My head smashed against the asphalt and I could feel nothing else.

It was like the moments after the wind has been knocked out of you and your lungs have to remember how to breathe again. It took a minute to think again, to figure out where I was and what had happened. I looked up, saw streetlights and felt my head against the back of my helmet, grinding against the pavement. My legs were still tangled in my bike, my feet pushed up against a car door. The driver, still in the driver’s seat with one leg on the ground and the other in the car, looked down at me.

Greg was calling to me. His bike, bent at unreal angles, made awful scraping noises against the road as he struggled to get up. With no time to react, he’d smashed into me just after I’d collided with the opening car door.

I could feel something warm creeping down the side of my face. It was blood.

Greg knelt over me. I burst into tears and he started yelling at the driver. “What were you thinking?” The man in the car didn’t reply.

The driver didn’t ask if I was okay. Instead he grabbed my bike and, with my legs still entangled in the frame, began to drag it away from his car and toward oncoming traffic.

I didn’t have the strength to kick, to fight back, to do anything but sob like a child. Greg charged toward him and screamed for him to stop, to move away from me. The man let go and walked around the corner, out of sight.

An ambulance came, and the EMTs put me in a collar and strapped me to a spinal board. As they were lifting me onto the stretcher, I heard the man who had hit me insisting to the police, “It was her fault. She was going too fast.”

I had sprained my lower spine, had a case of whiplash, some bumps and bruises and a killer gash above my eyebrow. My beloved bike, which had belonged to my mother in the 1980s, was totalled. The police officer who responded at the scene told me they were going to charge the driver with “improper opening of a vehicle door,” and that I should expect the driver to try to fight the ticket. The officer shook his head and promised that he would testify for me, that he wouldn’t let the driver “get away with this.”

I spent the next three months in physiotherapy. I couldn’t stand or sit for long periods of time. I couldn’t ride my bike, go for runs or play baseball with my team on Thursday nights. I couldn’t sleep through the night. I felt completely useless.

My physiotherapist set goals for me, things like sweeping the floor and picking up laundry baskets. In May I had run a half-marathon. In June I had trouble even dressing myself.

But more than sore, I was furious at the man who had doored me, who dragged my bloody and bruised body along the road, who claimed it was my fault.

For a while I tried to sympathize, forget the anger and move on. But I couldn’t forgive his cold reaction.

A police officer would later knock on my door and hand me a yellow piece of paper summoning me to court to testify against the driver.

I had never been to court before and didn’t know what to expect. I pictured a scene from a movie and envisioned the driver being convicted.

But I was now aware just how many variables were at play, and that a slip from me could mean he’d walk away.

I practised what I would say. I asked lawyer friends for advice. I hounded the cop who issued the ticket, trying to ensure he would indeed show up at the trial to testify. On my first court appearance, I wore blue because I read somewhere that people find it a trustworthy colour.

But things didn’t go as planned. The Crown prosecutor informed me that they didn’t have a formal statement from me on file, and the defence was going to stall for more time, claiming lack of disclosure.

Why didn’t they get my statement before wasting everyone’s time in court? I was frustrated but went home determined to write the most foolproof statement I could muster.

Months passed before I received another yellow trial notice. I showed up in blue again. Before the trial began, the Crown fumbled through some papers and asked about the nature of my injuries. “They weren’t all that serious, were they?”

I felt my face flush as I tried not to scream. Had she not read my statement? I was still recovering. She said she’d planned to offer a lesser charge, “but if you were seriously hurt, I won’t do that. Thank you, have a seat.”

The defence lawyer walked up to the prosecutor and began speaking with her. They were laughing about something when the judge entered. I wrung my hands, waiting for them to call my name.

The Crown stood up, read out the charges and said she had decided to offer a lesser charge of “improper use of a signal.” She explained that perhaps if the driver had properly signalled when he parked, I might have seen him, and the incident could have been avoided. The defence accepted the charge, the judge nodded, and it was done.

I wasn’t called to testify. The judge wasn’t told what happened. The Crown in fact implied it was my fault for not leaving the bike lane and merging with the car traffic to avoid the driver’s opening door.

I charged up to the prosecutor. “How could you do that? I will have back problems for the rest of my life!” She looked surprised.

She shuffled some papers. “Well, [improper opening of a vehicle door] is a bigger fine….”

I cut her off. “Obviously, money isn’t an issue if he could hire a lawyer!”

The remaining people in the room stared. “I’m sorry,” she said as she turned away to collect her papers.

I spent a long time imagining that day differently. I pictured myself standing up to shout at the judge, to tell him what really happened. I pictured myself refusing to leave the courtroom until the ruling was overturned. I fantasized about having been heard. And all the while, I kept asking myself why it mattered so much. Did I really want this man to get a bigger fine and two demerit points, or was it something else?

In the movies, the bad guy always gets caught in the end. In my movie, the bad man got away. I had lost, just because.

The idea that the system can and does fail so easily was what upset me more than anything. I feel foolish – a grown woman who is just now learning that the legal system isn’t foolproof, that logic and truth don’t always prevail.

I am now working to come to terms with the fact that others can alter my fate without my permission.

I sometimes imagine running into the driver again. I don’t have a clue what I would say. I am still mad. Let’s stop the movie here, before I’m disappointed by the ending once again.

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