Although neither Harvey nor Cassidy Langi clearly remembers the moment right after getting rear-ended by a driver going 55 mph while they were stopped at a red light coming home from dinner, there are flashes that will remain forever.
Harvey remembers being pinned to the steering wheel, unable to revive Cassidy. He remembers first responders ripping off the top of his Mazda3 to save his life. He remembers being taken to a different hospital than Cassidy, not knowing whether this most charitable and decent woman who he had married a year earlier was dead or alive.
"I tried to touch her and talk to her," Harvey says.
What happened? Was it his fault? Had he fallen asleep behind the wheel?
He didn't know that the driver had an open container of alcohol and prescription drugs in the car. He didn't realize that his car acted as a shield that likely saved the life of a man sitting in the backseat of the car in front of him at the red light during the chain-reaction crash.
He didn't know anything for hours. When he finally got word that Cassidy had suffered severe _ but not life-threatening _ injuries, he exhaled. It would be three more days before the couple reunited with an emotional hospital room embrace.
Cassidy, a former college volleyball player, would need six months to recover from six broken pelvic bones, eight broken ribs, 15 staples to heal wounds on her head and internal lacerations. Harvey suffered a broken lower back, broken teeth and torn ligaments in both knees that shelved him for the rest of his rookie season with the Patriots.
"We were able to reset everything in our lives and not take things for granted," Cassidy says.
