Wife Met With An Accident, Going Through Severe Ptsd

Please bear with me for the long read. Location: California USA

My wife met with an accident on Friday Dec 5th evening. A car jumped red light and hit my wife’s car while she was turning left on a green light. My wife saw the car coming and hitting but couldn’t avoid as it happened within a second. Fortunately no major injuries to my wife or the other car driver.

My wife’s car is fairly brand new, 2025 mini van with pretty good safety features. Three airbags were deployed and helped reduce the impact of the crash. Car also made automatic 911 call which was very helpful.

Paramedics were on the scene, they helped my wife get out of the car since the door was jammed, they ran routine checks before clearing her. She was sitting on the curbside by the time I reached. Cops also reached around the same time as me, they had our car towed to a towing company’s yard. They asked me to give a consent to the towing company and I obliged. Cops spoke to my wife and the driver of the other car and registered a case.

The driver of the car was an old lady, she got down from the car after the accident, spoke to someone on phone, later complained of chest pain and was taken to hospital in an ambulance.

Paramedics suggested I take my wife also for scans after monitoring her for couple of hours which I did, and fortunately scans were clean. My wife was under a lot of pain because of the impact from the crash so Doctors have a given her a strong pain killer prescription (Narcotics) for a week.

I stayed focused on helping my wife and didn’t bother much about being legally smart. My kids are young and they were pretty scared. Only thing I did outside of taking care of them was to get a recording from the dash cam before the car was towed.

I have opened a claim with my insurance (Geico) online and submitted the details of the incident along with the dash cam video. I haven’t been able to talk to them since they were closed for the weekend.

Couple of friends dropped by today and asked me to hire a lawyer which honestly I was not planning to. I was just planning to talk to my insurance to see what they suggest for next steps.

However, I am wondering if I should hire a lawyer because of what is happening to my wife when she goes to sleep. She is screaming, crying and feeling shocks in the sleep. I was able to calm her down last night (Saturday night) but it got worse tonight. I was not able to console her, she kept crying and repeating the words she told me when she called me immediately after the crash. I felt helpless and scared. I shook her gently until I could wake her up, made her drink water, talked some random stuff, told her that she is at home and she is safe, and then let her go back to sleep. I also called up advisory nurse to get the first appointment tomorrow with a doctor for possible PTSD.

We are financially in a good place and are not looking to sue someone for our financial benefit. I understand that we will get a depreciated value for the car and end up loosing $12K-15K.

I am not really worried about that loss of money but what I am worried about is finding something late related to my wife’s health. She saw the car crashing into her and those images seem to be causing flashbacks when she sleeps. I don’t know if she will be able to get over this soon or if it may result in some long term impact.

I am guessing the insurance will try to reach out tomorrow. I am also guessing that the other drivers’s insurance may try to close the claim soon to limit their liability.

I am in double mind if I should I hire a lawyer or not to deal with the insurance. My only worry is that if I let them close the claim/case and then later we find out something troubling about my wife’s health. Would a lawyer be able to suggest me better or are they simply going to look to extract money from the insurance? What is my best course of action?

Thank you for reading through.