It's been a week

...and it's only Thursday.

We still have a landline here. We tried to scrap it, but Bell cheerily informed us that if we did that, they would jack the price of our remaining services with them (cell and internet at this point) such that it would actually be cheaper to keep it.
But it's bare bones--as bare bones as a phone line can get. No long distance plan, so calling anyone outside of town is inadvisable. You have to be my age or older to really grasp how much phone service has changed: without a plan, which was never available in (ahem) university residence, long distance is prohibitively expensive.

We very rarely even pick it up when it rings anymore, because it's almost always a telemarketer. Well, yesterday it was a wrong number.

It rang on Monday just after 8 p.m. Not too late for telemarketers...I've had them call after 10 before...but something about it twigged me. I picked up on the third ring and it was Eva.

She'd hit a deer.

Again.

She hit one three months ago in almost exactly the same spot--just outside of Ayr, except in that case "hit" is overstating the case just a bit: the deer barely damaged the front bumper. Still enough to scare the shit out of my wife, of course.

This time...this time she hit it properly. Airbags deployed.

She said she was okay, but with Eva Breadner that could mean anything from "I'm okay" to "I'm not going to die in the next three minutes, I don't think."

We went to get her. I, stupidly, forgot all about her pills--she takes them at 9:00 PM, and they're important.

I had no idea what to expect. Most of the way there, I got a text from my friend Nicole asking if she was okay. I was momentarily flummoxed as to how Nicole could have possibly known, and then realized Eva must have posted to Faceboook. I relaxed...a little...thinking if she could do that, she probably wasn't too badly hurt.

And she wasn't. Bruises. Sore, shook up, and let's just say hitting a deer at 65 km/hr isn't exactly good for anxiety sufferers. But, just like the first time, she was really, really lucky. The deer didn't end up through the windshield, the way they so often seem to do; it just took out a goodish chunk of the front grille on the driver's side.

Eva hit the deer about about six minutes after 8. We got there at 8:45 and waited at least an hour (and Eva had to call again) for the police to show up. Roving bands of predatory tow trucks kept circling, occasionally trying a tentative nip at Eva's wallet. Two drivers said they thought the truck would be a write-off, two said maybe not.
It was almost an hour after the police had arrived -- the cop graciously stuck around, doing paperwork -- the tow truck contracted by our (thank god for) roadside assistance finally showed up, only to tell her that they'd tow her ten kilometers before she'd have to pay, presumably out the ass. One phone call fixed that. We got home at something like 11:30.

We still don't know about the truck, although we've been told when the airbags go off and the seat belts lock it's usually a writeoff. We went to clean it out yesterday, and that trip bothered me. I've always found it difficult to be around damaged things.
No idea what comes next: we either get our truck back or have three days to find a (presumably used) vehicle if it is totalled. Uncertainty is not something we like much around here.

I'm just happy Eva's okay. That's the important thing. She, of course, was more concerned about the deer. Which nobody could find, but we don't think there's any way it survived that collision. I hope not, anyway, because the damn thing has a death wish and I shudder to think what will happen the next time Eva hits it.

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Apart from all that...

There has been a truly extraordinary amount of emotional tumult around me this week, from, let's see, six different sources. I am of course not at liberty to write about any of it. Some of it's brand new; some of it dates to May. I can tell you that my ability to compartmentalize is still intact, but my own emotions have taken a serious beating. I've had a headache, off and on, mostly on, since Friday. My guts fire off warning shots every now and again. The logical, sensible thing to do would be to lock myself away from the world, and I've been doing that in short bursts of much-needed sleep. But keeping away from people in pain has never helped my own pain, either. And so, friends: I'm still here. I'll let you know if and when my capacity for the pain of others has been reached.