Futuristic, Linguistic: Factual Storytelling Assessment

A Conversation with My Sister

‘The last thing I remember is being so intensely overwhelmed with fear that I completely froze in the middle of the road. I honestly could not have moved out of the way, even if I had more time. It was all over before I even knew it happened. The pain was agonizing… I just… All I could do was scream.’

Even as she recalls these horrific memories, my sister remains poised, her face full of confidence and calm. The accident may have shattered some of her bones beyond repair, but it did not shatter her spirit.

It started off as a normal summer day, back in Cairns, August, 2001. I remember being at my primary school, playing on the sports field with my friends, when my name was blasted over the loudspeaker. ‘LAUREN VARLEY… PLEASE REPORT TO THE OFFICE IMMEDIATELY.’ I was scared, initially because I thought I was in trouble. But it wasn’t long before I realised; something was actually terribly wrong. My mother was waiting anxiously for me at the office, and promptly whisked me away the second I arrived.

Mum was crying. She never cried.

I asked her where we were going, what was happening. She told me Taryn, my sister, had been in a hit and run accident - a bad one. We were going to the hospital to see her.

‘He wasn’t trying to hit me, he was trying to hit my friend – there was bad blood between them.’

Seeing my sister in the hospital, in such a state, was not at all easy. She lay expressionless in the sterile, cage like bed, a metal rod piercing directly through the middle of her thigh (to keep her pelvis from shattering even more), as she waited to go into emergency theatre. She was to get a plate and six titanium pins inserted into her, as a replacement for her now half-destroyed pelvis. She would be in a wheelchair for around six months, and then would have to learn to walk again with her new bionic hip. Her injuries would change her lifestyle forever from this point on - she was told she would most likely not ever be able to have children.

‘After I learned to walk again, I started to get my life back on track. The accident was a lot to deal with such a young age, you know, I was only 15. But I survived. And I thought, if I can survive this, I can survive anything.’

She smiles lovingly at her youngest son. 11 years and three children later, she has defied the odds and proved the doctors wrong.

‘It all still affects me to this day of course. Even physically – I can’t stand up for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time, and being a chef, this really limits me in terms of work.’

‘I even set metal detectors off sometimes because of my hip… airport security always thinks I am a terrorist!’

My sister’s ability to joke and smile despite the ghastly ordeal she experienced will never cease to amaze me.

The fact that the man who caused all of this pain and damage to my sister was never sentenced to anything more than community service, will never cease to anger me.

Paul Jolly was found not guilty of causing grievous bodily harm, because he claimed to have forgotten to take his medication the morning of the incident – even though he didn’t have a clinically diagnosed psychological condition.

‘There’s no excuse for trying to run down anyone with a car at full speed… but try telling the courts that.’

I will never understand the judges reasoning behind the verdict. I know my sister will never feel like the law served her justice for the wrong she suffered. However, I feel that this has only added to her strength of spirit – it does not matter to her that Mr Jolly walked away free. Because my sister walked away free too, eventually. She healed, learned to walk again, and walked free, all on her own. Free of the burden of bad company, free of the destructive life she led up until that moment.

‘It was a blessing in disguise, you know. If it hadn’t of happened, I never would have stopped hanging out with those people. Never would have stopped the drugs, or gone back to school. It’s ironic to think an accident that could easily have killed me, actually ended up giving me a second chance at life.’

She served her own justice.