Sunday, November 5, 2017

The Great Wall of China
8. The Collision

With no police in sight, the scooter driver and I were left to settle the matter on our own. Blocking traffic was not really an issue since this intersection was large enough for everyone to go around us. The scooter was directly in front of the car, so we were only blocking one lane. I was going to get out of the car to make sure the scooter driver was ok, and check out the damage on the front of the rental car. We had compulsory insurance, but I wanted to know if I would have to explain a dent or a scratch to the rental company.

I never saw the truck coming. He hit us at an angle, like he was trying to do a PIT maneuver. The first thing I noticed was my car running over the scooter driver. I grabbed onto the steering wheel, mostly as a reflex, I suppose. I was not in control of anything. Some of the details over the next few days are pretty fuzzy, but I think I will always remember the look on the scooter driver's face just before I killed him.

From my point of view, a bulldozer rammed into us at a million miles per hour. Rather than slow motion, everything happened in quick jump cuts. I somehow transported to the back seat as the Earth quickly rotated around us. The ground folded up and over the car as the sky made its way under us. This happened several times. When the ground finally stopped spinning, the car was resting on its right side. Amy was still strapped into her seat, but in a twisted position, like a child trying to sleep uncomfortably. And she was obviously in a great deal of pain. She and the seat were still in the car, but she was lying on the pavement and a deflated airbag. Her window was gone, as was every other window in the car. There were a few chunks of laminated glass here and there, but the windows were mostly somewhere else.

I was resting on the ground and back door panel. I wanted to get to Amy, but checked to see if everything was in place first. All of my limbs were intact and nothing seemed to be broken or even sprained. There was a little blood on my left shoulder, but when I checked, the skin was not even broken. The blood seemed to come from over my shirt, not under. The impact obviously knocked me from one end of the car to the other, but it looked like I was in good shape. The interior of the car was more narrow than before, but there was enough space to crawl over to Amy.

When I got to her, I wanted to pull her out of the car. Her left arm was visibly broken and it looked like someone sprayed her with blood from a squirt gun. Obviously, pulling an injured person out of a car is a bad idea. I had no way of knowing what condition her neck or spine were in. But I knew that if someone else hit us, it could only make everything worse. I like to think I am a decisive person. Maybe I'm not, but I think I am. In this moment, I did not have the faintest idea what to do.

3 comments:

  1. how can you see her left arm broken? what is [visibly broken?]

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sometimes you can see that someone has a broken bone. In this case, it was an open fracture. Part of the bone was torn out of her skin. It was very visibly broken.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Never pull an injured person out of a car wreck unless the car's on fire.

    ReplyDelete

No hate, please. There's enough of that in the world already.