A car crashed into Lawrence Family Vision Clinic, 3111 W. Sixth St., Tuesday, March 29, 2011. Medics responded to two people at the scene of the accident.

A car came to rest inside the Lawrence Family Vision Clinic, 3111 W. Sixth St., Tuesday afternoon. Two customers inside the store were thrown across the room but not injured. The driver, a 27-year-old Lawrence man, also was not injured.

Two weeks after a car came crashing through the wall at the Lawrence Family Vision Clinic, some things look normal again, but other, less visible effects linger.

Employees of the center say they have suffered sleepless nights, bouts of anger and pangs of anxiety after a driver who was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving drove his car through the business’s north wall.

Children who were in the lobby have complained of nightmares and are struggling to handle the incident, said Megan Pederson, clinic office manager.

Those kinds of reactions — like trouble sleeping, irritability and anxiety — are typical for people who have gone through a traumatic experience, said Marcia Epstein, director of Headquarters Counseling Center.

“We have expectations of safety in our homes and in our workplaces,” she said. “It may be stressful, but we’re not in any physical danger.”

When that gets challenged, it can really shake people’s worlds, Epstein said.

Though the center helped with the victims of the accident at the vision clinic, Epstein made clear she was referring to trauma victims in general and not relating details of any one person’s specific case.

Hillary Emerson, an optician at Lawrence Family Vision, said the car came through the wall right at her and pushed her back about 15 feet, causing bruising that required a hospital visit.

She didn’t recognize it as a car at first — she just was hoping it would stop.

“I have a 10-month-old at home,” she said. “All I could think about was how she was almost motherless.”

The car took out a couple of work stations and came into an area that is usually packed on Tuesday afternoons. At times there can be 20 people looking at eyeglass frames or waiting around, employees said.

That Tuesday, there were four people in the area. Though no one was seriously injured physically, that can be frustrating to read in news accounts, Emerson said. She cried every day for about a week after the crash.

That made all the jokes — like those who commented about the clinic adding drive-through service — seem dismissive, too, she said.

The clinic is facing a lot of physical repairs, which adds to the stress level. More than 300 eyeglass frames were damaged along with cabinets and work spaces, among other damages. The driver’s insurance was not enough to cover all the damages, and Pederson said the office is working with its own insurance company to recoup the rest.

It’s important for others to follow the lead of trauma victims when talking about the incident and not to press them for details, Epstein said, and to encourage people to seek help if needed.

People should be careful not to dismiss the incident or people’s feelings afterward, she said.

“Just because it could’ve been a lot worse doesn’t mean that what’s happened is OK,” Epstein said.