E10 C4: The Battleground

Gina: [: 00:00:00

I don't remember the exact words. It was something along the lines of, "Don't worry, we're just going to ignore him," or, "Don't worry, nobody's gonna watch him." Something stupid like that. He liked to mess with me, break my balls. So when he called and said, "Your son got hit by a car I thought he was still messing with me I said, "What?"[00:01:00]

And he said it again, "Your son got hit by a car. You need to get here."

And I remember saying, "Stop. Like, stop fucking around. That's not funny." But then I heard his voice. I heard how out of breath he was. I heard the panic, and I knew. I knew that he was not joking

s mind should ever have to go[: 00:02:00

I think I blacked out parts of what happened next. Not literally passed out, but trauma does something strange to your memory. . It takes certain moments and burns them into you so clearly that you can still hear the voices twenty years later.

Then it takes the moments in between and completely erases them

I'm your host, Gina Sullivan, and you are listening to Daddy Tissues

Welcome to chapter [: 00:03:00

Some people see a family crisis and think, "How can I make this about me?" Last episode, , I left you outside my parents' house on a normal fall night. My three-year-old son was with the kids from next door.

or an hour. My son was safe. [: 00:04:00

She knew my family, she knew the history, she knew the situation with my son's father and his family. And thank God she was with me because I genuinely do not remember how I got from where we were back to my house. This was before everybody had GPS giving you directions in a soothing British voice.

ebsite where you printed out [: 00:05:00

It was a beautiful system, very safe. No possible problems there I do not remember whether my friend drove me back. I do not remember exactly when I got into the car with my mom. I know my dad was in the ambulance with my son.

I know I needed to get to the hospital, and I know I had absolutely no idea where I was going. I was frantic. My son had been hit by a car Nobody would tell me whether he was okay

d destroy the rest of my life[: 00:06:00

I just knew I had to get there And somehow an ambulance appeared in front of us. I still do not know where it came from. I do not know if the ambulance was carrying my son or another ambulance headed toward the same hospital. I only know that it appeared, and I followed it. I stayed directly behind it.

It went through the red lights, and I went right through the red lights with it. I did not stop. I did not think. I just followed that ambulance straight to the hospital. It felt like God had dropped something in front of me and said, "Follow that." Because I could have not figured out anything else in that moment.

never forget. I can close my [: 00:07:00

I still did not know whether my son was alive or not

My mom answered the phone, and I heard a woman's voice say

Why wasn't that fucking bitch home with her motherfucking son?

It was the sister The get out of jail free card, sister

to The sister who I believed [: 00:08:00

I thought she knew I would never knowingly put my son in danger I thought she cared about me. And while I was in a car trying to find out whether my three-year-old child was alive, her first instinct was to call my mother and blame me. Not, "Is he okay?" Not, "Where is he?" Not, "What hospital are you going to?"

Not, "What can we do?" Her first concern was finding somebody to punish, and that somebody was me. I did not even have time to process it. I could not defend myself. I could not react. I could not even allow myself to feel what she had just said because my baby had been hit by a car. Nothing else mattered.

sentence stayed with me. It [: 00:09:00

When I got to the hospital, my son's father and his mother were already there. They live closer, so they must have arrived before I did. -- My dad or my neighbor, I'm not sure, had contacted them. I walked into the room And I saw my baby laying on a stretcher

m and he was covered in blood[: 00:10:00

He looked like he was sleeping

Like he was trapped inside some terrible dream

there, that he was not alone [: 00:11:00

There were doctors trying to clean and , stitch parts of his little body. He was crying, and I could not take the pain away

That is one of the worst feelings a parent can experience Your child is hurting. He's looking at you. He believes you can fix everything because you are his mother, and you cannot fix it. You cannot pull the pain out of his body and put it into yours. You cannot trade places with him.

g to switch places with him, [: 00:12:00

An SUV had hit my three-year-old son. It went over him and dragged him, and then the driver got back into the vehicle and left the scene. They left my tiny baby lying in the street. We never found out who did it. I cannot understand that. I cannot understand how a human being hits a small child, drags that child with a vehicle, sees what they have done, and then drives away.

as something that could heal [: 00:13:00

there were internal injuries we had to continue monitoring. We had to return to the hospital for follow-up appointments. He could not walk for a few weeks while his body healed, but he did not need major surgery. His body healed on its own. He was going to be okay

How an SUV could hit him, go over him, and drag him, and leave him with injuries that his body could recover from is something I will never completely understand. It was a miracle

on. My miracle baby survived [: 00:14:00

I know there are families whose entire lives split into before and after because of one phone call. I do not take for granted that my son survived, not for one second

While I was inside the hospital with my son, sitting beside him and watching him breathe, an entirely different version of the event was beginning outside of that room The neighbor, my son's father, and members of his family were speaking with newspapers and news stations.

ended up on the front of the [: 00:15:00

The neighbor loved attention, .. any opportunity to be interviewed or involved in something was an opportunity he was going to take, and this was no different. People were speaking. People were giving statements.

be living through something, [: 00:16:00

They would decide whose fault it was. They would assign motives. They would create heroes and villains, and somehow the person actually trying to survive the event would have the least control over the story My dad was never the same after that day. Never Something happened to him when my son was hit I do not think he had ever been that scared in his entire life.

this very day But the truth [: 00:17:00

My son ran after them. Before my dad had a chance to grab him, a speeding vehicle came down the street. It happened that fast. There was no decision. There was no moment where my dad looked away for twenty minutes. ... There was no reckless situation where nobody cared where the children were.

It was a group of kids playing outside, then it was chaos. . My dad tried to save him. My dad rode in the ambulance with him. ... My dad loved that little boy more than I can explain

What if I had done something [: 00:18:00

I told him about the anger, the obsession, the control, the way his eyes changed when he became enraged, the way I felt when I knew something bad was about to happen. My dad did not understand it. He did not always believe me.

n two young people. Maybe he [: 00:19:00

Think about that Your three-year-old child has been hit by a car. You do not know the extent of his injuries. You do not know whether he is going to live. Your first instinct should be to get your child, to see him, to touch him, to find out what the doctors are saying. But instead, he went after my dad He blamed my dad.

ed on my dad. His anger came [: 00:20:00

That something did not feel right. I hate that it took my son being hit by a car for my dad to see it, but he saw it

driving to the gym was there [: 00:21:00

And instead of everyone coming together for this little boy, the room became another battleground People wanted somebody to blame. People wanted to fight. People wanted to defend their side. People wanted control.

ir fault, and that was their [: 00:22:00

People like to believe that tragedy automatically brings families closer together. Sometimes it does. Sometimes everybody drops the bullshit because they finally understand what matters. But sometimes tragedy exposes everything that was already broken.

and aim it at somebody else. [: 00:23:00

Maybe bad things only happen when somebody does something wrong. Maybe if we find the guilty person, we can convince ourselves that nothing like this will ever happen to us. But sometimes something horrible happens in seconds. Sometimes children run after leaves. Sometimes a speeding driver comes down a street.

Sometimes there is no time to stop it, and sometimes the people who should be helping you carry the pain decide instead to place all of it on your back

have been listening and you [: 00:24:00

Eleven days of being grateful that he was alive, while also being terrified by everything happening around us. And within those eleven days, the situation turned into something I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams or nightmares, I should say. [00:25:00] The accident was already one of the worst things that had ever happened to me.

But somehow, while my son was recovering, the adults around him managed to create another crisis. Something began inside that hospital, something involving his father, his family, my family, and the control they believed they had over me and my child. It became bigger than an argument, bigger than blame, bigger than people fighting in a waiting room I had spent the first three years of my son's life trying to escape that family's control.

y saw an opportunity to pull [: 00:26:00

I thought the worst thing that could happen had already happened. My son had been hit by a car. I thought nothing could possibly be more terrifying than that phone call

But by the time we left that hospital, I was about to find out how far people would go when they believed they were entitled to control my life And that is where I need to stop because the next part deserves its own chapter My son survived.

er. You're going to need it, [: 00:27:00