This Toronto Life: Accident

On June 26th, around 4:30 pm, it started raining. A few minutes later, it started pouring.

I looked outside through the big windows from our office and sighed. The girl sitting behind me, who shares the desk with me, looked out the window and said, “Gross…” Then she turned to me, “Did you bike today?”

I nodded but mentioned I was considering not biking home. I had an appointment and plans that day: walk to the RTM appointment, then go to T&T Market, and get food for my cat. But, with the thought that the cat food might be too heavy, I gave up the idea of walking. I packed up, picked up the helmet from a box under my desk, said goodbye to my co-worker, and walked out of the office.

It was pouring outside. For some reason, I was unable to fully sit on my bike seat when I first hopped on. It felt like an unseen force dragged me off my bike seat three times. I walked a bit with my bike, didn’t put too much thought into it, and then hopped on the bike.

I rode the bike on College Street. While passing Beverly, a construction site blocked the bike lane. Every bike was forced to share the road with cars or turn to take a longer route to avoid the site. I chose to go straight and share the road with the cars, riding between streetcar tracks, then turning back to the bike lane once it was accessible.

When I tried to turn back to the bike lane, I still don’t know what really happened. Maybe my front wheel or the back one got trapped and slipped on the streetcar track. I lost balance, fell to the ground, and my head landed first. When someone offered to help me stand up, I felt severe pain in my right leg and could not stand up anymore. The pain made me scream.

I lay there, screaming, and people started gathering. A girl who told me she was a nurse called the ambulance for me right away. A doctor approached and started asking me questions, “What is your name? Where do you work? Do you have your health card with you? Can you hear me?” He told me he was an ENT doctor. He said he might be useless, but he touched my head and my spine, as they all thought my head had landed first. More people gathered. The female nurse finished the call with the ambulance. I lay on the ground, rain soaking my face and body. It hurt so much. Someone came close and offered me an umbrella. More people stopped by and asked, “Did you call the ambulance? Does she have her health card with her?”

I was so close to the streetcar track, I could feel it under my arms. I saw car wheels passing by me, as well as bikes. They kept speeding up right beside me rather than slowing down, splashing more water on my face and body.

“Fuck…” I murmured.

People gathered around me saw all this happening. Someone offered to direct the traffic until the streetcar approached. “We have to move her, even though we shouldn’t.” They called out for help. Many people walked away. From the corner of my eye, I saw a lot of them shaking their heads, many looking just like me.

I closed my eyes for a moment. I was already surprised that so many people stopped and helped. I could not ask for more. If the streetcar came, then let it come. I could not move, so let’s all wait—that was what I was thinking.

Luckily, three muscular people stopped and moved me away from the busy road. With the move, my leg hurt even more. I screamed repeatedly, letting the pain out.

We kept waiting for the ambulance. The ENT doctor found my phone miles away and gave it to me.

We heard something approaching, but it wasn’t for me.

It was cold, so cold, that my whole body started shivering, causing more pain. People noticed and started giving me their towels to lay on me. It helped, just a little.

I looked at the sky. It was gray, heavy, and felt like it was closing in on me, reminding me of Vancouver. I turned my face away, trying to shake the idea of Vancouver and all the trauma I got from that city.

The nurse approached me again, and other people started asking, “Do you have anyone you can call to help? Do you live with your parents? Do you live with your partner? Anyone you want to call?”

“No one,” I said flatly. “I am alone, with no one.”

“Is there a friend you can call?”

“No, no one.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Not in Canada.”

I was emotionless. I might have been in shock, or the leg hurt too much. I was shivering with the cold but could not close my eyes.

The person directing the traffic came and squatted beside me. “Do you have anyone you trust to take care of your bike?”

I turned my face and looked at her. She was wearing a helmet. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but her voice was smooth. I opened and closed my eyes at her. Then I picked up my phone, called a number, but had no energy to speak, so I passed the phone to the nurse to talk to a friend to come and pick up my bike for me. The lady listened, collected my bike, and parked it on the side.

A few minutes later, the person directing the traffic was hit by another bike, and his hand was bleeding. No one wanted to slow down right beside me. They all kept speeding up, splashing more water on my body. It was damp and cold.

Soon, the lady came back to me and offered to store my bike in her office. After she returned, she stayed by my side again.

“Cordelia,” she said, “is there anyone you want to call back home?”

“No,” I turned my face to her again. “Let’s not bother. Let’s not create worry they cannot do anything about.”

“Yeah, the worry, I know,” she nodded.

“The clouds looked like Vancouver,” I kept going. My thoughts went back to when I was pushed on the ground on Granville Street and told to go back to China. It was cold, wet, damp like this. “I hate it.”

“I get you. I was there as well, and then I came back here,” I heard a gentle laugh in her words. “How long were you in Vancouver?”

“Eight years,” I said.

“Wow, and you moved to Toronto for work?” she asked.

“Yes,” I tried to nod, but could not move my head. “Toronto is different.”

“How so?”

I slowly lifted my chin to the girl who was directing the traffic with a huge street cone in her hand, waving at people. “SLOW DOWN! SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! SOMEONE IS INJURED AND ON THE GROUND, SLOW DOWN!!!!!!!” The lady beside me turned to her as well.

“No one in my life has ever fought for me like her,” I said emotionlessly. “This is the first time ever.”

“Never?” The lady couldn’t believe it.

“Never…” I turned my face back to stare at the sky. “Never… I was always on my own.”

It was already 50 minutes, and the ambulance still hadn’t shown up. Another person on the side said, “We should lie about her situation, say she is unconscious and bleeding everywhere, then the ambulance would come faster.”

My leg still hurt, my body still shivering, and my hands clenched on the phone. I thought over and over again, should I call the people who always made me feel safe? Should I call her? Would she reject me?

Pushing all the trauma aside, I called the person I always had as my emergency contact. She picked up. I couldn’t tell her what happened, then passed the phone to the person beside me. Later, they told me she would be with me right away.

I closed my eyes. Then the ambulance came, and also a fire truck.

More people came close to me. A big guy held my head, asked my name, asked where my health card was, told me to scream if I needed. They cut my shoe, stabilized my leg and neck, transferred me to a stretcher, then to the ambulance.

It happened so fast. I don’t even remember every detail, besides I was screaming.

The moment we arrived at the hospital, my emergency contact was there for me. I passed my phone to them, trying hard to stay conscious.

“I cannot go to work tomorrow…” I said to her. She nodded, and I asked her to take a photo of me and send it to my boss via Teams.

They took X-rays. I screamed. They moved me around. I screamed. They put me down to move my bones closer. I was put down, but I could see all their movements in slow motion. It still hurt so much. I only remember I couldn’t control myself after. My friend told me I cried, yelled, and screamed; the whole floor could hear me.

“Why am I still alive?” —> the only phrase I repeated, but I didn’t remember.

“This is sometimes how she behaves after she is drunk,” my emergency contact told another friend.

At the emergency room, I saw an email come in from the job I applied for, asking for references. So, I was crying uncontrollably, asking my friend to open my laptop and send all the names to the online system.

Thirty minutes later, I slowly came back to consciousness. I stayed in the hospital, and the next morning I underwent surgery. At that point, I still thought it was just my ankle that was broken.

Thinking back, I should recognize it was a sign not to bike at all. God had given me the chance to avoid what was going to happen. But I only considered it for 2 minutes, then completely ignored it.

It was not until July 10th that I learned it was not just my ankle. There were four major injuries: the ankle, bone, and ligament. The bone was a comminuted fracture. Fourteen nails now held my leg together.

The doctor said it was a bad accident and a significant surgery. It would take around two years to fully recover the mobility I had before the accident.

Looking back, the moment I was unable to hop on the bike was a sign. I should have just walked. I only considered it briefly, never letting the thought settle in my heart.

It was a clear warning, but I missed it. Now, the weight of that decision lay heavy on me, as heavy as the rain that poured down that day.

It was scary.

#thistorontolife

all copyright reserve ©Cordelia Shan