Lance Carter describes the aftermath of a drug-impaired motorist knocking him over and killing his partner and a good mate while they changed a tyre.
"Shit happens and you've just got to get on with it."
Lance Carter is sitting on a stool in his Ohauiti kitchen, and he's describing the aftermath of a drug-impaired motorist knocking him over and killing his partner and a good mate while they changed a tyre.
"They say I'll be on dialysis in a couple of years," Carter says. "All my organs got crushed and I've got to have a shower three times a day because of all the stuff coming out of my body.
"And I've got a hernia the size of a dinner plate, but hopefully that'll be sorted out soon."
Carter's caregiver has retired to a couch in the lounge and is listening to radio station Coast.
Car crash survivor Lance Carter tells of his struggles. Bay of Plenty Times Photograph by George Novak
She has a good view from where she's sitting. The house that Carter built on the side of a hill four years ago looks out over Tauranga. On a fine day you can probably see Mauao, but the rain and mist have blocked it out.
"And my right arm could only move like this," Carter says, tapping his fingers on the kitchen bench. "And I had a traumatic brain injury."
The 67-year-old heaves himself up and limps towards the pantry to find some documents related to the court case.
It was early afternoon on Friday, July 29 last year, when Carter received a phone call from his partner, Leigh Rhodes, saying her SUV had a punctured tyre on State Highway 29A near Baypark.
Carter had been away from his truck-driving job for six weeks to have a bowel cancer operation. He was worried about popping his stitches, so he asked his neighbour Kenny McCrae to give him a hand.
Leigh Rhodes
They'd been good mates for 20 years, having both worked in the car industry - Carter had once owned a yard in town.
"We came around and saw Leigh on the side of the road with her hazard lights on," Carter says. "We came and parked in front of her."
Also approaching the scene was Nicole Marie Reynolds, 40, driving a car that was seen to be weaving. A test would later find the class B drug methadone and the class C drugs lorazepam and clonazepam in her blood.
"I came to the drivers' door and said to Leigh, 'Just be careful when you get out'. Next thing I woke up in hospital."
Lance Carter in his home. Photo / Supplied
A police reconstruction filled in some of the blanks. Rhodes had left the vehicle and had been waving a white spare-wheel cover in the air to alert approaching motorists while Carter and McCrae changed the tyre.
Reynolds had first struck Rhodes, knocking her 30m down the road, and then hit the two men.
McCrae was killed instantly and Rhodes died in Tauranga Hospital a short time later.
Kenny McCrae
Carter woke up in a bad state, and the news made it worse.
"Leigh hadn't made it, so they brought her to me," he says. "That was hard.
"Then I had to sign a bit of paper for them to fix my ankle. I must have put an 'x' on it like the Treaty of Waitangi. I wouldn't have known what I signed."
Carter had been with Rhodes for eight years, but had known her much longer through a mate of his. Both had come out of earlier marriages.
Carter was in hospital eight weeks, initially with life-threatening internal bleeding. His ankle was "in a big case thing for a week" after having a pin inserted.
"You can't do a thing," Carter says. "You have to rely on people to help you - the amazing nurses in hospital who laugh with you, and cry with you, and wipe your bum."
After the crash
Carter also describes his homecoming in the third person.
"It's a totally different ballgame coming home," he says. "It goes from a physical game to a head game.
More than eight months after the crash, he still needs a caregiver to help with cooking, cleaning and transport.
His three daily showers require the removal of a compression sock from his ankle that he is unable to manage by himself.
His caregiver comes over for eight hours a day, but there is some uncertainty over how long this will continue.
Carter's body has healed to the point that he can walk, slowly, but only on flat surfaces. His steep driveway is too much.
"I can usually waddle around on sticks, but if I'm out and the ground is uneven then I just fall over," he says. "I am getting better - when I came out of hospital I was in a wheelchair."
Nicole Reynolds
On February 2, Reynolds pleaded guilty to two charges of drug-impaired driving causing death and one of drug-impaired driving causing injury.
She claimed to be on the methadone programme and admitted to taking the anti-anxiety drugs lorazepam and clonazepam, which belonged to her mother, without a prescription.
These drugs, which were known to alter a person's driving skills, were found in Reynolds' system when a blood sample was analysed, the summary of facts said.
Reynolds was sentenced on March 27 to three years and six months in prison. Carter has agreed to receive a letter from her every month.
After the sentencing
Carter has a son in Welcome Bay and a daughter in Taupo, both aged in their early 40s, and "some real good mates who support me, help me, but they've got their own lives to live".
He's learned that "life is very fickle - here and gone like that".
Before the accident, Carter had been looking forward to returning to his truck-driving job with Taylor Bros, an employer he says has been supportive.
"Leigh and I had plans, but . . . I need to sit down and think about what I'm going to do."
He brightens up when he remembers that he does have a plan, for early next year.
"My mate from Melbourne and I are going to go to the States and do Route 66," he says. "We're going to get the biggest V8 we can find and just go.
"I've always wanted to do that."
We ask the caregiver to turn down the radio while we shoot a video. When we're finished, she turns it up again.
Coast is playing Feelin' Groovy, and it's unclear to what extent this is appropriate. But the rain has stopped falling outside, the mist is lifting from Mauao, and Carter is thinking about his plans for the future.
