IT HAPPENED SO FAST!

I WAS RUN OVER BY AN SUV. HERE'S WHAT IT FELT LIKE.

- Tamara Dean 

I HEARD A WOMAN SAY,
                                      "SHE WAS HIT BY A CAR."

I thought: It sounds as if she's talking about me, but that can't be right. I couldn't see. I didn't know where I was. But I wasn't worried. I sensed that I was surrounded by purposeful strangers and that my partner, David, was by my side. Abruptly, I grunted and twisted. A nurse thrust a bedpan toward me. I dismissed the bedpan, leaned right and vomited blood over the bedrail. Still, I wasn't alarmed or in pain-yet. I was only perplexed.

The last thing I remembered was leaving a grocery store and thinking, These bags are heavy. That had been three hours earlier. Given the police report, doctors' notes and conversations I've had with eyewitnesses since that time in the hospital, I've gathered some of the details from the time I lost. 

On a Thursday afternoon back in May 2021, I was walking across University Avenue in Minneapolis when a black SUV turned left from an intersecting street.

"He was going fast," an eyewitness told me later. "He ran you right over."

I asked people, even in the hospital, when my mind was muddled: Did I have right of way? Yes. Was I wearing headphones? No one knew. Why did the driver hit me? No one could say. And the SUV driver couldn't be questioned because, after stopping briefly, he had fled.