Family interrupted

It only takes a second for your life to change forever. Lin Sampson dissects the anatomy of a car accident

Picture this heartbreaking scene. A funeral service is in progress inside the NG Kerk Parow Valley East for Talitha Eksteen, four years and ten months. Her parents, Ryno and Marlene Eksteen, lie on stretchers next to her small coffin which is covered with white Barberton daisies.

At 5.15pm on April 9 2003, life for the Eksteen family changed forever. A police docket opened at the time of the accident describes it as culpable homicide due to the negligent driving of a 57-year-old woman, who died two months after the accident from natural causes.

Ryno Eksteen was a draftsman for Power Engineers. His wife, Marlene, was a legal secretary. They had two daughters, Lorika, 14, and Talitha, a small, blonde, angelic-looking child.

In the front garden of the house in Parow, a child's swing is decorated with artificial flowers in memory of a little girl who once played here. Seven years later, the house trembles with a sense of aftershock.

That Wednesday, which sticks in their minds like a fly caught in glue, started off like any other day. "Lorika's school shoe broke and we decided to go quickly to the shops to buy her new ones," says Ryno. The family set out in their blue BMW. "I was always very careful about safety. Me, have an accident? Never."

Within a few hundred metres of their house (according to statistics, most accidents happen within a few kilometres of where you live), driving up Del La Rey Street, a Nissan Skyline going at what Ryno describes as a "helluva lick", and driving on the wrong side of the road, hit the Eksteen's car broadside on.

That day René Hudson was on duty as a paramedic for Netcare at Louis Leipoldt Hospital when she got the call. "I remember the accident because April 9 is my birthday. When we got there it looked bad. One paramedic even vomited.

"The slogan on arriving at an accident is Hazards (check oncoming traffic), Hullo (check patients' responses), Help. We each get assigned a patient. I worked with the mother, the only one who was conscious. She fought me all the way. She kept saying, 'Where are the children? I want to see them.'

"I could see the little girl was very badly hurt. Her head was all black and blue. I knew then that she wouldn't make it and when we got to the hospital I said to the nurse, 'You must come and talk to the mother'."

Marlene was conscious throughout. She says: "I knew there was something very bad with the children. I called out, 'Lorika, how are you?' No answer. There was also silence from Talitha. I could just see how she was lying; she looked like a broken doll. The next moment there were all these red, blue, orange lights coming towards me."

Their injuries were multiple and long-lasting.

Marlene lives in pain. "I haven't slept for five years". Both her legs are damaged, one very badly and is 5cm shorter than the other. Her knee is smashed and looks like a Meccano set. She walks with great difficulty.

Lorika died but was resuscitated and spent four days in a coma. She has some brain damage but managed to go back to school and write her matric. "She is," her father says, "a vuurvreter, a fighter." Her mother says: "She was an A-student. She didn't study, she would just look over a page and know it."

Although Lorika now holds down a job, she finds it difficult to concentrate. According to school reports, she had been university material and was destined to become a lawyer.

Ryno sustained the worst damage. He was in a coma for a week and has a titanium pipe and screws in one leg and two punctured lungs, which makes breathing difficult. Now the two screws have broken. "I am just going to leave them," he says. "I have had enough of doctors." His upper arm is scarred from glass. The accident has also left him with frontal lobe damage that manifests in post- traumatic epilepsy, bipolar mood disorder and profound personality changes. He also stutters.

Marlene puts a large Tupperware box on the table. "These are our medications for one day," she says. The names alone describe a life sentence: epilim, fluoxetine, propranolol, promethazine, clonazepam.

That fateful moment has had far-reaching consequences. It has left the family practically bankrupt. Ryno and Marlene have both had to give up their jobs. They did not have medical aid but the Road Accident Fund has paid most of the doctors' fees. The bill from Tygerberg Hospital was R100000.

"Because the accident wasn't our fault," says Marlene, "we are still waiting to be paid out by the fund. So far we have had only R750, with which we bought a table. We just wanted something to remember Talitha by."

They now live on Ryno's disability pension. "It is only the third of the month," he says, "and I have only R1700 in my bank account. Sometimes the clinic does not have the drugs we need and we have to buy them ourselves." This month they spent almost R2000. They also have to visit doctors all over the peninsula, often incurring hefty transport costs.

However, by far the worst consequences have been emotional. The atmosphere in the house even after seven years is one of suppressed emotion, of dissipated anger, floating angst. It brings to mind the words of the Bob Dylan song Everything is Broken. Broken bodies, broken bones/Broken voices on broken phones.

Just before I was due to interview them, they rang to say they felt too emotional to discuss the subject. Their health now absorbs their lives and at night Marlene spends hours counting out drugs for the following day. They all fear the future in different ways.

There is a chance that Marlene may have to have a leg amputated. "Because of the damage to my legs," she says, "sometimes my trousers don't fit. A man said to me in the mall today, 'Pull up your trousers.' It is hurtful."

Ryno's moods have begun to swing dangerously. "I think he will end up in Stikland (a local mental home)," says Lorika. "He barks at our heels like a small dog. It is just not pleasant having him around."

Ryno admits that he can be very aggressive and that he takes out his anger on his wife. "I can be very, very nasty. My bipolar condition makes me up one moment, down the next." He also feels that he has not yet come to terms with his daughter's death.

Lorika is the strongest, but she also loses her temper quickly and can be moody, "especially if I don't take my medication". Her luck is having an understanding husband, Ryno Bester.

And what of forgiveness? Marlene says: "When we were in the hospital, they laid us all out in row and the other driver said, 'I am very sorry'," a phrase that sounds sadly inadequate. Ryno says that at the time, if he could have had his way, he would have gone to the woman's house and not been responsible for his actions. "But what is the use? It wouldn't bring back our daughter."

They have had counselling but found it useless. "I said to the counsellor, 'Have you ever lost a child, had bad injuries, including brain damage? If not, just forget it.'"

Miraculously the family has stayed together, although it has been touch and go. Ryno frequently thinks of suicide and once went as far as buying a rope to hang himself with. A couple of years ago he said, "I have just had enough, I am going."

Marlene looks up at the wedding picture on the wall, at the svelte smiling couple. Now they are both overweight and walk with limps. "Where is the Ryno I married?" she asks. "He is absent. I watched him walking in a restaurant the other night and it is not the same man."

"We are," says Ryno, "both different people. We live in a different world. We used to love to go to Butterfly World and hike in the mountains. Now nothing is the same."

They are familiar with words they never even knew existed, like "frontal lobe damage" and "post-traumatic stress". "I just want people out there to know how an accident, even a small one, can completely change your life," he says.