What REALLY Happened This Morning...

Okay. This is going to get long. But I need to get this out. 

At 2:00 this morning, Jake Miller, Bailey Miller (no relation to Jake), Bailey's Girlfriend Marina Hall, and Hunter Moss were all in a car that Jake was driving. He was driving way too fast, and they were all telling him to slow down. Marina's in the passenger seat, Hunter's behind the driver, and Bailey's behind the passenger.

Jake rounded a curve in the road, lost control of the vehicle, and hit a tree going at least 90mph, according to the traffic people who surveyed the scene. There were no skidmarks on the road, so he didn't even tap the brakes. Jake died on impact.

Bailey and Hunter managed to force their way out of the car. Bailey called his dad (they were very close to his house), and then he dialed 911. Bailey attempted to get Marina out. Marina had been nearly crushed by the engine. The tree had pushed it on top of her. If she hadn't been so small, and if the airbag hadn't covered her so well, she would've died right there, just like Jake.

Bailey also tried to get Jake out, but he couldn't.

It took over an hour for the paramedics to cut Marina out of the car. I don't know if she was conscious then or not. If she was conscious, she was probably looking at Jake the whole time. The paramedics were more worried about the living person than the dead body at the moment, and rightly so. They managed to get her out and into an ambulance.

Bailey had a broken ankle, so they put him in the ambulance as well.

Hunter was walking around, but he complained of stomach pain, so they put him in an ambulance and rushed him to the hospital.

Bailey ended up with some internal bleeding and a broken ankle. When I left the hospital (at around 2:00), he had just finished surgery and was waking up. He's the least injured of them all. But he's probably going to be the most damaged, mentally. He seems all happy and ready-to-go, but Mateo told me that Bailey kept repeating, "I couldn't get him out! I COULDN'T GET HIM OUT!" when they talked. [Referring to Jake.]

Hunter's intestine was sliced open somehow, or else burst, and he had to have emergency surgery, several xrays, and a CT scan. They're going to keep him in the hospital for 7-10 days, to make sure there's no chance of infection. I was able to see him while I was there, and we talked for a bit. He really, really wants to drink something, but he can't drink anything until they sew his midsection back up. (And that's going to be a while.) He looks MUCH worse than he is:

You can't see the seatbelt bruise, but it's there, and it's VERY prominent. It's really bad. (One of the adults said that he should say that he got into a knife fight, and that's how he got these scars. Hunter laughed, then winced.) He was very drugged up when I saw him, both times, but he was able to talk more the second time. He's still in immense pain, and I'm sincerely hoping that he's able to talk more on Sunday when I go back to see him (I doubt I'll be able to see him tomorrow.)

Marina's hips are broken in at least three different places. She's got compound fractures and breaks in nearly every bone in her body. If she gets through this, she's going to have to learn how to walk again. When I was at the hospital, she was still too unstable to put into surgery. She was also in a medically-induced coma, to keep her from going into shock. I saw her mother while I was there, and she didn't look good at all. (But then again, who would be? Seeing your daughter like that...)

We're still not sure what happened, or how the car was. We can't see the car until the coroner has made his report and released it. Once they do, one of our church members (who is friends with the guy who owns the wrecker lot where the car was taken) is going to go and take pictures of the car. It was a little Audi A4, so it was a tiny little car. I can't imagine there being very much left.

Bailey was told that Jake was dead while he was on the way to the hospital. Hunter figured it out on his own, from listening to the policemen talk and from the way people were acting. I don't know if Marina's been conscious enough to know.

I spent about six hours in the hospital waiting room, watching Hunter's friends come and sit and wait, because they couldn't go back and see him. It was family-only for a while, and once his mother and father could go back, they didn't come back out to the waiting room. His brother came back and sat in a corner and cried, which really scared me. I was actually the first non-family-member that he asked to see. I felt really happy about that. And he didn't look as bad as Aaron (his brother) had led me to believe.

We're still trying to piece together the story, and I think we're never going to have the whole thing.

Just keep them in your prayers and thoughts, please. I know that you know none of these people, but Hunter means the world to me. He's my best friend, and he's kept me from killing myself a few times in the past three months. 

It's going to be a tough recovery for these people, particularly Marina, if she pulls through. (And I hope she does, otherwise that may be what makes Bailey snap.)