HOW NOT TO DRIVE HOME

After four trips to Bat Chen's, I finally learned the way to her house, so you'd think I'd know how the way to leave it, wouldn't you? Well, you'd be wrong! If I don't mess up and take a wrong turn ending up on the wrong road and looking for signs pointed north, it just isn't going to happen. As usual, I took a wrong turn and found myself looking for signs pointing north, and that's just about the last thing I remember until that white car slammed into me and my car crash landed on a dividing island, half in the opposite lane behind a traffic signal. I have absolutely no recollection of the traffic light-if it was red or green or changing. None at all and that's the scary part. I sat there shaking for a few seconds while people ran up to see if I was ok. One nice man gave me a sip of water and said that he'd called the cops and an ambulance. I called Bat Chen and said "I crashed the car and myself too." She asked "Where?" and the nice man told me, and I told her. The place name meant absolutely nothing to me at the time. The ambulance came and the paramedics pried me out of the car and carted me and the lady from other car to a hospital in Petach Tikva. On the way Bat Chen called back and I told her which hospital. She arrived a few minutes after I did. She has a good friend in the town where the accident was and she'd called him and told him to leave everything and go to the place where the accident was and see what had happened. He called back and reported that my car looked really bad and they were towing it away along with a white one. Can you imagine that? He left his hair salon with a bunch of people in various stages of haircuts, color, and what not, to go see what happened? It took forever to get checked and I had to threaten to get up and leave if they didn't take the freaking back board away. That hurt more than anything except the neck brace which soon followed the back board. A quack finally came along and asked what hurt, then sent me off to X-ray, where the idiot techie broke a fingernail and I threatened to sue. At least she didn't throw me off the table like the one in Safad did back in '98! I was then parked in the hallway to wait for a bed driver to take me back to the ER. The fool asked me where he had to take me and I lost it. How the hell am I supposed to know? Bat Chen saved his life by telling him, and back we went to waiting. It took forever for a sawbones to look at the pretty pictures of my bones and he missed the cracked ribs. Yeah, well, I've had so many cracked ribs that I didn't need him for that. At least two, and my left (useless) leg is one huge bruise and sprained pretty much from top to bottom. Except for a scratch cut on my right foot, that's about it. And a huge hematoma where the seat belt was. Just as I was about to check out AMA yet again, the idiot quack came and released me. The other lady was released minutes before so she was ok too, tank G-d. The ambulance driver had shoved all my stuff into the bag, but said there was no room for BBC so Bat Chen comandeered a wheely and took me out to her van, then, back to her house. The bad pain hadn't quite set in yet and I got in her house using and old walker she brought out to me, and collapsed on the bed in the spare room and took some of my pain pills. Breathing was a nightmare for the next two hours, but I eventually fell asleep.
In the morning, the first thing we had to do was track down BBC as I really couldn't walk even with the walker. We found the yard they'd towed the car to and went there. The lady in the office was very nice and got BBC for us, and we went to the local branch of my clinic to top up my meds supply, then, I filled her van with solar(diesel) and we did a few more things(among them buy yet another charger for my cell phone) and took my aching body home to figure out what to do next. It was obvious that I wasn't going anywhere any time soon, and as there were still a few lose ends to tie up with her/my bank account, we decided that I'd just stay there until after the 28th, when her/my new bank account would be sorted permanently. As the hospital had given me 3 days of bed rest I didn't(couldn't) report the accident to the cops until the 4th day. In the meantime the other lady's insurance agent tracked me down and tried to get me to say the accident was my fault but all I could tell him was that I didn't remember a thing.
The accident was on Sunday the 19th, so, on Thursday we went to the cop shop in the town where the accident was and reported it properly. The cop who took the report was a dear and called the accident investigator who wanted to know the answers to a mile long list of questions. It was decided that we'd go back there and meet with the investigator on Friday, which we did. Now, these investigators are good at what they do, and know who is telling the truth and who is not. As I didn't remember the accident all, and was obviously confused by it all, there was no problem with him. I did tell him that I've been driving since 1968 and never had an accident except for the run in with that katyusha in '92 which really doesn't count, and that I have no, 0, not a one, traffic convictions, and that I am compulsive about traffic signals. Leia might remember the green light I sat through for 3 changes in Swansea. I didn't mention that, but, I did say, that it makes absolutely no sense to me that I might have run a red light. He was most sympathetic and lead me to believe that it would be ok and gave me back my license which he had the authority to suspend on the spot if he thought I was at fault. In fact he was obliged to suspend if he thought it was my fault. At then end he gave me a form to take to the place where the car was to release it. The nice lady there got the remaining things out and I paid for them to send my beloved car to the crusher as it was never going to be able to go back on the road. Damn right I cried. That car saved my life. Bat Chen and I went to get her son from kindergarten and went home where we rested over Saturday, and on Sunday ran a bunch of errands including taking her van to the shop to get the lift fixed yet again. Monday was even more running around, then came Tuesday, payday! I won't list what we did because just reading the list will exhaust you. At some point I asked Orna to get my mail, and tell me if anything had come from the States. There were two letters from Florida and I had her open them. One of them had a photocopy of a check for $150,000, but she couldn't read the letters to me, so I had Yossi go down and read them to me. YES! The wicked step saw the light and decided to pay out the proper, correct amount. Yossi was then sent to my bank to show Mordy the check and tell him to behave, then he hopped a bus to bring me my mail. Mordy was in shock and called to ask if me if it was really true and I made him approve a 500 shekel withdrawal from a branch down there. He, of course was all ballistic about when the money would arrive and I explained that first I had to get home and send the papers back by Fed Ex and that I couldn't go home for a few days yet, but that I'd come into the bank on the following Wednesday. He just had to make do with that. In the meantime, we got the swift routing from Bat Chen's new bank where the account is in my name to use as leverage with Mordy. On the Friday we got her/my new credit card and arranged for her to pick up the secret code number. Zahava kindly agreed to take me home on the Sunday, so after a quiet weekend, we shoved all my stuff back in the bag and went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for a picnic on the way home. Zahava arrived at Bat Chen's more or less on time and I loaded all my stuff on BBC and used it as a walker to get to Zahava's van. Bat Chen's Great Dane decided that she wanted some attention and knocked me over. Luckily I was close to the lawn and fell on the grass and not the paved walkway! I'm not quite sure how I got up again, but Bat Chen's power chair was involved. At last I was in Zahava's van and we headed North, homeward, two weeks later than originally planned. I filled *her* van with diesel and she stayed over that night. It really is a long drive from there to here. In the morning I took her to my hair cutter because my new hair cut, done by the guy Bat Chen sent to the junction to check the accident, made her want one too. She got a great cut, then, agreed to wait while Orna and I went shopping to bring the groceries back to Gimp House because I was skint and couldn't even pay a taxi to do it. After that, I crawled into bed and stayed there until morning. I didn't even turn the computer on because by then my butt was sore from the fall on the lawn! That's about it. Home never looked or felt better. The rest of the week might take almost as long to tell, but it will have to wait until later today, or maybe even tomorrow. My butt still hurts a bit.