A Curve Ball

(For context, read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

A day or so after my first court appearance, I received a call from my insurance company.

To make a very long story just a bit shorter, the pedestrian - who was deemed completely okay by the ER doctors at the hospital on the day of the accident - had hired an attorney (a well-known one in town....one of those slimey, ambulance-chaser types you see on TV commercials late at night). Through her attorney, the pedestrian was contending that she had a trumor on her brain - a traumatic brain injury that was preventing her from working and was requiring around-the-clock medical care. Also, according to this letter, during a follow-up visit to the doctor a few days after the accident, she had had a stroke and passed out in the waiting room - and had almost died.

What in the world?! This all went from a simple situation (again, in my head, she was okay since I'd been maybe going 3 mph before/during the collision and since she'd been released from the hospital the day of the accident with a clean bill of health) to a nightmare. I didn't know what to do or how to do it. I felt terrible for her - I kept saying that it all seemed kinda shady but that if I had, in fact, been to blame for her injuries and they just turned up late, I wanted to do everything possible to help her out. But, the whole situation just didn't feel right. I was scared, angry, stressed out, confused and resource-less. What was my next step and my course of action?

The insurance company kept saying they'd do everything possible to take care of the situation. That I had nothing to worry about. That based on the police report and my own recorded statement I'd given them (the insurance company) on the day of the accident, everything would be fine. They'd hire a lawyer. They'd deal with everything. (That was encouraging on the one hand - since I truly didn't know how to proceed...but yet, not so encouraging - what if I was really to blame for her injuries? I wanted to help the woman and not get out of the consequences of my actions on a technicality or because I had a good (slimey) insurance company.)

This all just went from bad to worse.