Karen: Chapter One – The Attack

Ralph Brandt on May 9, 2008

Tags: accident, actress, amputation, Brandt, crash, EMT, Female, films, Hollywood, hospital, Movies, nature, nurse, shooting, surgeon, surgery, woman

Karen Harris is a young woman who narrowly escapes death on the freeway. She recovers and begins to rebuild her career when she comes face to face with a reality. Unless she takes decisive action her life will be cut short. When she takes it that action is misunderstood.

A table of chapters and links to them is provided at the end of the first chapter.

Karen Harris was a talented young woman who seven years before was a rising star. She had significant roles in several prime time TV programs between the time she was fifteen and twenty and was the young lead on the program “Southern High” which was Central Network’s answer to the National Network’s “School Days.”

She was the blond version of Denise Shore, but with a totally differnet personality. She was much easier to work with, and at twenty she looked fifteen. Southern High debuted two years after School Days hence the older show had already built a loyal audience when it started. ‘Southern High’ never caught a significant audience and was cancelled in it’s third season. Most of the industry considered Central Network’s decision to run it in the same time slot as “School Days” the reason for the failure rather than the writing and acting. This was proven when it’s syndication airings at a different time on cable networks the year after cancellation got better audience ratings than it’s original ones and only slightly below the ratings of new episodes of School Days. It was evident that most of its potential audience was watching the established School Days. Ten years later TIVO might have saved the show by allowing potential viewers to watch both. Surveys showed video taping did help the rating some but at the time it was not generally done by enough viewers. Southern High just couldn’t pull the loyal School Days viewers away.

Authors note: If you want to know more about School Days, check the stories, Denise and Jan in the list of novels at the end of this chapter.

When Southern High folded Karen signed on for one role after another for a year, sometimes appearing in a single episode, sometimes two or three. The big one just didn’t happen but she made enough money to live comfortably. Then she was considered for a lead in a new Police and Detective series that was being planned and she was signed. It was the big role of her dreams. She was cast as a rookie cop, the number two role in the series.

She finished one season on the show and was signed for the second at a substantial increase. The audiences liked her. Surveys showed she was the draw for many of the viewers. She was worth more money. She finished the second year and again got a significant bonus to continue.

On her way home one evening two cars passed in the two lanes to her left. As they passed she saw windshield of her car shatter and felt pain in her right arm and chest. She lost control of the car, it rolled over, then flipped on its side and slid down the highway for over a hundred yards on the passenger side. The car, an unpretentious Saturn L shed pieces of the body but the driver’s area remained intact. She was preotected from additional injuries.

Police and paramedics were called. Motorists helped control the bleeding from two wounds in Karen’s right chest and four in her right arm. Her seat belt protected her from being thrown around in or out of the car. Other than the bullet wounds she had only minor cuts and bruises from the accident. She was conscious and told the police about the gunfire before being taken from the scene in an ambulance. The police cordoned off the car and started an investigation.

They found six jacketed slugs in the car. They also found shell casings from an AK-47 on the road near were tire tracks indicated she began to lose control of her car. Either she was the target of a shooting or an innocent victim of an on the road gang shootout. Several other witnesses, one who’s car had also been hit by stray bullets believed two car loads of people were shooting at each other. He was able to provide descriptions of the cars, make, model, color and also the first three letters of the license number of the one and two letters of the other. Another witness was able to confirm the description of the one car and the last two digits of the one license. Three other witnesses were able to confirm portions of the information about the cars.

Karen was taken to surgery. Her chest was opened, the bullets removed and her lung was repaired. The life threatening surgery finished orthopedic, vascular and neurology teams started work on her arm. She was reaching to adjust the visor when the bullets struck. Two of them took paths that rivaled Ozwald’s magic bullet of Dealy Plaza. Her hand was nearly up to the visor, the palm of it facing the windshield when they struck. The first bullet entered the palm of her hand near the wrist. At the angle of her arm the bullet path nearly followed her arm toward the elbow, exited from the arm and re-entered her upper arm. The deformed and tumbling bullet tore into her biceps near the elbow and stopped near the shoulder. A second bullet entered the forearm about a third of the way between the elbow and wrist, traveled across the arm diagonally, exited it and entered the upper arm, broke the bone and lodged in the arm. A third bullet hit her elbow, shattering the joint and passed through. A fourth bullet went through the soft tissue of her upper arm without hitting any bone but it was tumbling and did significant vascular and nerve damage.

The surgeons cleaned the shattered bone out the elbow joint and replaced it with an artificial joint. They pinned the fracture of the upper arm and attempted a reconstruction of the nerves, veins and arteries in it. Another surgeon did as much as possible to reconstruct her hand and wrist while the other teams had her sedated, then splinted it with a plaster splint. Before she left the OR they bandaged her arm. Only her fingers protruded from the bandage. As they left the OR the orthopedic surgeon commented that she would need additional surgery on her hand. He had not wanted to keep her sedated longer to finish the work.

DMV records showed two possible matches for the one car and three for the other based on the information from the witnesses. Officers were dispatched to go to the addresses for each DMV record and see if the could locate the cars. Over the next day they located the cars involved and were able to locate the owners and drivers. Both cars had bullet holes, one had blood stains on the front seat and the other had blood on the back floor. The police found four gang members with bullet wounds. One was dead. Two others would die in the OR. Karen had been caught in the crossfire of a serious gang shootout.

Table of Chapters