I Witness

What is it with people’s infatuation with accidents? Not being able to look away is something inborn into almost everybody. I felt helpless as she lay there motionless. The EMS team scurried around her one talking to her and taking her vitals and one grabbing a kit of some sort from the back of the ambulance. She wasn’t conscious and with every second that passed looked worse and worse.

The truck hadn’t hit her with that much force, but the way it hit her was what made it serious. She saw it coming and kind of crouched and shielded herself with her arms up in front of her face, but arms are no match for the front end of a pickup truck. She bounced off of it and landed only a few feet away, the truck stopped almost immediately and the driver jumped out and rushed to her. He was shaken and didn’t really know what to do, so he just paced back and forth with his hands on his head and muttering,
         "Oh my God, my insurance is gonna go through the roof."

Another lady who had gotten off the bus with her dialed 911 and answered the plethora of seemly pointless questions they always ask. She had good answers to all the questions, like maybe she had done this before. She was clear and concise and very quickly took the lead role in organizing the chaos. She called out to one lady standing by, looking concerned yet calm and told her to pick up the girls purse and set it on the ground beside her. The woman asked if she should look for the girls ID, but the woman on the phone said,
         "No, the paramedics will do that, I just didn't want it to run off."

Many people say that the time it takes for help to arrive in an emergency is an eternity, but this time it was like they were there before anything had happened. Due to the authoritative lady who had called for them there was not much in the way of crowd control that needed to be done. They were able to get to work without any hassles of shooing people out of the way or getting answers to the now much more important questions like where was she hit, had she been conscious.

The tech taking her vitals called out to her partner to bring the “Defib” and began CPR. The charge and subsequent “ZAP” of the machine was just as it sounds in the movies. After the third attempt to revive her one tech reached over and turned off the machine as the second got up and retrieved from the back of the ambulance a plastic board that looked much like a surf board for beginners.

As the crowd began to slowly disperse they all had looks of anguish on there faces. Like they knew her, like she was something special to them. Having never witnessed anything like this before I was surprised at how calm I had remained. Almost content, then from behind me I felt the warm touch of a man’s hand on my shoulder and heard the words
         “Come now dear it’s time to go home, there are a great many people waiting to see you.”