Miracles

I'm not quite sure where to start this post.  The subject matter for it is fairly emotional not only for me, but for the whole Smith clan.  I guess I'll start by saying that this weekend we blessed Nettie.  All but one of her Smith (and Williams) uncles were here, and both of her Grandpa's were here as well.  It was a truly sweet experience, highlighted by the fact that her Uncle Scott was still here to participate in the event.

Thursday evening, Tucker and I were getting ready to head up to Shad and Katie's house to play some D&D.  Right after 6pm (I think), Tucker got a call from his mom.  I didn't really think about it, or pay much attention to what he was saying on the phone because she calls fairly regularly, and I assumed she was just asking about something for the upcoming weekend when the whole family would be here in Raleigh.  When Tucker got off the phone, he said that Scott had been in an accident (a motorcycle accident) and they couldn't get ahold of Stephanie to let her know.  The hospital chaplain had called Lois instead, hoping that she would be able to reach Stephanie.  All they had told her was that they thought that Scott was ok.  Not the most reassuring statement, as ok could mean a lot of things.

The next few minutes, Tucker tried to get ahold of Stephanie, calling her cell and her work, but couldn't get through.  But shortly after all this trying, he got a call from her instead, asking him to come to the hospital with her.  So of course he said yes.  I called Katie to let her know that if we made it to the game that night, it would be late (seeing as we didn't know how Scott was doing).  Tucker left with Stephanie and promised that he would call soon to let me know what was going on.

About an hour later, Tucker called and told me that Scott was relatively ok.  We found out that his accident had happened while Scott was driving home from a job interview on the 440... that's right, he crashed his motorcycle while driving on the freeway.  So immediately, I thought that he must have been hurt pretty bad, but his list of injuries was a concussion, a broken collarbone, and some road rash on his hands and knees.  Extremely good considering the circumstances.  Tucker stayed at the hospital with Steph until about midnight.

The next day Tucker went to school a little late, explaining to one of his labmates that he had been at the hospital late with his brother.  When he got to school, he explained his injuries to them and then told them where the accident had happened.  More than one of them had driven by (and got caught behind the traffic) of Scott's accident, and they even expressed to Tucker that they were amazed that Scott was even alive from how bad it had looked.

From what we can piece together, Scott somehow lost control of the bike (whether he was hit, or blew a tire, or just lost control isn't really known) and was thrown into the median (just a concrete barrier separating the two sides of the freeway).  His bike hit the median as well, but bounced back out into traffic, where it hit one car, and was then caught under another car.  The bike (supposedly) exploded, and the car that it was trapped under, burned and melted with it.

While this accident was certainly bad and will leave Scott a gimp for a little while, he was extremely lucky.  If Scott had bounced back out into traffic like the bike, he would have been killed.  And really, it's amazing that he wasn't killed or more seriously injured just by being thrown from a bike going 70 mph.  Even more amazing is that Scott was discharged from the hospital the evening after the accident.

Lois joked today that she was happy Scott decided to time his accident with this weekend since they were going to be up here anyways for the blessing.  I think that we all realize just how close we came to loosing Scott, and even though this was a happy weekend, there was a definite feel of gratitude underlying everything.  The family simply would not have been the same without Scott, and I know that Nettie was glad that he was able to be in the circle to help bless her on Sunday.

All in all, a very memorable Fourth of July weekend for the Smiths.