Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Emergency
The flashing red strobes lit the scene, casting shadows over the twisted wreck of steel and glass smoking on the side of the road. Rain spattered on the concrete, further amplifying the brightness of the emergency lights, and the direness of the situation. The woman was on her back in the road, lying exactly across the yellow divider lines of the highway. Her breathing was shallow, her pulse weak. She was alive, awake, but only just barely. She blinked her eyes to keep the water from her eyes, entirely oblivious to the warm blood pooling underneath her broken body. She tried desperately to move her head to the side, wanting to see the car she had been thrown from only moments before. She looked past the men rushing towards her, stretcher between them, rain dripping from their tense faces, and tuned her ears for the horrible sound she so desperately wanted to hear.
The men reached her, their hands suddenly on her, stripping her of her blouse and breathing down on her, replacing the horridness of the situation with something much darker, still all too familiar. She cried out in fear more than pain, adrenaline numbing her to the injuries of her body. Blue gloved hands held her down, strapped her to a long board, immobilizing her, preventing her from seeing the wreck even in her peripheral vision. Her voice was ragged, her moans cut short by the oxygen mask placed over her face, only serving to heighten her feeling of helplessness.
A face hovered over hers, a voice muffled and incomprehensible and loud, so loud, bursting her ears and stripping her mind of any focused thought. She cried out again and again, her words as incomprehensible to them as theirs were to her. Firemen worked frantically around the wreck as she was wheeled past, her neck still working against the cervical collar fixed around it. She couldn't see the bright yellow sticker, still attached to the splintered glass of the back window, announcing the presence of a child. She couldn't see the toys scattered all along the road, just as she had been, drenched and broken and of no more use. But she finally heard what she'd been pleading for, just before the doors of the ambulance shut, closing her off from the old world.
Cries other than her own.
Small, weak, but decidedly alive.
As the medication flooded her body, she collapsed against the stretcher and did not wake up for a long time.
The men reached her, their hands suddenly on her, stripping her of her blouse and breathing down on her, replacing the horridness of the situation with something much darker, still all too familiar. She cried out in fear more than pain, adrenaline numbing her to the injuries of her body. Blue gloved hands held her down, strapped her to a long board, immobilizing her, preventing her from seeing the wreck even in her peripheral vision. Her voice was ragged, her moans cut short by the oxygen mask placed over her face, only serving to heighten her feeling of helplessness.
A face hovered over hers, a voice muffled and incomprehensible and loud, so loud, bursting her ears and stripping her mind of any focused thought. She cried out again and again, her words as incomprehensible to them as theirs were to her. Firemen worked frantically around the wreck as she was wheeled past, her neck still working against the cervical collar fixed around it. She couldn't see the bright yellow sticker, still attached to the splintered glass of the back window, announcing the presence of a child. She couldn't see the toys scattered all along the road, just as she had been, drenched and broken and of no more use. But she finally heard what she'd been pleading for, just before the doors of the ambulance shut, closing her off from the old world.
Cries other than her own.
Small, weak, but decidedly alive.
As the medication flooded her body, she collapsed against the stretcher and did not wake up for a long time.
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