more than a piece of wood

I swear, soon I'll go back to movie reviews or something. But gah.
As I was exiting a bus today, the strap on my viola case came unhooked and my viola hit the ground hard. It was 6 PM, and I was en route to making a brief birthday party appearance before heading to an 8 PM concert. As soon as it hit the ground I anticipated trouble, but it's too cold here to open the case outside so I headed over to the party. Inside, I opened the case, and...
A big crack, up the face of my viola at least six or seven inches long. My heart stopped. Thirty seconds later I was outside, coatless, on my phone dialing every violist I knew within easy train access. A friend of mine lives only a few houses away from the party I was at, but he didn't answer. Nobody answered, and I paced. Eventually, I tracked down a viola that I could borrow in Rogers Park (a few miles north) and ran my ass over to the train to head up there ASAP.
Here's where things really went to hell. I got on a train, went two stops, and then my train driver announced that there had been some sort of train-and-person accident farther north and that all the trains both directions were going to be staying where they were and cutting off power. I jumped back off the train.
Luckily, my original hope (the one who lived by where I had just come from) called me back. I took a bus back to his house, swapped violas, and went back to the train station, where the trains were still shut down. I took a cab, played the concert, and took a (mercifully running) train back to my friend's house to swap back.
Now I'm home. Things still haven't hit fully, but I'm becoming a little bit less comatose. I can speak in full sentences, that sort of thing. I was so exhausted by my efforts to get to the concert and by the overwhelming nature of the evening that I was practically incoherent when I was at the show. Now I'm just worried about my viola. It's an object, a thing, but very, very close to my heart. It's hard to describe, but my viola is very like a person to me. We've spent so many thousands of hours together. I've shared at least as many highs and lows with this piece of wood and metal as I have with any single person. My viola has made me cry, and laugh, and go more than a little crazy; I've shed sweat and blood for it. My skin and sweat and fingerprints are literally embedded into the wood. I first saw my viola when I was maybe 12: it was my birthday present, and I was in instant love the first time I saw it. Her. I struggled (vaguely, and not too often) in high school with the fact that my viola felt female to me and that I loved her. (This is funny now :) I'm hoping that they can fix the crack without too many problems, but the damage hurts in some undefinable way. Something constant in my life for well over a decade has sustained damage.
I'm not writing well. Thanks for reading. I'll post something not about me soon.