DailySusan Humor Blog

QUEEN NEFERTITI REVIVES

Praise God, our daughter’s beloved softball teammate, Crystal, is going to be OK after being in a car crash Tuesday night that took the life of one of her best friends. Her poor mom got to the scene in time to watch them take Crystal’s bloody, battered body out of the car and rush her into an ambulance. It was thought that Crystal had very serious internal injuries and that Wednesday would be “touch and go” for her life.

Crystal had been a passenger in the back seat. Inexplicably, for someone ranked very near the top of her high-school class, she apparently wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. It just isn’t like her. But it shows once again the aura of invincibility that our teenagers think they have. It needs to be addressed, bigtime, in every household in the land.

Fortunately, though, once they got the internal bleeding slowed down, they were elated to find that her injuries, while painful, aren’t life-threatening. Her jaw is broken in three places, she has lost some teeth, she has broken ribs, some minor issues with internal organs, some mildly damaged vertebrae, and a lot of horrendous bruises.

She has to have jaw surgery soon and will wear a neck brace for three months. But otherwise, it’s a downright miracle that she wasn’t killed. The ICU waiting-room vigil with her parents turned into a one of the most moving moments of my life. Tears streamed down all our cheeks as the doctor described how all the “worst-case scenarios” had improved to “doable scenarios.”

Thank You, Jesus! We need all the happy endings we can get.

I was also elated to have been present at the moment Crystal came to. Her softball coach, a wonderful and funny young man, went in to look at her with me. There were tubes and machines all around her. The neck brace was enormous, and her gorgeous raven hair was spread out all over the pillow.

This coach, Jeff, always calls her “Queen Nefertiti,” because of that raven hair, her half-Chinese heritage that gives her elegantly darker skin, and her expert hand with eyeliner. In that neck brace, with her dark hair all spread out, she looked even MORE like it.

“Crystal, this is Jeff,” he began, in a coach-to-player lecture, as if he was recording a message for someone in Alaska . . . not realizing that she had regained consciousness and heard every word he said. Then she began blinking and trying to pull out her ventilator. We gasped, grinned and ran for her folks.

They were mad that she hadn’t responded for THEM, of course. But they’ve always just referred to her as their princess. He, on the other hand, calls her a QUEEN.

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PRAYER REQUESTS: Praise for Crystal’s wonderful news, plus comfort and peace for the family of Grace, the girl who died in the crash, along with the other three girls and their families, who will be dealing with this for the rest of their lives. We also seek safe travel for the son of a good friend who’s coming home to the Omaha area from Springfield, Mo., today. (Psalm 91:15,16)