“Abba!!! I killed someone!!!!!!! Abba, I had an accident!!!”
There is no more shocking phone call one can receive from one’s child. I could barely extract the information about the location of the accident, and I rushed to get there... The Hatzolah members at the scene said there was a head injury, and it was impossible to assess the condition until arrival at the hospital, where advanced equipment would be used to examine what was going on inside the head.
My son, shaking all over, told me that the bus was standing outside the station, picking up and dropping off passengers. He was passing the bus in the work pickup truck, overtaking it with great caution, when suddenly a young man ran out from in front of the bus straight into the middle of the road and was thus struck by the vehicle my son was driving.
I took my son home while he was completely shattered, broken beyond comfort. Neither I, nor my wife, nor his wife were able to calm, encourage, or console him. He lay in bed, crushed and broken, not knowing his own soul, trying to understand what sin he had committed that Hashem brought about such a terrible decree through him—to kill a soul or, at best, to cause serious injury?! Until three o’clock in the morning we tried to calm and comfort him, but he was in his mourning and his sackcloth!!!
The next day I received a phone call from an unknown number. The call began with words of thanks—for the accident. I did not understand what he wanted, and then a wondrous story became clear. On the line was the young man who had been struck by my son. He told me that at the hospital, they examined him and found not even one fracture—only a small cut that required stitches.
The doctor said that despite that, it had still been an accident with a large vehicle that struck him, and insisted on doing a CT scan. On the CT scan they saw pressure from a cervical vertebra pushing toward the spinal cord. They rushed him into surgery—and saved his life. In the best-case scenario, he could have been paralyzed for life.
He also told me that for a long time he had been unable to control his fingers, and the doctors had not been able to identify the source of the problem. The surgery resolved the issue. Because of the accident, he received the gift of a healthy life!!!
P.S. In response to my question—how did he get my number? He said that he copied the number from the vehicle that hit him. That was the number of my company—my son works for me...
What seemed to us like misfortune turned into goodness!!!
We made a large Kiddush to give thanks to Hashem!!!
ש.ב.
