Flight of the Intruder

This morning I was driving to work, down a back road, past some grape vineyards when something hit me in the side of the head. It was warm so I had my window open about a hand width and a bird managed to hit that exact spot. She hit the frame of the window, bounced off of the side of my head and I heard her hit into some stuff in the back of my van. I thought about pulling over but surely the bird had to be dead, I was doing over 50 mph added to the speed the bird was flying had to kill her, so I continued onto work. When I got to work I opened the side door of my van and found feathers all over the floor. I looked around and could see her lying on a duffle bag near the back, so I opened the back door, but when I went to grab her she moved her head. I was amazed that she was still alive. I could see that her leg was broken but other than that didn't look to bad. When I would get close she would stand up on her one good leg. I went around to the front of the van hoping she would fly out, but she just laid back down seeming pretty content to stay where she was. I called over two co-workers who were just showing up for work and asked them what they thought I should do about this bird after all I couldn't leave this bird in the back of my van. So "E" reached in and gave the bird a little push and it flew out of the van about ten feet and landed in the middle of the parking lot. We got the idea of picking it up and moving it off into the grass but when I got near it, it kept circling around to face me, apparently not wanting me to grab it. So "E" came up behind it and grabbed it while I had it distracted and moved it over into the grass. I came out at lunch figuring it would be gone or dead but it was still hanging out right where we had set it down. At the end of the day I came out with another co-worker who is a bird watcher, but I guess she finally recovered and flew away as she wasn't there. I described it to my friend who said he thought it was a "Flicker" which is a form of woodpecker and when I got home I looked it up on the net and it really looked like the pictures the sites had except it had a yellow beak which was much thicker at the base and shorter. I hope it survived, I know I probably wouldn't have survived the same impact.