the deep moans round with many voices

On Monday evening, my coworker AO's son Josh was in a terrible car crash. Apparently he ran a stop sign and a driver on the cross-street hit his car in a T-bone collision. He was very seriously injured, and was airlifted to a bigger hospital than Ithaca's little local hospital.

He has broken bones (including, I think, a crushed pelvis), arm injuries, leg injuries, etc. He had to have surgery because of injuries to internal organs. As of last night, the doctors were fairly sure he had not ruptured his intestines, which is a rare spot of good news. However, the most worrying problem is the cranial swelling, which is bad enough that he currently has a hole drilled in his skull to relieve some pressure and allow the doctors to monitor him more carefully. He recognized AO briefly when she arrived at the hospital Monday night, but since then he has not responded to anyone and also he isn't moving the way people do in natural sleep, which is not a good sign.

We have set up a couple collection boxes at the smoke shop, and there are tentative plans for a charity concert of some sort (since Josh is a well-liked local musician), but at the moment nobody has any details. AO is, of course, excused from work for the foreseeable future, and the rest of us are covering all her shifts.

AO has had the most horrible luck these past few years -- losing her restaurant and having to declare bankruptcy, having to put her husband in a nursing home because of his advanced multiple sclerosis, losing a job at Borg-Warner, dealing with medical problems of her own, supporting her unemployed daughter, etc. And now this thing with Josh.

...

I need to get some serious cash from the bank tomorrow to put in the collection box -- more than just my spare change, which I have been adding the past two days.

Also, I am going to go light another candle for Josh now, as I have been doing the past two nights.