So Here's the Truth
It can end in an instant. Period.
There's a great equalizer in the very nature of our humanity. Every man, woman, and child on Earth can count on one thing. One day, they're going to die. There's no getting around it. No matter what you do, no matter how much money you make, no matter how many great and wonderful things you accomplish, one day you'll be dead and buried just like the crack dealers and soccer moms. We're all gonna be there one day, and it's the same for all of us.
Most people will slip off in their sleep, or die from a prolonged medical condition, but when someone is torn from us by a sudden, traumatic event the pure humanity displayed is enough to make you reevaluate everything in your life.
I questioned whether or not I wanted to tell this story or not, as it's not something that a lot of people can understand. I can put the words out there and do my best to describe the images and feelings, but unless you've been in a situation comparable in some way to this you're just not going to get it. I don't mean that in an arrogant, or negative manner; I just mean that the issues with this story are off the scale of what you're average person deals with.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the story of my first night on the job.
It's Saturday, November 1st, 2003, and I'm a senior in high school. I'm also an "explorer" with Cary EMS. I had managed to arrange my schedule at school so that I could take an EMT class two afternoons a week, and through another guy in the class stumbled across the program.
An Explorer Post is technically run by the Boy Scouts of America, but in our case that meant they got my $5 dues, and didn't have anything else to do with us. Basically, an explorer was there to get some ride time in, and was trained in CPR/First Aid, knew where everything on the truck was, and could help the paramedic or EMT who was working in the back.
Since I was in an EMT class at the time, I knew a little bit more than your average explorer, but not a whole lot. We'd had a meeting that morning, and the people who needed to get their CPR certification were having that class in the afternoon. I already had my CPR certification, and having been "cleared" to ride the week before, I'd decided to take advantage, and signed up to ride from 3p-11p.
Right at 3 o'clock, a call came out, and I swear I don't think I've ever had a grin that big spread across my face. I was simultaneously excited, and scared, and happy, and almost sick. I jumped in the back of the truck, and strapped myself in. I swear from the second the siren cut on I knew that I'd found something I was really going to love.
We went down to an apartment complex I've since learned to know (and hate) very well. A girl in her mid-twenties had just broken up with her boyfriend, and decided to take a bottle of Oxycontin to get back at him. She did this with her 4 week old infant lying next to her on the bed.
Unfortunately for this girl, we have a drug that very quickly, and not so nicely, reverses the effects of narcotics. Essentially she went from the greatest high you can imagine to full consciousness and a lot of pain almost instantly.
She puked. Hard.
We took her to the hospital, and cleaned up the truck, and I was ready to go again. I couldn't believe how awesome it really was. Someone actually called 911, we came in, worked some magic, saved the day, and turned around daring the world to give us more. I was 10 feet tall and bulletproof.
A few hours later, just after dinner, we ran another call for a lady with a headache. I don't remember a lot about the call, and wouldn't remember anything at all if it hadn't come on this night, but it was the first call I ran with the crew that I'd be with for tonight's big adventure.
"T" was our paramedic, and she's a helluva medic.(I'm changing names just because these people are working full-time in EMS, and most don't like publicity. Really, she deserves to be recognized, but most media outlets are incredibly gifted at fucking up the lives of emergency personell) She'd been in the field for nearly 10 years already at this point, and while no one's seen it all, she's as close as you could hope for. Her skills are top-notch, and there's no one I would've rather been with on this night. She was great.
The OldMan has been doing EMS nearly as long as I've been alive. He's old, gross, racist, sorta stupid, and would do anything in the world for you. Someone once told me "[TheOldMan] would give you the shirt off his back, no question. You wouldn't want to wear it, but he'd give it to you." I think that describes him perfectly. He also knows the truck better than anyone, knows every road in the county, and has been at this so long that nothing fazes him.
In all honesty, I couldn'tve hoped for a better crew.
We make it back from the headache call, and we're all sitting down to watch a movie. I can still see the room in my mind. I was looking across the room at T when the pre-alert tones went off, and made me jump. It was about 8:45
"Pre-alert- Multi-system trauma. Highway 54 and Nowell Rd."
Immediate adrenaline. I'm pumped. Trauma! Blood! Guts! This is what I signed up for! Making a difference on the side of some road late at night... this is great! I didn't notice at the time, but T looked concerned. Very concerned.
You see, they don't page out calls as "multi-system trauma". Ever. Hearing something like that meant that someone official was already onscene, and knew that whatever patient we were going to get was fubar.
I get up, and try to play it cool as I walk out to the truck. It was really a struggle to keep from running. I get in the truck, and we start down the road, lights and sirens blazing.
T turns to me- "Do you know how to set up an IV?"
Me- "Of course!" (I am, afterall, one badass explorer)
T- "Hang a bag of ringers for me, and don't forget your vest!"
She wanted me to hang an IV of lactated ringers, a fluid used to replace lost blood in trauma patients. She was also reminding me to put on my reflective traffic vest designed to keep me from being plowed over in traffic. Ha.
I hang the bag, and before I can believe it, we're slowing down, and TheOldMan cuts the siren out. I lean to the side, and look between the seats in the cab, and out the front window. I can see it perfectly even now.
There was a line of traffic in the right lane, that seemed to stretch forever. We were in the center of the road, straddling the center line since there was no opposing traffic. There was a State Trooper in his Smoky hat slowly waving us foward toward a line of flares that stretched across the road. As I look past him, I think to myself, "Why are all those blankets in the road?"
TheOldMan parks the truck, and I jump out, vest on, gloves on, ready to go. I go around back to help get the stretcher out, but TheOldMan tells me to follow T. I walk back around to the front of the truck and begin towards T, who's talking to a firefighter.
There's a foot sticking out from one of the blankets. A foot that isn't moving. Nothing under the blanket is moving. It was a white Reebok tennis shoe, with green trim. Tall white socks. A woman's leg. As I continue to pass the blanket, I see dark curly hair on the other side, and what looks like pieces of a really thick egg shell cracked open on the ground, with some grey scrambled eggs next to them. I realize what I'm looking at, and freeze.
I lose all track of time, place, event, everything. It's all gone. I just stare around me. I am in a field of gore, and can't seem to figure out how I got here. The scene is lit up like daylight by several of the fire engines, and this intersection seems enormous.
I'm standing next to one "blanket", and there are another 2 right in front of me. There's a white van with a crushed front end sitting in the middle of the intersection near a dark green SUV. Across the intersection from me, seemingly miles away, two people are performing CPR on a black man, and everytime they do a chest compression, his belly dances in an almost comedic wave. A deep part of my brain thinks "Santa- Bowl full of jelly" and laughs.
I'm shaken out of my reverie by a voice saying "Are you from Cary?"
I have to think, but finally manage a "Yeah!" and begin walking towards the voice. When I discover the source, I rethink my affirmative answer. At the head of a backboard is a lone firefighter who looks to be about my age, and twice as terrified as I am. He again asks if I'm from Cary:
Me-"Yeah"
FF-"This is your patient. We got him backboarded for you, that's all I know."
Me-"Uhhh... hold on."
"T!"
T-"Hey. This is our guy right? You and OldMan get him loaded up, I'm gonna go get the truck set up."
Me-"Okay"
At least, that's what I think I said. It was probably something more like a mumble while I quietly went about crapping my pants. TheOldMan brought the stretcher over, and parked it about 5 feet away. I quietly curse him for leaving it so far away, but I'm not a complainer.
I try to think about what I need to do before we move this guy, and that's when I notice that his left leg has an extra bend in it. He's got an open fracture of both the bones of his lower leg, and there's about an inch of bone that's just missing. His shin has a 90 degree outward turn in its middle. I'd learned that very week that gross deformity gets corrected, so without having much of an option, I took hold of his foot, and straightened his leg on the board.
He screamed. Loudly.
I look at the firefighter, and count to 3. We lift him up, and as I unconsciously take an extra large step, I figure out why OldMan didn't bring the stretcher closer. There was another body between our patient and the stretcher. I'd been kneeling next to him the whole time, and never noticed.
We loaded the stretcher, and I climbed in the back with T. From here, the details are fuzzy, so I'll do my best to stick to what I remember. I put an oxygen mask on the guy, and T asked me to put him on our heart monitor while she started an IV. I put the electrodes on backwards at first, and T had to look up and tell me to switch them.
T gets her first IV, and tells me to switch places with her so she can get one on the other side too. She tells me to do the best I can to dress his wounds, and to try to get some information and vital signs when I get a chance.
I finally look at the guy, and he's covered in blood. His whole body is like one big mass of road rash. Most of his skin actually looks black from coagulated blood and asphalt fragments. Normally we have to cut trauma patient's clothes off, but in his case, almost everything was gone anyway.
I dressed his wounds as best I could, but at this point nothing was really bleeding anymore. He kept grabbing my leg, and even though I felt like a bad person, the thought of getting his blood all over me was still repulsive.
I got a set of vital signs, and T gave the hospital a quick call to let them know what we were bringing in. I did my best to get some info, but our guy had a pretty good head injury, and the best I could get was his name. He couldn't even tell us what car he'd been in.
Before I can believe it, we're pulling into the hospital. I honestly think TheOldMan has driven 120mph the whole way there, but he tells me he never passed 75. Turns out, he's not lying, time literally just flew in the back of that truck.
We bring our patient into the trauma bay at WakeMed, and I have never been so happy to see a group of doctors and nurses in my entire life. There's such a sense of security in handing off a patient to someone who knows more than you do, and is ready and willing to take over, and thank you for a job well done. I'm a little scared of the eventual day when I'm the doctor, and that's no longer an option for me.
Me move him over to the hospital bed, and I spend a minute or two disconnecting our equipment. Across the room they're still performing CPR on the black man from the scene, and a guy who looks to be about my age is screaming in the other bed. I walk out of the bay, and run out of the hospital. I'm desperate for air, and freedom, and escape.
Right about here is when what just happened finally hits me. I look at the back of the truck, and the disaster that iwaits inside, and I just start to shake all over. I think it was mostly the adrenaline wearing off, but my whole body was just taken over by tremors for about 2 minutes. I'm glad no one is there to see.
I pull on a new pair of gloves, and start trying to get the truck back in order. Everytime I think I've gotten everything clean, I'll notice a new spot of blood somewhere. It took me an hour to clean a 5'x7' area. Insane.
T is inside trying to write her paperwork up, and it's no small task. I go and get her a cup of water, and she gives me one of the most heartfelt "thank yous" I've ever received. As I'm walking outside, a medic from another service points out a chunk of flesh that's stuck to the toe of my boot. Cursing, I clean this too.
2 hours after we arrived at the hospital, the paperwork is finally done, and the truck is clean. On the road back to the station, T tells me to call my Dad and tell him that I'm going to be a lot later than usual.
After any major event, like a multi-fatality wreck, or a bad pediatrics call, your service is required to offer something called a "Critical Incident Stress Debriefing" or CISD. T wants me to go to the one being held for this call.
We make it back to the station, and I catch a little bit of the news coverage of the wreck. They don't know much more than I do, and at this point that's not saying much. At about 1am we head to CFD station 2 for the debriefing.
We're in the day room of the station along with all the Cary firefighters who'd been on the call. There's a shrink, and one of CFD's assistant chiefs there.
We proceed to have a 2 hour discussion. It's supposed to be about everyone's feelings, but what it mostly centers on is what happened, and that it's my first night.
The details that emerge are that there was a minor, 2 car accident. Turns out my patient was the driver of one of those vehicles. Several "Good Samaritans" stopped to help the two people involved in this crash. About 2 minutes later, 6 of them were wiped off the face of the Earth by a drunk driver who plowed through the whole scene, and never tapped his brakes.
He killed a nurse, and her husband, while all 3 of their sons watched.
He killed 2 college buddies who'd gotten together for a football game and a good time.
He killed a college student from Campbell who was 6 months older than me.
He killed a man who lived nearby, and after hearing the first crash rode a bike to the scene to see if he could help. It was him I saw CPR being performed on.
It was the nurse whose foot shocked me at the beginning of the call. She and her husband landed in such a way that their hands were touching.
The college student was the body that I never noticed was next to me until I stepped over him.
Everyone at the CISD was very concerned over my well-being, but I didn't understand why. As far as I could tell, I had no reason to be upset. Someone needed help, and I was there. We got him to the hospital alive, and his life was signifigantly better off for my having been involved in it. I felt really, really good. I still do.
I finally made it home at about 4am, and slept easily. No nightmares, no reliving it. I woke up the next morning, and went back to the station to ride for a few hours, just to make sure I could. It didn't bother me a bit. I was ready to keep going. I needed to keep going.
The drunk got a minimum of 8 years in jail. Killed 6 people, and got 8 years in jail.
I don't know if I'll leave this up or not. I still don't think I'm doing it justice.
*Edit*
I remembered today that I did have a little bit of purpose in writing this. The one part of this entire experience that did bother me a little bit, was the knowledge that it could easily have happened to me. If I'd come up on this wreck in my car, I'dve done the same thing that all of those people in the middle of the road did. No concern for my safety, or blocking the road, or marking the scene, or anything. I'd be a greasy stain, and it's still true today.
Just be careful.
*Second Edit*
Fixed some typos, clarified a few points.
Also, it took me 3 months before I drove through that intersection again. I went back one night at about the time the accident occurred, parked my truck, and walked around a little bit. There were still flowers and crosses littering the roadside. Sad little things that didn't really seem memorial enough for 6 lives. The intersection wasn't the sprawling expanse that I remembered, it was tiny. A 2 lane road crossing another 2 lane road. I stood exactly where I had when I'd gotten out of the truck, and couldn't figure out how everyone had fit on the scene.
To this day, I still shiver a little bit when I drive through there. Most of the time I avoid it.
There's a great equalizer in the very nature of our humanity. Every man, woman, and child on Earth can count on one thing. One day, they're going to die. There's no getting around it. No matter what you do, no matter how much money you make, no matter how many great and wonderful things you accomplish, one day you'll be dead and buried just like the crack dealers and soccer moms. We're all gonna be there one day, and it's the same for all of us.
Most people will slip off in their sleep, or die from a prolonged medical condition, but when someone is torn from us by a sudden, traumatic event the pure humanity displayed is enough to make you reevaluate everything in your life.
I questioned whether or not I wanted to tell this story or not, as it's not something that a lot of people can understand. I can put the words out there and do my best to describe the images and feelings, but unless you've been in a situation comparable in some way to this you're just not going to get it. I don't mean that in an arrogant, or negative manner; I just mean that the issues with this story are off the scale of what you're average person deals with.
Anyway, without further ado, here's the story of my first night on the job.
It's Saturday, November 1st, 2003, and I'm a senior in high school. I'm also an "explorer" with Cary EMS. I had managed to arrange my schedule at school so that I could take an EMT class two afternoons a week, and through another guy in the class stumbled across the program.
An Explorer Post is technically run by the Boy Scouts of America, but in our case that meant they got my $5 dues, and didn't have anything else to do with us. Basically, an explorer was there to get some ride time in, and was trained in CPR/First Aid, knew where everything on the truck was, and could help the paramedic or EMT who was working in the back.
Since I was in an EMT class at the time, I knew a little bit more than your average explorer, but not a whole lot. We'd had a meeting that morning, and the people who needed to get their CPR certification were having that class in the afternoon. I already had my CPR certification, and having been "cleared" to ride the week before, I'd decided to take advantage, and signed up to ride from 3p-11p.
Right at 3 o'clock, a call came out, and I swear I don't think I've ever had a grin that big spread across my face. I was simultaneously excited, and scared, and happy, and almost sick. I jumped in the back of the truck, and strapped myself in. I swear from the second the siren cut on I knew that I'd found something I was really going to love.
We went down to an apartment complex I've since learned to know (and hate) very well. A girl in her mid-twenties had just broken up with her boyfriend, and decided to take a bottle of Oxycontin to get back at him. She did this with her 4 week old infant lying next to her on the bed.
Unfortunately for this girl, we have a drug that very quickly, and not so nicely, reverses the effects of narcotics. Essentially she went from the greatest high you can imagine to full consciousness and a lot of pain almost instantly.
She puked. Hard.
We took her to the hospital, and cleaned up the truck, and I was ready to go again. I couldn't believe how awesome it really was. Someone actually called 911, we came in, worked some magic, saved the day, and turned around daring the world to give us more. I was 10 feet tall and bulletproof.
A few hours later, just after dinner, we ran another call for a lady with a headache. I don't remember a lot about the call, and wouldn't remember anything at all if it hadn't come on this night, but it was the first call I ran with the crew that I'd be with for tonight's big adventure.
"T" was our paramedic, and she's a helluva medic.(I'm changing names just because these people are working full-time in EMS, and most don't like publicity. Really, she deserves to be recognized, but most media outlets are incredibly gifted at fucking up the lives of emergency personell) She'd been in the field for nearly 10 years already at this point, and while no one's seen it all, she's as close as you could hope for. Her skills are top-notch, and there's no one I would've rather been with on this night. She was great.
The OldMan has been doing EMS nearly as long as I've been alive. He's old, gross, racist, sorta stupid, and would do anything in the world for you. Someone once told me "[TheOldMan] would give you the shirt off his back, no question. You wouldn't want to wear it, but he'd give it to you." I think that describes him perfectly. He also knows the truck better than anyone, knows every road in the county, and has been at this so long that nothing fazes him.
In all honesty, I couldn'tve hoped for a better crew.
We make it back from the headache call, and we're all sitting down to watch a movie. I can still see the room in my mind. I was looking across the room at T when the pre-alert tones went off, and made me jump. It was about 8:45
"Pre-alert- Multi-system trauma. Highway 54 and Nowell Rd."
Immediate adrenaline. I'm pumped. Trauma! Blood! Guts! This is what I signed up for! Making a difference on the side of some road late at night... this is great! I didn't notice at the time, but T looked concerned. Very concerned.
You see, they don't page out calls as "multi-system trauma". Ever. Hearing something like that meant that someone official was already onscene, and knew that whatever patient we were going to get was fubar.
I get up, and try to play it cool as I walk out to the truck. It was really a struggle to keep from running. I get in the truck, and we start down the road, lights and sirens blazing.
T turns to me- "Do you know how to set up an IV?"
Me- "Of course!" (I am, afterall, one badass explorer)
T- "Hang a bag of ringers for me, and don't forget your vest!"
She wanted me to hang an IV of lactated ringers, a fluid used to replace lost blood in trauma patients. She was also reminding me to put on my reflective traffic vest designed to keep me from being plowed over in traffic. Ha.
I hang the bag, and before I can believe it, we're slowing down, and TheOldMan cuts the siren out. I lean to the side, and look between the seats in the cab, and out the front window. I can see it perfectly even now.
There was a line of traffic in the right lane, that seemed to stretch forever. We were in the center of the road, straddling the center line since there was no opposing traffic. There was a State Trooper in his Smoky hat slowly waving us foward toward a line of flares that stretched across the road. As I look past him, I think to myself, "Why are all those blankets in the road?"
TheOldMan parks the truck, and I jump out, vest on, gloves on, ready to go. I go around back to help get the stretcher out, but TheOldMan tells me to follow T. I walk back around to the front of the truck and begin towards T, who's talking to a firefighter.
There's a foot sticking out from one of the blankets. A foot that isn't moving. Nothing under the blanket is moving. It was a white Reebok tennis shoe, with green trim. Tall white socks. A woman's leg. As I continue to pass the blanket, I see dark curly hair on the other side, and what looks like pieces of a really thick egg shell cracked open on the ground, with some grey scrambled eggs next to them. I realize what I'm looking at, and freeze.
I lose all track of time, place, event, everything. It's all gone. I just stare around me. I am in a field of gore, and can't seem to figure out how I got here. The scene is lit up like daylight by several of the fire engines, and this intersection seems enormous.
I'm standing next to one "blanket", and there are another 2 right in front of me. There's a white van with a crushed front end sitting in the middle of the intersection near a dark green SUV. Across the intersection from me, seemingly miles away, two people are performing CPR on a black man, and everytime they do a chest compression, his belly dances in an almost comedic wave. A deep part of my brain thinks "Santa- Bowl full of jelly" and laughs.
I'm shaken out of my reverie by a voice saying "Are you from Cary?"
I have to think, but finally manage a "Yeah!" and begin walking towards the voice. When I discover the source, I rethink my affirmative answer. At the head of a backboard is a lone firefighter who looks to be about my age, and twice as terrified as I am. He again asks if I'm from Cary:
Me-"Yeah"
FF-"This is your patient. We got him backboarded for you, that's all I know."
Me-"Uhhh... hold on."
"T!"
T-"Hey. This is our guy right? You and OldMan get him loaded up, I'm gonna go get the truck set up."
Me-"Okay"
At least, that's what I think I said. It was probably something more like a mumble while I quietly went about crapping my pants. TheOldMan brought the stretcher over, and parked it about 5 feet away. I quietly curse him for leaving it so far away, but I'm not a complainer.
I try to think about what I need to do before we move this guy, and that's when I notice that his left leg has an extra bend in it. He's got an open fracture of both the bones of his lower leg, and there's about an inch of bone that's just missing. His shin has a 90 degree outward turn in its middle. I'd learned that very week that gross deformity gets corrected, so without having much of an option, I took hold of his foot, and straightened his leg on the board.
He screamed. Loudly.
I look at the firefighter, and count to 3. We lift him up, and as I unconsciously take an extra large step, I figure out why OldMan didn't bring the stretcher closer. There was another body between our patient and the stretcher. I'd been kneeling next to him the whole time, and never noticed.
We loaded the stretcher, and I climbed in the back with T. From here, the details are fuzzy, so I'll do my best to stick to what I remember. I put an oxygen mask on the guy, and T asked me to put him on our heart monitor while she started an IV. I put the electrodes on backwards at first, and T had to look up and tell me to switch them.
T gets her first IV, and tells me to switch places with her so she can get one on the other side too. She tells me to do the best I can to dress his wounds, and to try to get some information and vital signs when I get a chance.
I finally look at the guy, and he's covered in blood. His whole body is like one big mass of road rash. Most of his skin actually looks black from coagulated blood and asphalt fragments. Normally we have to cut trauma patient's clothes off, but in his case, almost everything was gone anyway.
I dressed his wounds as best I could, but at this point nothing was really bleeding anymore. He kept grabbing my leg, and even though I felt like a bad person, the thought of getting his blood all over me was still repulsive.
I got a set of vital signs, and T gave the hospital a quick call to let them know what we were bringing in. I did my best to get some info, but our guy had a pretty good head injury, and the best I could get was his name. He couldn't even tell us what car he'd been in.
Before I can believe it, we're pulling into the hospital. I honestly think TheOldMan has driven 120mph the whole way there, but he tells me he never passed 75. Turns out, he's not lying, time literally just flew in the back of that truck.
We bring our patient into the trauma bay at WakeMed, and I have never been so happy to see a group of doctors and nurses in my entire life. There's such a sense of security in handing off a patient to someone who knows more than you do, and is ready and willing to take over, and thank you for a job well done. I'm a little scared of the eventual day when I'm the doctor, and that's no longer an option for me.
Me move him over to the hospital bed, and I spend a minute or two disconnecting our equipment. Across the room they're still performing CPR on the black man from the scene, and a guy who looks to be about my age is screaming in the other bed. I walk out of the bay, and run out of the hospital. I'm desperate for air, and freedom, and escape.
Right about here is when what just happened finally hits me. I look at the back of the truck, and the disaster that iwaits inside, and I just start to shake all over. I think it was mostly the adrenaline wearing off, but my whole body was just taken over by tremors for about 2 minutes. I'm glad no one is there to see.
I pull on a new pair of gloves, and start trying to get the truck back in order. Everytime I think I've gotten everything clean, I'll notice a new spot of blood somewhere. It took me an hour to clean a 5'x7' area. Insane.
T is inside trying to write her paperwork up, and it's no small task. I go and get her a cup of water, and she gives me one of the most heartfelt "thank yous" I've ever received. As I'm walking outside, a medic from another service points out a chunk of flesh that's stuck to the toe of my boot. Cursing, I clean this too.
2 hours after we arrived at the hospital, the paperwork is finally done, and the truck is clean. On the road back to the station, T tells me to call my Dad and tell him that I'm going to be a lot later than usual.
After any major event, like a multi-fatality wreck, or a bad pediatrics call, your service is required to offer something called a "Critical Incident Stress Debriefing" or CISD. T wants me to go to the one being held for this call.
We make it back to the station, and I catch a little bit of the news coverage of the wreck. They don't know much more than I do, and at this point that's not saying much. At about 1am we head to CFD station 2 for the debriefing.
We're in the day room of the station along with all the Cary firefighters who'd been on the call. There's a shrink, and one of CFD's assistant chiefs there.
We proceed to have a 2 hour discussion. It's supposed to be about everyone's feelings, but what it mostly centers on is what happened, and that it's my first night.
The details that emerge are that there was a minor, 2 car accident. Turns out my patient was the driver of one of those vehicles. Several "Good Samaritans" stopped to help the two people involved in this crash. About 2 minutes later, 6 of them were wiped off the face of the Earth by a drunk driver who plowed through the whole scene, and never tapped his brakes.
He killed a nurse, and her husband, while all 3 of their sons watched.
He killed 2 college buddies who'd gotten together for a football game and a good time.
He killed a college student from Campbell who was 6 months older than me.
He killed a man who lived nearby, and after hearing the first crash rode a bike to the scene to see if he could help. It was him I saw CPR being performed on.
It was the nurse whose foot shocked me at the beginning of the call. She and her husband landed in such a way that their hands were touching.
The college student was the body that I never noticed was next to me until I stepped over him.
Everyone at the CISD was very concerned over my well-being, but I didn't understand why. As far as I could tell, I had no reason to be upset. Someone needed help, and I was there. We got him to the hospital alive, and his life was signifigantly better off for my having been involved in it. I felt really, really good. I still do.
I finally made it home at about 4am, and slept easily. No nightmares, no reliving it. I woke up the next morning, and went back to the station to ride for a few hours, just to make sure I could. It didn't bother me a bit. I was ready to keep going. I needed to keep going.
The drunk got a minimum of 8 years in jail. Killed 6 people, and got 8 years in jail.
I don't know if I'll leave this up or not. I still don't think I'm doing it justice.
*Edit*
I remembered today that I did have a little bit of purpose in writing this. The one part of this entire experience that did bother me a little bit, was the knowledge that it could easily have happened to me. If I'd come up on this wreck in my car, I'dve done the same thing that all of those people in the middle of the road did. No concern for my safety, or blocking the road, or marking the scene, or anything. I'd be a greasy stain, and it's still true today.
Just be careful.
*Second Edit*
Fixed some typos, clarified a few points.
Also, it took me 3 months before I drove through that intersection again. I went back one night at about the time the accident occurred, parked my truck, and walked around a little bit. There were still flowers and crosses littering the roadside. Sad little things that didn't really seem memorial enough for 6 lives. The intersection wasn't the sprawling expanse that I remembered, it was tiny. A 2 lane road crossing another 2 lane road. I stood exactly where I had when I'd gotten out of the truck, and couldn't figure out how everyone had fit on the scene.
To this day, I still shiver a little bit when I drive through there. Most of the time I avoid it.
posted by C at 2:39 AM
2 Comments:
so do you just go home and drunken type all this? i mean it's good and all, but is that what you do? cause i should really get in the habit of doing that, my memory would be a lot better. so now that i've discovered your little blog to the world, im definitely gonna read it to find out what you really think of all the crap that goes on in class. and p.s. you left me, kenan, and mcdreamy out of the top o story. get it right. see you tonight
thats why we do it man...good story from a good man...lol...catch you tonight dude
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