All he was doing was going out to get pizza.
Last night Mr. escapee drove his car over to the local pizza place. His car was (note the verb tense) a 2003 Civic that had never given us a minute's trouble.
As he drove down the road towards our house, he thought he saw something in front of him, but before the thought could even complete itself, CRASH. Airbags blew up, his glasses flew off, and suddenly he was right up against the steering wheel.
He said he sat there a little while, and there seemed to be a lot of people around, and the smell of gas. The people were urging him to get out, so he unwedged himself, and stood there blinking (no glasses).
He had hit a black car with no lights on in the dark. It was a kid taking his unreliable car somewhere to be traded in. The car went dead: no lights, no nothing. His father was following him at a distance and told the kid over the phone to get out of the car right now, and he did, thank heaven. My husband never had a chance; he slammed into an invisible car seconds later.
Someone dug out his glasses (OK, thank heaven) and the cops came, and he called me. We live 5 blocks from where it happened. And adrenaline took over, and I, who could barely walk a few months ago, ran all the way. A friend of ours rushed over, and it turns out she knew the kid and his dad, and I controlled my near-hysterical fear of cops in favor of standing in the 20-degree-with-wind outside. I sat in a cop car. Oh, God.
Mr. escapee ran home and got our other car, cleaned out the dead Civic, we got papers, we drove home.
The pizza was dead too.
He's okay, he says; sore chest and a little dithery.
So now we're thinking. Do we need two cars? I work at home. If we do, what do we do? My income has gone down by 2/3 this year because of my head injuries; I get paid by the piece, and when you're off for four months...Cash in an IRA? Used car? We've never bought a used car.
Any advice would be appreciated.
UPDATE, later: I got him to the Doc in a Box. Nothing's broken, EKG is fine, but he probably has internal bruising. The nice Kenyan doctor (we had a long chat about the University of Nairobi) recommended naproxen, rest, and ice.