Mr. Martinez-Olivera,
You may not remember my name. You may attempt to suppress the memory of who I even am or what I look like. My name is Alyssa Copeland. On June 5th, 2017, you ran two red lights on Alexander Street in Plant City, plowing into the driver’s side of my two door Volvo. I was 38 (almost 39) weeks pregnant and on my way home from a shift at the hospital to finish the last piece of my daughter’s nursery, her dresser. It was 3:15 in the afternoon and I can sometimes taste the metal and heat of the moment even though I have no memory of it. It’s been nearly 4 years since that day, and it has affected my life in so many ways. I don’t know how much you understand or know about what your mistake has done to me, but I am going to tell you in this letter. After an hour spent in the June heat stuck in the steel frame of my mangled car, fire fighters and rescue crew decided they needed to rip my legs out from the wreckage in order to save my life. The Aeromed crew was moments away from leaving without me, due to a storm rolling in, and my blood pressure was dramatically dropping with each passing minute. Luckily, the decision was made for the best, because my legs were still there, and I was able to be flown to Tampa General Hospital where a trauma team was waiting for me. I bet you never knew that the police officer at the scene thought that if my husband was home, he could come to my car to say goodbye to me, so he called him. I was only a mile away from home that day. 1 mile. My husband was at work and had to drive to the hospital while watching my helicopter race through the sky above him. When I arrived at the hospital it was determined that my baby had died. I was taken into emergency surgery to deliver her. She was delivered sleeping at 5:15 pm that day. She was 6 lbs1 ounce and 19 inches long. She had long legs and fingers, beautiful ivory skin and lots of dark brown hair. Once she was delivered, I started bleeding out internally in the labor and delivery room. While my family was holding my dead baby in a quiet room, I was dying on the operating table. I began to bleed so much that my blood could no longer clot, causing a condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation. A fatal diagnosis. Nurses and doctors were running to the blood bank to transfuse me and keep me alive while attempting to stop the bleeding. I received 53 units of blood products. My kidneys hemorrhaged, I had a severe laceration on my liver, and my spleen was destroyed. I became hypothermic and began going into respiratory failure. After repairing my liver and removing my spleen, the bleeding continued. Over 4 hours this went on. Doctors told my family to be prepared for my death. The main trauma doctor finally decided to remove my uterus. At 27 years old, with no other children, they were going to remove my uterus. It worked and I became stable. I was left intubated and kept in a coma in the cardiovascular ICU with my abdomen left open and packed with sterile gauze. Doctors told my family that I probably wouldn’t make it through the night. But I did. The next day, to the surprise of the doctors, I was still alive. I was brought back to surgery to clean out and close my abdomen. For 3 consecutive days I returned to the OR for multiple surgeries. I had a crushed left hip, broken right hip, degloved right knee and multiple other broken bones. My hips were pinned, nailed and plated. On the fourth day I was extubated. In my coma I kept wondering why I was asleep because I HAD to finish my nursery. Wake up! I continued to yell at myself. As time passed, I started wondering if I was dead. The darkness was so isolating, I call it the “nothing”. When I woke up, I asked if my baby was dead. It was confirmed. I screamed “FUCK” over and over and over again. I know the entire hospital must’ve heard my cries. I was then told that I lost my uterus. My ability to ever become pregnant again was destroyed. In the weeks following, I remained in the hospital, unable to move my lower body, in pain and distress and wondering what the fuck happened to my life and why. I held my baby a week later. She was covered in makeup, swollen and cold. I begged her to wake up, hoping that my tears could somehow bring her back to life. They didn’t.
I was released from the hospital in July, stuck in a wheelchair for 3 months. No pharmacy could fill my pain medications for a few days due to the amount. My first night home was hell. The very next morning I woke up, in pain, and arrived at the courthouse to face you. You would not look at me. But I sure did look at you. I stared at your emotionless face and wondered if you had a family. I wondered if you knew how you had destroyed mine. In less than 2 weeks I had to plan my daughter's funeral. I had to adjust to living in a wheelchair and pick out a fucking baby casket. It was white, lined with pink roses. And I picked a funeral card that stated, “An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth, then whispered as she closed the book “Too beautiful for Earth...”. Swollen, broken, high on medications I mindlessly applied makeup on July 14th, 2017. I straightened my hair and painfully dressed myself. I rode to the cemetery with a speech in my trembling hands. 100 plus people gathered that day and my husband wheeled me to the front of our daughter's casket, and I spoke. I wouldn’t let you take that from me. I am so fucking glad I didn’t let you. I spoke for her. Because she deserved it. You deserve to never have your name heard again.
Months passed and I relearned how to walk. I also learned how to cope. I took pain medications and drank excessively. I smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day. I never left my back porch. I went back to work, only to get home and drink through as much beer as I could to numb the shattered shards of my heart. I went through countless fertility treatments and multiple surrogacies. 5 to be exact. My first surrogate baby miscarried at 17 weeks, another baby girl. The other 4 failed immediately. I flew to Cleveland and was accepted into a uterine transplant program that I turned down because I couldn't afford what it took to commit. This entire time I continued to drink, more and more. I was fighting to come back but I was losing myself in a cycle of self-destruction. I continued to attend court dates. For a year. The last court date I attended your charges were dropped. Somehow you got out of supplying multiple false drivers licenses, not being a CDL license holder, being in this country illegally, speeding and running two red lights and killing my daughter while almost killing me. Must’ve been nice to have the money of a farm whose reputation was on the line on your side. I remember that court date like it was yesterday. It was the first time you looked at me. When the charges were dropped you looked straight into my eyes and smirked. Had I been a little less sane, you would have died that day and I would be sitting in a prison right now. You disgust me with the smug contempt you showed to me. Instead of killing you I continued to destroy myself. Driving home every day to see your tire marks still embedded into the median at Alexander. Walking into a home that felt cold, joyless, empty. In a way, I let you win. I continued my professional drinking career and destroyed personal relationships in order to isolate myself. Because I had come to absolutely hate myself, blame myself, for what my life had become. My daughter was my purpose. Without her I was an empty shell of human going through the motions and despising every second. I went through mediations against your employer. I left with next to nothing compared to what I had lost. So, I drank more. To the outside world I was a strong inspiration; on the inside I was a raging alcoholic with multiple plans of suicide neatly tucked into the shelves of my brain. I saved bottles of medication, waiting for the right time to consume them all with a 12 pack of Michelob Ultra or a liter bottle of Barefoot Moscato. I began to drink so much that I had a hidden stash to replace what I took from the fridge so that my husband would not notice. I would drink and lay on the floor of my daughter’s nursery sobbing with heartache, one time puking all over the carpet and then feverishly attempting to clean it up, so I didn’t ruin the perfection it was, and to this day, still is. For almost 4 years I did this. I lost every bit of myself because I let your actions win. I remember sitting outside one day, with a case of beer, watching your coworkers’ interview tapes on my laptop. All of them lying and blaming the accident on me. All those people, most of them with families of their own, lying for you knowing what had happened to my daughter. Does that make you feel good?
Mother’s Day is this weekend and 6 months ago I broke through the grasp you had on me and got sober. This is my 4th Mother's Day, 3rd without my daughter, and 1st ever being sober. I have cried so much that my face is swollen. I have curled up into a ball in my bed and screamed her name. Today I am at the river with sober friends and their families. As I watch the water glistening in the sun, disturbed by running children, I wonder what my almost 4-year-old daughter would look like or how much she would enjoy this beautiful Saturday with family and friends. I lift my face to the sun, close my eyes and feel her warmth over me. I know that she is there with me in spirit always.
I sometimes wish that I could be there when karma catches up to you, Tomas. She will. I know that to be true. I hope when she does you think of me. I hope you remember what you took from my life and the lives of so many others affected by your misjudgment. I hope that my face appears vividly in your mind when that misfortune comes. And I hope it appears with the same smirk you so graciously provided me that day you decided to be brave enough to even look my direction.
Maybe one day I will hope for peace for you. Maybe one day I will be able to fully forgive you. It’s a work in progress and something I pray for (for myself, not for you) every day. Until that day, I will remember to pull back my hatred bit by bit each time I kneel to pray.
One more thing: Her name is Lena Noelle Copeland. Never fucking forget that. She is more than you would ever imagine to be.
Sincerely,
The bad ass survivor you couldn’t destroy.