Summer '07 (the black hole) part 3: Josh Goes Through the Windshield

I got a call last Friday from my wife informing me that Josh, my younger brother, had been in a car accident. I found out various details over the course of the week: He had been asleep in the passenger seat (buckled in) when the vehicle in which he was travelling hit a parked car, he went through the windshield (figure that one out), the vehicle caught fire, etc. The police told him that had his seatbelt engaged, he'd be dead right now, because when the examined the car they found most of the engine sitting on his seat.

Poor Josh landed on someone's lawn in a suburb of Red Deer (missing 30 feet of pavement for 10 feet of grass, apparently), and woke up from his original nap in the hospital. His eyelid and one of his ears were nearly torn off, and his lip was split so badly that he tells me he accidentally stuck his tongue through the hole below his bottom lip. He took 130 stitches in his head and face alone. He also suffered multiple broken ribs and, most seriously, a lacerated liver. They're keeping him in the hospital because apparently there's a high risk he'll contract pneumonia in the next little while.

I'm very glad my little brother isn't dead. I'm also alarmed at how quickly and easily several tons of metal and glass gone awry can mangle the delicate bones and tissues of a human body (like Josh's or Eva's), and how, when that phone rings, you never really know what you're going to hear from the other end.

God(s), bless my family. You can have our blood, but please leave us our lives.