Everything changes in a second

I ran into Maggie outside her Victoria Avenue apartment building in late October, and we stopped to chat. She was tired and a bit overwhelmed, she said, for she still had a lot of assignments to complete and was also working as a teaching assistant in the department. But as she spoke, she couldn’t hide her excitement. Not only was she almost finished her last semester and about to graduate, but, best of all, she was recently engaged and eagerly showed off her new ring.

Life was not only good, Maggie said, it was fantastic. On Dec. 12, she would be saying goodbye to the snow and slush of Montreal and joining her fiancée for a new life in sunny San Diego, where she planned to indulge in her two favourite activities year-round — surfing and horseback riding. She even had a few excellent job prospects as a writer, having spent a very successful summer internship at Surfer Magazine.

Then, in one horrifying explosion of glass and twisted metal, everything changed for Maggie, her fiancée and her family.

On Saturday, Nov. 24, she was in Nova Scotia, driving a rented car from the airport to her father’s house in Chester, when, from out of nowhere, a drunk driver in the oncoming lane strayed across the white line and hit her head-on. Doctors and police investigators agree it was all so fast that she probably never knew what happened.

The initial reports were grim — a long, nauseating litany of shattered bones and, worst of all, a serious head injury.

Thanks to the Internet, Maggie’s friends are able to keep up to date on her condition. Daily reports from her hospital bed in Halifax, faithfully posted by her closest friends and relatives, are encouraging. Progress is slow and painful, of course, but she is fighting back. Although her eyesight is still questionable, they say she can now recognize certain people and is able to receive brief visits — but everything is still very fuzzy. She has a long, painful road ahead of her, a daunting future filled with reconstructive surgery, physiotherapy and so many other terrible challenges.

At this point no one knows if she will ever be able to write again, or if she will be able to climb into a saddle or hang ten along the Pacific coast.

All this just because some drunken jackass decided he was okay to drive.