When I was in graduate school, I got hit by a car. I was a pedestrian crossing a street with a friend, and the car merged into traffic — or, rather, merged into me. I had stepped forward when I saw her coming toward me, and I stepped back, but not in time. I rolled over the hood of the car and ended up in a sitting position on the pavement.

“Is your hip okay?” my friend screeched.

“My hip is fine. My leg is broken.” I exuded an eerie sense of calm.

“How do you know?”

“Because when I lift my leg, my foot feels like it’s not going anywhere.”

The woman who hit me had a cell phone (an amazing thing in 1991) and called the ambulance. When they arrived, they bundled me onto a stretcher. “Which hospital do you want to go to?”

“Well, let’s see. Which one does my insurance take?”

“She’s paying for your hospital bills.”

“Ok. Which one has the better cafeteria food?”

“You’re going to Carle. It’s the trauma hospital.”

“Ok.”

I didn’t feel much pain as they loaded me into the ambulance. I felt the bumps. I was pretty sure the only place I was hurt was the leg.

By the time I got out of head-to-toe x-rays, five of my friends were there to see me. They warned me that my parents were on their way from about two hours’ north. I was hurting, and finally a nurse gave me morphine. (I’ve been told that I’m pretty funny on morphine.)

All I had was a broken leg, but about an inch of bone was shattered. I understood they were going to take me to my room and then wait for surgery. As I was being pushed through the ward by a burly red-headed nurse, he grabbed the phone, held it out for me, and said, “You know who this is.” I got an earful from my mother, who was absolutely sure I got hit by the car to stress her out. Then he wheeled me past my room (“there’s your room”) and then to the operating room.

Over the next couple of days, I had many visitors. My friends took it upon themselves to run interference with my mom, who thought they were all very nice people. I was on a morphine drip and utterly hilarious.

I spent the next 8 weeks on mostly bedrest, and I didn’t know why they wouldn’t let me go back to my regular activities until I fell a couple times the first week. Then I spent 6 months on crutches, another surgery to put a bone graft and metal bar in, and three months using a cane. I limped for a good few years; now, I have bad arthritis in my knee from the long-ago injury.

It could have been worse. It could have been so much worse. It was probably worse than I thought it was, to be honest. But I survived and made my way through grad school on crutches. And now, other than having to be pat down every time I’m in an airport, I’m doing fine.