what the what?

this last thursday was a particularly harrowing day for more than just myself. i was nannying, as i usually do in the mornings, and i was on my way to meet angie ann (the mom) with her three youngest kids, andrew, francesca and mimi. we were in the minivan, calmly tooling our way along when the peacefulness of the drizzly trafficy day was thoughtlessly interrupted by a bone-shaking crunch of metal on metal. after the jolting and slamming around ceased and we're just sitting there staring in front of ourselves, watching smoke pour out from under the hood, i hear francesca say in a panicy sort of voice, 'what happened?! my neck is broken!!' i look around to find them all still safely buckled into their seats with no signs of broken necks (or any other injuries), and attempt to convince her she's fine (it didn't work... she continued to assert, 'my neck is broken!!' a few more times)
instead of trying to walk you through the steps that led up to this fateful encounter, i drew a quick little sketch here for your comprehending ease:

the part that says 'me' is us in the minivan, going across 4 lanes of traffic plus a turning lane in the middle. there were those two lanes of backed up traffic that had stopped and made a way for me to cut through them, kindly enough, and no cars were coming from the other way, so i start to go across. sadly, there was a car zipping down the turning lane that happened to cross my path at just an untimely moment. he told the police that he was turning left there were i was going (not down at the stop light, which is where i'm pretty sure he was turning) which would give him the right to be in that turn lane right there... however, the question this assertion raises in my little brain is, why would he have been going 30 miles an hour down the turning lane if he was turning right there? wouldn't he have been just about stopped by the time his car reached mine?
i should think so.
suffice it to say, no one was issued tickets, but the van was totalled and i made a visit to angie ann's husband's office for a cat scan. it's in times like these that it's very handy to have a radiologist hook up. i had a giant goose egg from bashing my head against the inside of the door and i was really light headed and loopy for the rest of the day. the cat scan looked alright though, so i just went home and did a lot of sleeping. i'm glad to report that the goose egg is receding, slowly but surely.
poor andrew may take a little longer to recover from the trauma. he's almost 3 years old, and he's taken to screaming and going rigid every time he has to get inside a vehicle of any sort. they just left for vacation and angie ann said he was terrified the whole plane ride. hopefully his trauma will also recede, slowly but surely.