hospital was completed without a hitch. You know things are bad in a country when you’re a bit relieved that the public utilities don’t work as they should.

Ah well, the twenty stitches I got are out; the nice nurses at the Arima Health Facility said I was healing well. The chick with the broken leg had surgery and is going through a painful recovery. Man, I’m just glad we all survived. Looking at the news these days, believe me, it could have been so much worse.