There Was a Time for Everything by Judith Friedland;

Author:Judith Friedland;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Friedland, Judith, 1939 / Women college teachers / Jewish women
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2022-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

11

Difficult Times: Family Troubles and Work Troubles

Now in her first year at the University of Toronto, our daughter Jenny was in Quebec on Christmas break. She was driving to Mount Tremblant to ski with three passengers: a girlfriend, my brother’s fifteen-year-old son, Alexander, and a friend of Alexander’s. It was January 2nd, 1986. Late that morning, the police phoned my brother, Barry, who lived in Montreal, to tell him there had been an accident. Barry called our house and reached Marty, who happened to be at home. I was at my desk at work when Marty called me with the news. I instinctively cried out such that colleagues rushed to see what had happened. One of them insisted on driving me home, realizing I was too distraught to drive myself.

There was black ice on the auto route near St Jérôme. Once a car hit that ice, its driver instinctively hit the brakes, which made the car spin off the road. Each car ran out of control in this way, until some eighteen cars were involved. Jenny saw the car ahead of her put on its breaks, and she put on hers; her car spun around, and the passenger side of the car landed in a snowbank in the median. Unhurt, she scrambled out the driver’s side onto the road to assess the situation. When the next car hit its brakes and spun around, it hit her and sent her flying twenty feet away. The same car hit Alexander as well as Jenny’s friend as they were getting out of the car, and both of them sustained injuries. Alexander’s friend, having remained in the car, was unhurt. Jenny suffered a broken leg (a “bumper fracture” of her left tibia and fibula), injuries to her left knee, a broken right ankle, a concussion, and a scalp laceration.

An ambulance took her to the hospital in St Jérôme, where they stitched up her scalp. From there, she was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. I boarded a plane in Toronto and arrived at the Royal Vic while Jenny was still in Emergency. She was somewhat disoriented, complaining about the pillow under her head being lumpy when in fact it was the stitches and the swelling on the back of her head that were causing the discomfort. She kept saying, “Mom, is it you? Will you stay? It hurts so much.” Then, in a pleading sort of tone, she would add, “It wasn’t my fault.” I told her that I knew it wasn’t her fault, and that of course I would stay. I tried to reassure her that everything would be all right. Inside, I was heartbroken for her and terrified of what might be in store.

Jenny’s broken leg would turn out to be a complicated injury. By the time she reached the hospital in Montreal and was readied for surgery, her leg had developed an acute “compartment” syndrome. The syndrome occurs when the intact tissue (the fascia), enclosing the groups of muscles,

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