It often comes as a surprise to me that someone I know ‘only in passing’ reads my blog now and then.  Take the technician at my eye doctor’s across the river.  Susan.  When I was there the other day, we talked about my latest trauma – our totaled Prius.  “You must have a story that goes with that,” she said.  “You are a great story-teller; I read what you write.”

On reflection, I do have a ‘sort of story’ about that car crash.  Before the dust had settled and the fluids had stopped leaking, an EMT showed up at the driver’s window.  “Are you hurt?” he asked Nyel.  “No, but I think my wife might be,” was the answer.

The uniformed young man (maybe in his 20s – I can’t really tell anymore) came around to my side, asked for me to open the door and then knelt to talk to me.  He asked me some questions about what happened and how I was doing.  My answers were “I’m not sure, I had dozed off” and “I’m sore in the seatbelt area.”

“May I see your chest?” he asked.  And, being a literalist as I am, I pulled up my sweater and exposed by lacy 34-D bra in all its glory.  I wish you could have seen his face.  Not horror exactly – but on the dismayed side of surprise.  “No, no, no,” he said quickly.  “I just meant that I would…”  I think he was going for “…like to feel…” but thought better of it.

I pulled down my sweater, he gently pushed around on what I would call “the upper sternum (bony) area” of my (now) well-covered front, as he repeatedly asked, “Does this hurt?”  “Just a little,” I kept saying, all the time thinking “so now you know what your grandmother’s underwear might look like…”  Wisely, though, I said nothing.  Only asked how he got to the accident scene so fast.  “I just got off duty,” he said, “and I was on my way home.  I thought I might be able to help.”

 I think we were still chatting when all the emergency vehicles and personnel began to arrive – the Warrenton Chief of Police, the fire department, the ambulance, the EMTs.  Lots of young men being solicitous and helpful.  I didn’t flash any of them, though.  Probably they didn’t ask exactly the right question.

Susan loved my ‘story.’  So, I offer it to my readers for their reading pleasure and with profuse apologies to the wonderfully sincere and helpful young EMT who stopped, on his own time, to help.  I hope he chalked up my behavior to an old lady’s addled and literal response to his solicitous inquiry.