Speaking of my Actor Brother...

He was in a hit-and-run accident yesterday. He's okay, but he broke his left arm, which is a little ironic since he's sort of an action star and generally comes out unscathed from such events onscreen. Aside from that, though, the whole thing played out pretty much like a movie (or several movies), as you're about to read.

Act One: Richard (my brother, duh!) is tooling along the road on his trusty motorcycle, en route to a meeting with his friend and colleague, Ronnie Ricketts. There are two cars racing with each other to one side of him, but he doesn't take much notice since it's a wide road and there's not much traffic. However, a roadblock suddenly looms out of nowhere up ahead; the cars swerve to avoid it, which sends them careening into Richard's front fender, which sends Richard flying through the air.

Act Two: The cars quickly flee, and the onlookers do nothing but look on, which I suppose is what onlookers do. Fortunately, a Pizza Hut delivery dude pulls over and helps Richard get his bike and his woozy self off the road. (And to think I used to revile Pizza Hut! Turns out they have lousy crust, but great delivery riders.) Pizza Hut Dude helps Richard unearth his cell phone and call Ronnie Ricketts. (I suspect my brother was in shock at this time, because although he had over a quarter-foot of shattered bone in his arm, his main concern was that he was going to be late for his meeting.)

Act Three: In time-honored heroic fashion, Ronnie Ricketts arrives with a car to whisk Richard off to the hospital, as well as a motorcycle-riding pal to take care of the bike. At the hospital, Richard is swarmed by medical and non-medical personnel--in particular, he is somewhat alarmed to see an orderly toting about five sealed packs of blood. "Is that for me?" Richard asks, wondering how he could have lost so much blood without even noticing. "Oh, no, this is for the O.R., not the E.R.," says the orderly. "I just wanted to get a look at you." Already disconcerted by the unprofessional behavior, Richard and Ronnie decide to transfer hospitals when a doctor friend advises them that the one they're in is not to be trusted for surgery.

Act Four: Richard's wife Snooky arrives at the new hospital, just in time to join him in the emergency room as they insert four inches of titanium into his arm to replace the shattered bone mass. Richard remains conscious throughout the operation and wants to know if they can give him pop-out claws like Wolverine, but the doctors sadly refuse. Instead, everyone from the surgeon to the orderlies keeps asking if he managed to get the cars' license plate numbers, when in fact he was busy spinning through the air at the time. Because he's an action star, they seem to think that, Neo-like, he should have been able to activate bullet-time, whip out a notebook, and jot down the plate numbers as he was involuntarily defying gravity.

Denouement: Richard is transferred to a private room for observation, and hooked up to a menacing-looking contraption known as a 'Vulcan frame'. He has now hopped film franchises from X-Men to The Matrix to Star Trek in under 12 hours' time. In the same half-day time period, his room is invaded by a reporter from Channel 7, despite the fact that his mother-in-law told me that I should memorize his room number, since the hospital had been instructed not to give it out to anyone. Snooky dispatches the reporter with her customary professional grace; and Richard doesn't really care because he's decided he's now a cyborg, and is angling to replace Jim Carrey in the upcoming revival of the Six Million Dollar Man.

Ya gotta wonder if his life is cinematic because he's an actor, or he's an actor because his life is cinematic.