P.I.'s Epiphany

Work this business long enough and hard enough, and the stories begin to blend together without commercial breaks.

The fine line between wake and sleep is traversed by people and cases past and present.
Dreams are not just dreams... they are time-lines, case notes, haunting images of broken bones, crushed skulls, open eye sockets we enter through our cameras.
I sometimes wake up thinking I lay broken in a crosswalk, or stuck upside down in an overturned car, or trapped in a hospital bed.
It takes a moment for the reality to settle in before I can accept I am safe, I am home. I am in my own bed. That is the wind I hear...those are the birds waking up... that is the water of the bay outside our window... the oysters lay peacefully by the water's edge. All is well.

Yet every day I leave that bed and this remote house on the shores of Port Gamble Bay, the drama begins anew.
Every day, I enter the city by bridge or boat. And there's no way to start out a morning knowing what the day will bring.
There is never a dull day in this business. Or a predictable one. There is, at best, an "easier" day spent trudging throught the urban or rural tundra.
Truth be told, when someone tells me they are bored with their lives, I am stupefied.
"Boring" is a concept I have yet to discover in my life.

Driving down the road a little while ago, I was on the cell phone with a friend who is a home health care nurse. She "gets" me and the work I do.
I told her of one place I just left.
The entire apartment could have fit into the living room of our beach house.
And our house is not big. There are just two of us here unless the kids or someone visits.
The apartment I told my nurse friend about had two young adults, both in their 30's and four children spanning the ages from 4 months to 12 years.
The volume immediately went from the simple beat of my knock at the door, to ear-busting loud when the door was opened. The tv was on, the kids were screaming, it was chaos.

While the parents turned off the tv and quieted the kids, I tried to figure out whether they were "hoarders" or forced to live like that as I entered the apartment. I walked a narrow pathway through the entry, another pathway to the sofa, the walls were stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes and toys and clothes and dad's tool chests.

Both parents apologized about the condition of their apartment.
I said, "No apologies necessary. You were hit by a truck. You were hurt. I don't care about your house, only you."

The parents and kids had been hit by a drunk driver in an big pick-up.
They were all talking at once and were all wound tight.
And I could see why, as they showed me the pictures they took from accident scene and later, the collision yard.

The hit they sustained was huge -- their big vehicle was totaled, front and passenger seat broken, baby and boosters seats lifted and turned. Airbags deployed.
Heads were hit, arms were jammed, backs were twisted, necks were wrenched, children injured and screaming.
The whole family seemed to sink into one collective trauma as they relived the accident for me.

I told Dad, were it not for the big and well-built vehicle he had purchased for his family, they would not all be here. I spoke quietly, leaned into just the parents, that if they were in a smaller cars they would all have been toast. I again complemented Dad on his choice of the family vehicle.
It was the first smile, albeit a weak one, I got out of him.
"Thank you" he said, quietly.

Then Dad explained the vehicle was on a loan.
They paid over $500 a month, just bought the car, and did not have GAP Insurance -- which covers the difference (the "gap") between what you've paid on the loan and what you owe on a loan in the unlikely event of a crash landing, which this was.

Usually GAP insurance comes only with newer cars. there's was a 2003.
I silently guessed they didn't have it even before I asked and I was right.
When they gave me their numbers, I also knew they didn't know what I was about to tell them.
That they were upside down on their loan.
And even though it wasn't their fault, even though they'd been consistent in paying off their loan, it didn't matter....they could likely owe money on a car that was in a collison yard soon to be scrapped.

"Then how will will be buy a new car?" Mom asked.
"We don't have enough money now to pay our bills, feed the kids, we can't afford a down payment."

I told them I don't know. That's why people get GAP insurance when they take out a car loan. So they don't end up in this position. However, " I added, to bring some hope into the dismal equation,
"perhaps the people who gave you the loan in the first place may roll it over into a new loan, since the auto industry is hurting. "
Mom and Dad both nodded at the same time.

The other big problem was not just the lack of GAP insurance, but the lack of auto insurance altogether.

Mom explained why they had no auto insurance. She stayed home with the kids and injured Dad was the breadwinner. His job was in an industry hurting big time due to the economy. There was an eviction notice, everything went belly up and the wind blew down their house of cards. They had to move from their rented house into the apartment we were in.
They said to survive, they cut out the auto insurance.

In Washington state you are supposed to have auto insurance by law. However, there is no database that lists who has what. And when you register your car, you are not required to show proof of insurance. So, some people... many people... go without the hefty monthly insurance payment, figuring... incorrectly... that if someone hit them, then the hitter's insurance will cover it.

Fortunately, mom said, the officer who arrived at the scene told him he would not ticket them for no insurance.
I told them the officer had a big heart. Otherwise, they'd be stuck with a $500 plus fine.
Still... without their own insurance... they would be at the mercy of the Defendant's insurance company who, I explained, was not their friend.
Maybe the Defendant had rental car insurance, maybe not, I said.

I didn't say it, though I felt for certain, the Defendant's insurance company would accept liability as I quietly studied the police report they handed me.
Defendant was cited, the young family had the green light, three independent witnesses were present. Still... I thought, looking up from the report and at all of them gathered around me, this was not a good situation.

The truck that hit them was old.
There was auto insurance, but the policy limits could be too low to cover the severity of their injuries.
Fortunately, I needed not to go there.. it is not my job to discuss the financial "what ifs". The attorneys do that.
They probe the policy, deal with the adjustors, break the good or bad news to the people who called them for help.
I am merely one stop on the personal injury highway.

My job is to gather the facts. And to do so, I must gather the wits of those who have head injuries, or emotional trauma, or physical injuries, lost jobs, lost cars, terrified children.
It does get dark at times.

So after I left that family and headed to my next case, I was on the cell phone with my home health care nurse friend. She told me how working with trauma day in and day old must be having a big effect on me. She reminded me I long I have been at this work. I have no paid vacation time, no sick time, I just move like a cruise ship 24/7 from one injury to the next, she said.

Her words helped shape the epiphany I had shortly after.

It started while I watched an injured client hurl into a clear pitcher used for water in the hospital. I saw him start to heave, looked around his room for a throw-up pan, saw nothing. I grabbed his water pitcher, poured it out in the nearby sink, handed him the pitcher and he just threw up and threw up while he pushed the button for the nurse. I could see his container was getting close to overflow.

I moved to the nurses station and asked for an assist. Police were everywhere in the hospital, there'd been the capture and shooting of a guy who was targeting Seattle Police... he shot one officer, killed her partner and blew up property in a police transportation yard.

He was found and shot the day of the Police Officer's funeral I listened to on my radio. He was brought to the same hospital I was at and officers from all over the country were there about the same time my client was hurling.

One person in the hospital told me what the media hadn't released yet. The bad guy would be in a wheelchair for his trial, she said. He had an ostomy bag and could not walk. I was glad he was still alive... that the experts could probe his mind.... that he would be held accountable the horror he inflicted on the officers, their families, our community. The dead officer's wife asked a picture of her husband be placed in his cell so he would have to live with the face of the man he killed.

I often feel like I work in a Fellini movie.
The unreality of it all became my reality as I sought help for my puking client. A nurse shouted, "I'll be there in a minute."

I grabbed a throw up container from a nearby supply table and moved back to his room. I gave him the empty container after he placed the full one next to his lunch on his bedside table. The man was so sick and he said he was so embarassed between hurls.

I told him not to be as I tried not to get sick as I stepped out of the room when the nurses walked in. It's then when you beging to fight those instincts that surface and say, "What was in his puke? Can you get sick from it? Did you breathe it? Wash your hands. Where's the nearest exit?"
Unless you make a deliberate, concerted effort to stay calm... chaos ultimately ensues.

And leaving that hospital that night, beginning my rounds the next day, moving from place to place, the epiphany I had was that this business never truly stops, the inuries never end, the pain never really goes away.... it is a continuum, as much a part of life as the folks sipping their mint julips at the Kentucky Derby.

Almost none of the people I see are at fault. Yet all of them have been taken down, their lives inextricably altered by a convergence in time and space... that put them in the pathway of a speeding bullet or car, a weakened porch, a falling light pole, a blood thirsty dog, a psycho killer.

I realized that nothing I do can make a difference in the events that cause it. All I can do is be part of the clean up crew. And what I must do is make sure I gather the facts and evidence from the injured and deliver it to the attorneys... the good attorneys... who can help the injured find their way back to health and home. If there is a way.

If you have no auto insurance, even if the accident is not your fault, it could take weeks to get a police report, to get the Defendant's insurance company to accept liability, then get a rental car and yours replaced.

With no auto insurance of your own, there's no one to step in on your behalf unless you find someone like the attorneys who found me. And even then, we can't change the fact that the process takes time... time many people do not to have, to keep their homes, their doctors appointments, their sanity.

I shared the epiphany.... the realization that it never ends with my nurse friend and she told me that's why full time trauma nurses, police officers and soldiers have in-house counseling. I explained, Private Investigators have nosuch thing, no one watching our backs while we watch others'. We just talk to other investigators, or friends, who understand. Some of us even blog to release the images and realities that occupy our days and haunt our dreams. And even then, in our blogging, we must be cautious not to violate the privacy -- or sanctity -- of the cases of others.

And so I move from this post back to the cases. Some need to be closed, others need to open
In this river we called life, the flow may slow down or speed up... it never stops until the human body stops. As a P.I, I have learned the best approach is to go with the flow... it is the path of least resistance.