The impact threw Frey from the scooter first, and Pereira flew over the top of her teammate. After she landed relatively unscathed, Pereira realized Frey was lying facedown.
She picked up Frey and, noticing that she was bleeding profusely, compressed her head to slow the bleeding. A bystander collected a towel from the wrecked scooter, gave it to Pereira and called 911.
Frey doesn’t remember, but Pereira said she was conscious and “freaking out about the whole thing.” Pereira pressed a towel to Frey’s head until an ambulance arrived.
Shelton raced to the emergency room where she found Frey lying flat on a hospital bed, a neck brace holding up her face and head.
“She was like, ‘Well, my toes can wiggle, and my fingers can wiggle,’” Shelton said of Frey. “It was scary for me. I know it was really scary for those girls.”
CT scans on Frey’s head came back negative, revealing no skull fracture or structural damage. Her left eye is swollen shut by a deep gash above her eyebrow. Cuts and abrasions cover the left side of her face and neck. A thick bandage covers a cut on her lower leg.
“I’m really glad I went straight to the emergency room because she looked a mess and she felt a mess,” Shelton said. “By the end, I had her laughing a little bit. I think it was comforting for me to be there because nobody was there when I got there.”
After the chaos of the emergency room subsided, Frey and Pereira, both from neighboring small towns in Eastern Pennsylvania, called their parents to tell them what had happened. Two hours had passed since the accident.
“With our parents being so far away in Pennsylvania, we didn’t want to worry them too much,” Pereira said. “We tried waiting until everything was okay to call them.”
Pereira emerged with a cut on her left hand and residual headaches from the collision. She and Frey wore sunglasses during UNC’s win Sunday against California, their eyes still sensitive to light.
Pereira said it’s hard for her to get back into a car. She sits in the backseat to put her at ease.
“I’m just trying to sleep everything off,” she said.
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Frey and Pereira watched UNC’s back-to-back games on Saturday and Sunday — a 2-1 loss overtime loss to Maryland and a 4-0 win against California — from the team’s bench, a temporary return to something normal, something familiar.
“It was nice to watch, but it was kind of leaving me on edge,” Frey said, cracking a smile. “I wanted to get out there, but the team did well.”
They joined the Tar Heels for a team breakfast Saturday morning, the first time they had returned to the group since the accident.
Associate coach Grant Fulton welcomed them back in his South African accent.
“It’s good to have you guys here,” he said.
Teammates noticed, though, that their minds seem elsewhere.
“They’re still in this world that you can’t really reach them,” said Nina Notman, a sophomore midfielder. “We just try our best. We try to be there for them and pick them up.”
Shelton said she hoped Frey could return for UNC’s next game, Oct. 12 against Wake Forest, if she feels up to it.
Frey and Pereira are feeling better, however incrementally, but the events of Friday afternoon continue to weigh on them.
“Definitely emotionally draining,” Frey said. “I’m not sure how long that’s going to take to go away, but it’s slowly going away.”
sports@dailytarheel.com
