‘I didn’t pick up the phone’: Wife of SA head chef shares shameful moment after crash
This head chef was on the way to work when his worst nightmare unfolded – but his “blissfully unaware” wife mistakenly ignored the calls. Find out why.
The wife of SA head chef Chase Reid said she will struggle to forgive herself after she unintentionally ignored calls from the hospital after her husband was involved in a collision that left him seriously injured.
“I (feel) guilt and shame of knowing my husband was going through the worst thing of his life and I was blissfully unaware because I didn’t pick up the calls,” Vienna Possemato told The Advertiser.
“That’s probably going to take a little while to let go of I think.”
Mr Reid, 39, was driving from his Hampstead Gardens home, which he shares with his wife of seven years, to work at Feathers Pavilion Cafe at Burnside when his motorbike collided with a car on the corner of OG Rd and Payneham Rd.
It was Mother’s Day and Ms Possemato was at home getting ready for church when she started receiving calls from an unknown number.
“They didn’t leave a message so I thought it must have been a scam caller,” the 37-year-old assistant director of a childcare centre said.
Ms Possemato said she continued to receive an influx of calls, this time from private numbers.
She decided to ring her husband but it went to voicemail.
“I thought it was a busy day at work for him,” she said.
Eventually, after a trauma nurse at the Royal Adelaide Hospital left a message, she rung back.
“I went into full breakout mode … almost hyperventilating,” she said.
Ms Possemato is struggling with the fact she did not pick up the phone.
Her husband’s crash happened at 7.15am and she answered the phone at around 10am.
She said she will always pick up private calls from now on.
When she arrived at the hospital the staff told her the extent of her husband’s injuries.
Mr Reid suffered a broken nose, a split upper lip, two broken wrists, a rib fracture, an open book pelvic break, a slight spinal fracture and lacerations to both his shins.
“It’s nothing short of a miracle that he has no brain injury,” she said.
He immediately went in for surgery to fix his broken nose, internal bleeding and pelvis.
Following the crash, Mr Reid told his wife he remembers waking up still on the ground at the crash site.
“He remembers seeing blood, there was just blood as far as he could see coming from his helmet,” she said.
“He wasn’t really scared, he was more worried about me finding out, that’s so typical Chase, thinking about everybody else but himself.”
He said he felt God’s presence in that moment and held onto his faith.
Mr Reid is currently still at the RAH and will be for the foreseeable future while he goes through rehabilitation.
On Thursday he stood up and walked a few steps for the first time since the crash.
“It took all of me not to burst into tears,” Ms Possemato said.
The couple is very grateful to the staff at the RAH and focusing on Mr Reid getting better and being able to return to work.
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