Written on October 18, 2023
Today was a day filled with more good news than not and that is a deal I’ll always take.
To begin, I received a long awaited phone call from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) team who were the investigators of the crash. Two weeks I’ve waited for this one phone call, not with anticipation but instead with growing fear, worry and apprehension.
Constable Light called at 2:00pm and was able to finally tell me some more information involving the next stage of the investigation. Prior to this phone call, I only had as much information about the incident as everyone else. All I had was the short Global news article that was available at https://globalnews.ca/news/10002433/investigation-ongoing-fatal-crash-manitoba-highway. It stated “An investigation determined that a 35-year-old male driver from Carvel, Alta., was heading south when he collided with a northbound vehicle (Jenny’s vehicle) after crossing the center line.” and that was it. That’s all I had to go on. But the article ended with “Mounties continue to investigate”. With the way that specific sentence was structured, it is written that the other driver was at fault but the line that the RCMP was “continuing to investigate” left a minuscule drop of doubt in my mind that would inevitably fester over the following two weeks into something that I could no longer ignore. It is hard to imagine or even fathom, but because of that one minuscule drop of doubt, a part of me had to be realistic and consider a scenario where after the “Mounties continue to investigate” then maybe, just maybe, Jenny could potentially be 50/50 at fault or even worse.
I know Jenny is a very safe, defensive driver. If her shift is 1 hour and 20 minutes away she will always leave at minimum 2 hours before her shift. She is extremely afraid of deer crossing the road, in fact having a run in with a deer already this year so I know she was alert and driving extremely safe that night. But all it took was that one minuscule, condensed drop of doubt… one tiny line of ambiguity, and I began to feel my toes dip into a vast pool of uneasiness.
What if after their “further investigation” Jenny was somehow found partially at fault? Or even fully at fault? As the other driver was pronounced deceased at the scene of the crash… this would mean Jenny would be at minimum, charged with manslaughter.
As these two weeks went by, each day was a struggle harder than the last. As I was trying my hardest to keep myself sane and simply move forward little by little even after seeing her damaged, bloody, stitched up body hooked up to so many machines just to breathe, just to survive, I also was being bombarded by so many things I had to do but not know how to deal with and all of it all at once. MPI reports, MPI claims, insurance reports, insurance claims, HEB claims, agency claims, banking reports, credit claims, credit freezes, chequing decisions, liability reports, liability claims, power of attorney papers, paperwork for her family, paperwork for myself, all the while trying to keeping myself afloat just to be there for her everyday. As each day went by, trying to juggle all of this, I could also feel my toes being submerged into that pool of unease and my body continue to lower itself further and further while I could only believe with all my heart that Jenny was driving safely, as she always was, the night the crash occurred. I had to put my whole belief, my trust and all my remaining sanity into that tiny part of that article where it stated the oncoming vehicle “crossed the center line.”
Until today.
I was finally told the one sentence I needed to hear from Corporal Light of the RCMP to finally clear up the dark clouds that loomed in the horizon of my dwindling stability.
“Jenny is not considered to be, in any way, at fault for this collision.”
Us humans, we must inherently be dramatic. With intelligence we also came equipped with the ability to exacerbate any information we choose for our benefit… or our downfall. So when I write that the very moment I heard Constable Light say that line over the phone I hope you believe me when I say it felt like a golden, radiant pillar the size of the Earth appeared into existence from nothingness and stuck itself right underneath my entire crumbling world to help support it from collapsing.
I thanked Constable Light for the information and he then asked me a bit about Jenny. I told him what I could about her over the next 10 minutes. I remember hearing his voice waver a bit as he thanked me for telling me her story and as we ended the call he said a line that made me instinctively raise my hand over my heart.
“It is unfair that in life, people can do all the right things yet still have something tragic happen to them to no fault of their own.”
Right after the phone call ended I took a moment to stare out the hotel window. I stood there motionless, with no facial expression at all. It was a cloudy day but very bright with a small clearing in the sky just big enough for the sunlight to shine through.
I couldn’t wait to see Jenny again.
I had the following part of this section written which was about the events that happened after I visited Jenny following the phone call but I decided it didn’t flow well with the heavy and painful undertone over the turmoil brewing in my mind up until that point. When I saw Jenny again I felt so reassured and a bunch of interesting events happened. I will detail it in my next entry which is already partially written. I am so grateful to finally have that small drop of doubt in my mind disappear for good. I can now continue pushing forward with an absolute clear conscience. Thank you for reading my fourth entry in Jenny’s Journal.
Jenny's Recovery 