On an August morning two years ago, Meredith Melville was crossing Piedmont Avenue in Oakland, California, to meet a friend at a cafe. While in the crosswalk, she noticed a car some distance away.
Perhaps she misjudged its speed, she said, because she’d walked only partway across the street when the car, a Toyota sedan, came bearing down on her.
“She should have seen me,” Melville said of the driver. “All of a sudden she was there, and I didn’t have any way to get out of her way. I flew I don’t know how many feet.”
Passersby came to help; the police and an ambulance arrived. Soon Melville, a retired teacher, was at a hospital being treated for multiple fractures. Surgeons replaced her right hip and repaired her broken right elbow. She would probably need a knee replacement soon, too, doctors advised.
After a week’s hospitalization and a month in rehabilitation, Melville, then 73, went home in a wheelchair. Physical therapists helped her gradually progress to a walker and then a cane, but “it was a long process,” she said.
