Mix Up

I ask people to tell their stories after an ordeal all the time, and sometimes they do, sometimes they do not. The point is, it is my job to ask, even if I know sometimes it will be tough for them. Because I do what I do, I feel I should share my family's ordeal over the weekend.
Regular watchers of the five o'clock newscast know I was gone Friday. Here's why:
As I was getting ready for work, my sister, who is in the New England area, called to inform me my younger brother was involved in a truck accident in Llano. She said he was on his way to work, at around five that morning, when the truck he was in rolled. All we knew when my sister called me is the two people in the vehicle had been flown to the hospital, but we did not know what hospital.
So I finished getting ready for work and started this way, thinking I could make some calls from work to see where my brother was air-lifted to. As I was turning onto South 14th, my little sister called me back to tell me my brother was air-lifted to Hendrick. So I turned around and was on my way to the hospital when my Mom called. She was crying and said she was on her way to Abilene with my other younger brother and my older sister. I told her I would call her when I got to the hospital.
When I walked into the hospital, I asked where I could find my brother, who was just air-lifted in. Security pointed me in the right direction. I got the person I needed to talk to and he asked if I could help them finish filling out my brother's information. They already had his name and some other info but they needed date of birth and other things like that, so I called my mom and asked her. By then they were already in the car on their way to Abilene from Midland. She asked, still crying, how my brother was doing. I told her I did not know, because I had just arrived at the hospital and the sooner we could get the info they needed the sooner we would know. I assured my mom that I would call as soon as I knew something. Then I was taken to a small waiting room that no one else was in and told the nurse would be in soon. Right away I thought it was going to be bad news, otherwise why wouldn't I be in the regular waiting room?
After a few minutes the nurse comes in and introduces herself to me then proceeds to explain my brother's injuries, including a head injury. As the nurse is talking to me, the doctor comes in and tells me more. He tells me that my brother also has a broken arm and maybe a broken leg, but they would get to those injuries later because they were concentrating on the head injuries. By then my mind was racing and I was prepared for the worst. Before leaving the room the nurse told me it's good that I was there, and that it would be good for my brother to know somebody was there with him, even though he was not conscious. She said they had to do a few more things and then they would let me back to see and at least try and talk to him.
A few more minutes go by and the nurse comes to get me and leads me to where my brother is being treated. As I walk in to the room, I see a team of people around him and see one person working on my bother's leg, and immediately hesitate. They urge me to go and talk to him. Still hesitant, I walked to the bed and looked very closely and even called out my brothers name.
It's at that point that I stepped back and told the people in the room, "this is not my brother!"
Before I said that, all kinds of things went through my head. One of them was, could my sister have told me the wrong brother was involved in the wreck, because the guy on the table was bigger than my youngest brother who I was told was in the accident. I immediately thought my sister meant to say it was my other younger brother who is a bigger guy. The person on the table had facial injuries so I looked really close and thought, no that's not him.
Standing there I called my Mom and told her. She then asked, "then where is he, and how is he doing?" Of course no one knew, because we did not even know who the person on the table was. He came in with no identification, so the staff at the hospital thought they were working on my brother. To make things more confusing the other person involved in the accident was supposed to be a 62-year-old man and supposedly air-lifted to a hospital in another town. That's the info I got and that's the info Hendirck had, although I'm sure what the staff was thinking was, "here is a guy involved in a roll over, flown in, lets work on him no matter what his name is."
So, I am on the phone with my mom telling her, "this is not my brother." She then asked me if I was sure, and told me to check for tattoos. My brother has two sons and he has one of their names on one arm and the other on the other arm. The staff checked for me and there were no names. At that point my brothers wife who was also on her way to Abilene in a separate car, was on the phone with a nurse and I got on the phone with her and told her the same news and she replied like my mom did, "then where is he and how is he doing?" Somewhere in the middle of all that we found out that it was my brother who was flown to another town and the person here at Hendrick was the other person in the truck (about the same age as my brother). The information about the 62-year-old being involved in the accident was wrong and when a younger man wound up at Hendrick, every body assumed it was my brother, and that the older man was at another hospital. It turns out there was not a 62-year-old man in the truck, instead it was my brother and the guy who was now lying in front of me being worked on.
My brother suffered a broken leg and ribs but is okay and was able to call my mom and tell her to go back home.
We later found out the truck he was in rolled about 5 to 6 times and the driver was ejected and my brother, who had his seat belt on, had to break a window to get out of the truck. He then had to crawl up a ditch they had rolled into and yelled for help. The man who stopped to help said he just happened to have his window down and heard my brother yell for help, because he did not see him.
I spent the weekend thinking about the man at Hendrick and how helpful they told me it would be for my brother if he knew I was there with him. Because of the mix-up it took that much longer for his family to get to him. I also wondered if his family thought he was not as injured as he was. I was told the person in the accident, who was the most injured, was brought here to Hendrick. Did his family think he was in another town? We are still trying to find out where the mix up came from but I do know that the people at Hendrick were as helpful as could be and when I thought my brother was in that emergency room, after talking to the doctor and the nurse, I felt assured he was in capable hands. My brother is okay now we pray that the man who is at Hendrick is doing well and his family is okay too. I know they are there with him today.