Robert "Bobby" Jorgensen, October 8, 2011
As a mother there is nothing more frightening than sitting beside the hospital bed of your child, regardless of age, watching him lying there unresponsive and still. The only sounds I hear besides my own rapid heartbeat, are those of monitors and machines, his raspy breathing, and an occasional moan coming from somewhere deep inside his chest. Face and neck swollen, lacerations cover his face, arms, and chest. This is all I can see. He is covered by blankets. He lies upon an inflated air mattress to support and protect his broken body. The Doctor says he shouldn't be alive; that only one in a million survive his type of injuries.
It is only today, October 14th, six days later that he is finally able to tell me what happened. The person responsible is aware of how her actions caused the accident. While I might like to rant and rave, I won't. It would serve no purpose but to hurt someone that is already haunted by guilt. My son is alive and will heal from his injuries. His recovery will be long and slow but should be full and complete. The passenger in the car only sustained a sprained wrist.
I sat next to his bed and listened to his story and as the details unfolded, I learned about the miracle of his survival. A miracle. A real modern-day miracle. He had been extremely ill with a high fever that Saturday morning and should not have been driving. He knew it, I knew it, but she was relentless in her demands. (Perhaps I am not as kind about not blaming her as I intended to be.) He got into the car and did not put on his seatbelt - something he always does but on this morning failed to do. About eight miles from home the accident occurs. The steering wheel is grabbed and jerked by the passenger. The car slams into the hillside and goes into the ditch. My son is thrown halfway through the front windshield.
The car is on it's nose and begins to fall over on top of him. He is watching knowing that he is going to be crushed. He thinks "I am going to die." As the car is falling, it is as though a hand from Heaven reaches down, grabs the car, turns it on it's axis, and then drops it down onto all four wheels.
At this point Bobby is fully ejected from the car. His lung is punctured, five ribs, and both collar bones are broken along with numerous internal injuries. His tongue is bitten almost entirely off. He is unconscious and unresponsive and lying in pools and pools of blood. The passenger, who has called me from the accident scene, tells me she thinks he is dead; and thus begins another hellish nightmare of waiting by the phone to learn if my child is still living or has died from his injuries. Just as I did on January 10, 2010 - waiting by the phone for someone to call me and tell me if Christian had died from his self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Almost an hour later the paramedic talks to me from the ambulance. He says while Bobby's injuries are extremely serious, he doesn't believe they are life threatening but will not know until they get him to the hospital for evaluation. I am thinking that his voice is too cheerful and I believe that he is just trying to reassure me. I can hear my son moaning in the background.
Not being there, not seeing with my own eyes is horrible. I don't know who or what to believe.
When he regains consciousness, the panic of not being able to breath sets in. I don't know if the tube was inserted into his chest in the ambulance or at the hospital. At the hospital he is immediately taken into surgery.
Today I sit next to him and we discuss his "miracle". He should be dead. The car should have crushed him. The Doctor said that the bones that were broken on both sides of neck and upper chest should have severed his jugular veins. She said she doesn't understand how he avoided a catastrophe fatal injury. She said it is a miracle.
Twice he was saved from death. He believes that his brother, Christian, saved him. I agree. Christian told me in the note he left for me that he would watch over us and protect us. I believe that he did.
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