A Survival Story

Kiara and I met in Boston years ago. We were young mothers in our early twenties. She had a one-year old daughter and I had a two-year old son. We didn’t have cars and often wondered if we would reach the end of the month with food on the table. But we were healthy and always cheerful, particularly Kiara who could make any one laugh. By snow, rain or sunshine, we pushed our toddlers’ strollers to the bank, the supermarket or the post-office. We were neighbors and stay-home moms but I was also preparing a master degree in chemistry. Kiara often took my son to play with her daughter to allow me a couple hours of freedom to study in peace. We finally bought houses and moved away from the building. Each one of us had a second child and later my husband was transferred to Ohio. We would visit at Christmas time.

I had unlimited phone calls at work and regularly called Kiara on Tuesday afternoon for our weekly chat. When the phone rang and rang on that fateful day without anyone answering, I thought one of her kids had an emergency. I called later, again and again. I called the next day and the day after. Five days later I learned from a friend who still lived in Boston that Kiara had been in a bad accident and was in a coma at Mass General Hospital. My heart sank and I was in denial. I called her home late at night. Around midnight her twenty-year old son answered. He was crying as he told me the accident story.

I heard the nightmarish words: semi truck, drunken driver, wrong direction, head on collision on passenger side, crash. The car went under the truck. It was so collapsed they had to saw the car top to remove Kiara. It was a miracle that her son survived with only bruises. Kiara had no pulse. The paramedics had to resuscitate her. They moved her to the hospital by helicopter.

Kiara remained in the coma for three weeks while we prayed and prayed. Her injuries were extensive, broken leg, broken arm, collapsed lungs, fractured bones in the face and forehead, a hole in her forehead,… She stayed in the hospital for three months. The doctors performed a dozen surgeries. I was allowed to visit her when she finally went into rehab and had a shock when I saw her. She was wearing a boot to support her left leg, had a cone covering her right eye, a hole in her neck to allow feeding. She couldn’t smile or talk long because of the wires in her face. And we learned the terrible news. Kiara had lost the nerves in her right eye and would never be able to see with the right eye. But she was alive. After six months of therapy, she started the painful task of leaning to live again.

Ten years later, we both moved to Florida and she’s my neighbor again. Kiara has blocked out the details of her accident and never talks about it, but she often recalls the fringe benefits it brought her. Having undergone so many surgeries on her face, broken nose and jaws, she looks younger than before her accident, wears dark fancy glasses day and night, dresses in the latest fashion,… She drives, goes to the gym regularly, is on the Board of Directors of her building, has learned to knit and read all my books.

Kiara’s sense of humor is intact or has even amplified as she repeats, “I was given a second chance. I can’t afford to mess it up. We have to laugh and enjoy every minute of our lives.” She often throws lavish parties as she did last night and considers the anniversary of her accident her real birthday. “I was born again that day.”

Mona Risk writes romantic suspense for Cerridwen Press: TO LOVE A HERO and FRENCH PERIL and medical romance in the genre of ER and Grey's Anatomy for The Wild Rose Press: BABIES IN THE BARGAIN and Rx FOR TRUST. All books are available at Amazon.com