It's the morning my Caseworker comes to see me, and I'm ready to leave with her for errands. Little did I know this day was to be very eventful. We head out with permission from the hospital, first to my bank and then to my apartment.
"How do you have so much junk?" She asks.
"Well, I've moved around so much in my life, leaving sentimental things behind, so now I don't want to leave anything behind or get rid of anything."
"You should be on that hoarder's show." She says jokingly.
I chuckle and we get going. Cleaning, packing, and stuffing the trunk until there was no room to see out the back of the vehicle. Her vehicle was tall, far off the ground and had a lot of room for storage in the back, but it still wasn't enough to get all of the stuff I had in the apartment moved to storage. By the time we left, we knew we had to make a second trip, but it wouldn't last as long on the second trip as it did the first, because everything was packed and ready to go.
On the way to my storage unit we stop at a red light meeting up with union street nearby to the Red Cross. The lady in front of us had a canadian license plate and had no clue where she was going. The roads were slippery, the wind was at lightning speed and we had plenty of space between our two vehicles. Then the lights turn green and as the Canadian lady starts to drive, we start to drive.
She stops abruptly. I see it all coming, but in the conditions of the road, the weather and the short reaction time, my caseworker cannot stop in time. I brace myself for impact, but it seems I only make it worse. Had my seatbelt not ben on I probably would've gone through the windshield, but now my shoulder and neck hurt.
WHAM!
Now the two of us have collided, her tiny vehicle smushed in the back, so badly that it looks like her trunk is an accordian. I see her laugh in the front of her vehicle. Meanwhile, my caseworker is trying to hide her frantic emotions and thoughts.
"What are we going to do? I'm going to be blamed for this. That lady shouldn't have stopped when she did."
She makes random funny comments that I can't help but laugh at, though I know the situation is too serious for laughter. Soon we will find out that because she's a Canadian driver and we ran into her, although it was her fault we did, it was now on my caseworker's shoulders. It became her fault in the screwed up justice system we have, and I go back the the hospital with a sprained clavicle and a pulled tendon in my neck.
In a short piece like this, the writer has to have focus. The memoir can't just be 'first this happened, then that happened, and next....'
ReplyDeleteIt has to be pushing the reader and the writer toward some kind of conclusion, epiphany, realization, closure.
But here, nothing is clear except that WHAM. Are you moving from hospital to an new apartment, from old to new apartment? Was all that stuff in the hospital with you? Was the amount of stuff in the car part of the cause of the accident?
Is this really about a caseworker (who usually is in charge of other people's lives) suddenly losing control of her own? Is it about justice, injuries, you, her? That it happened and you remember it isn't enough--it has to have shape and point, so try a rewrite, kayla.
okay...
ReplyDelete