It was back in August 2001. Aysem and I were waiting to cross the street in front of her parent’s apartment. The light turned green for us and Aysem got the jump on me, so I was about a meter behind her. Then I heard the crashing sound. I glanced to my left and saw a delivery van bouncing off the back on a car. Things really did slow down like a freakin’ slow-mo scene in a poorly made action movie; I could see little bits of glass flying as the taillight and front lights of both vehicles exploded from the collision.
The car hit by the van rocked forward into the car in front of it and that car was pushed toward me. The only thing I could do was hope to get across the street before it hit me. I could see the face of the driver and he was looking at me like, “Dude, you’re screwed! Sorry.” BAM! The front right quarter of the car hit the back tire of my bike and sent my flying through the air. My head bashed into the traffic light pole. I was completely knocked out for a few seconds, but I woke up in a pool of my own blood. Aysem was screaming at the driver to call the police and an ambulance, but he was arguing with the other drivers. The worst place on the body to get a cut is behind the ear, because it hurt so bad I thought that my ear had been torn off my head. Of course I was completely disoriented and had no idea what the heck was going on. The traffic was terrible and the accident only made it worse, so the ambulance was going to take forever to arrive. Right then two guys in an old BMW pulled up and told Aysem to get me in the car. These two totally unknown dudes gave us a ride to the hospital. I felt bad because I bled all over the backseat of their car.
At the hospital they placed me in an exam room and I sat there waiting for a doctor to look at me. The nurse had placed a badge on the huge cut on my head and another one on the road rash on my face and Aysem had finally convinced me that my ear was fine and the least of my worries at this point; meanwhile, every person who came be the exam room felt like they should look at my head and provide their personal medical opinion about it. This involved them walking into the room, quickly saying something in Turkish and then lifting the badge and looking underneath. Seriously, these were just random people, I swear that the third guy was the janitor because he was pushing a freakin’ mop-bucket around. Each time the badge torn off the scab that was rapidly forming.
After waiting 20 minutes or so, our principal called and told us to go to a different hospital in another part of town. When we arrived there, I was still completely out of it. They did cat scan and the doctor told me that there should be no longer term effects. I still have a little reddish area on the left side of my face if you look closely; there is also a scar under my hair on the right side of my forehead. After about a week the physical pain was gone, but I still felt a little mentally slow for about a month and a half.
