Did she break her neck?

 I tried to find pictures of the almost 900 foot driveway we had while we living in Oregon.  Suffice it to say, it was a long winding driveway cut out of the middle of a "forest" of VERY tall trees

It was probably late spring/early summer of 1987.  We had just recently moved to our home that sat in the middle of 10.5 acres of trees - many of them over 100 feet tall!  Victor and I had gone shopping for a sit-down lawn mower for the acre of grass directly surrounding the home.  Eddie (almost 10yrs) was at home with Emily (5yrs) and Jennifer (3yrs).  I know that is a big job for a young boy.  But, honestly and for the most part, Eddie was a GREAT babysitter, very responsible and caring.

After an hour or so, we arrived home to find Emily laying on the couch in the family room "resting".  Half an hour passed and she remained in the same position, barely moving her head.  Umm, not normal....  Me to Emily, "Are you feeling ok?".  Ems responds quietly and still not moving much, "yeah".
Me to her again, "You don't seem ok.  What's wrong?"  She didn't want to volunteer any information. 

I called for Eddie.  "Eddie, why is Ems just laying here?  What happened?  Did she eat something that made her feel yucky?"  Eddie answers reluctantly,  "Uh she kinda fell off her bike". 

The story looking back:

It seems that Eddie was going to ride his bike down to the mail box which sat at the end of long driveway.   Emily wanted to go too.  First problem - she was borrowing a bike that was too big for her.  Second problem - driveway was not only winding with lots of trees on the side, but, it had a fairly fast slope down to the mailbox.

Emily's bike started going  faster than she could control.  She yelled ahead to Eddie that she couldn't stop.  He told her it would be easier to stop by going off the driveway.  Stop she did.  The bike went off driveway and she "flew" into a large tree trunk.  Eddie recalls,  "I was imagining all sorts of terrible stuff as I walked up to her laying on the ground.  She was crying and not wanting to move.  Did she break her neck?"

We took Emily to the Doctor and got x-rays.  She did break something.  But, not as serious as her neck.  she had broken her collar bone. 

Come to find out later, this would not be Emily's last mishap on a bike.  =D