terrifying phone calls in the middle of the night

last thursday, bryan and i had a meeting with our financial planner and afterwards he was headed up to pennsylvania to visit his family for the weekend on his motorcycle. it needs a new clutch, so he was going to drop it off at home and we were going to go back up this coming weekend to finish repairs. i didn't go for the first weekend because i didn't want to use a vacation day when we were going back the following weekend anyway...

so bryan got on his way around 8:20pm and i headed home. i dozed off a little after 10, and around 10:45 or so woke up feeling funky about bryan's trip since it was dark and raining and he was alone. i had asked him to call me when he got home to PA, but i texted him and told him to either text or call me when he stopped for gas so i'd know he was okay. i fell back asleep.

at midnight, i am awoken to bryan's ring.

"i've got bad news honey. i wrecked the bike."

i didn't believe him at first. i said, "no you didn't." and he said "yes i did" a few times before it really hit me that he was not screwing around.

i can not tell you the combination and roller coaster of emotions i experienced in the next couple of minutes. he told me it wasn't bad and that he was fine but going to the hospital for lack of a better option and since the paramedics had suggested he get his fingers checked out. so i knew that it must be mild in the grand scheme of accidents if he was even ABLE to call me himself. so i tried to stay calm, but the fact remains that i love that man more than anything in my world and it COULD HAVE been way way way more serious, and at that moment i wanted to be next to him and hug him and know first hand that he was alright. but i was 3 hours away, it was dark and raining and i was tired and i had no idea if i'd be able to stay alert enough to make my trip up there to him safe. not to mention the fact that he kept telling me he was alright, so it didn't seem very smart to risk ME crashing on the way up there. i got off the phone after agreeing that i would wait a bit to hear from him once he got to the hospital, and i just started crying. it was midnight. i didn't know what to do. i wanted to go to him, but i wasn't so sure that was the best idea. i got up to get dressed, then got back in the bed, then got up to get dressed, then got back in the bed, until ultimately that's where i stayed.

i eventually learned that as he was driving down 695 outside of baltimore a little after 11pm in the rain, a car was coming up behind him in the middle lane. he didn't want to speed up, so he decided to get into the right lane. unfortunately he didn't notice that lane had been repaved, making about a 4 inch bump up into that lane. he equated it to riding your bicycle down the street and then just gently trying to get up on the sidewalk, rather than angling your wheel to make the jump. so the bike went down when the wheel brushed the curb, and off came bryan. he thinks he must have tried to stand up and put his hands down on the road, which really screwed up his fingers on his left hand especially. as luck would have it, the car he had been moving out of the way for was a cop who had just gotten off duty. he called in the on duty guys and they tended to the accident.

we kept in touch either via text message or phone calls when he could get a signal all night and as the night wore on i was at least satisfied that he was going to be alright and that waiting til morning was the best idea to decide on what i was going to do. when we last talked at 4am, he thought he was going to just go to the tow yard, pick up the motorcycle and drive it home. he even considered just continuing on to PA, but little did he know if he tried to tell me that the next morning i was going to have to put my foot down--i needed to see my love in flesh and blood and know he was still in one piece, only with a few chunks of flesh missing. (check those out here and here and here--i won't post the pictures because some are gross and i'll let you view at your own discretion. the first is just a brush burn on his arm though, safe for the squeamish.)

on friday when he got to where the bike had been towed, he realized that it was in much worse shape than he expected. so we decided i would rent a pickup truck and come up to bring him and the bike home. i was so happy to see him, but for some reason i had to whack him in the arm and yell at him a bit, which really surprised him. i don't know... i was just so upset at the idea that i could have lost him that i needed to get that out somehow. so i punched him in the arm for almost dying. (hey, i never claimed to be the most emotionally stable person in the world.)

we made it back fine, and i was so glad to have my husband in the bed with me that night. the motorcycle is gonna be out of commission for a while... but i think that's alright. you can bet i'm gonna be putting up one hell of a fight the next time he thinks he's riding in the dark/rain, though!

never having seen our motorcycle before, these pictures might not mean much to you. but it's pretty torn up. for one thing, there used to be a windshield...







all i can say is, in the way of terrifying phone calls in the middle of the night, i'm glad i got the one that i did and nothing worse, but i'd be extremely happy to never get one again.