Earlier this evening I witnessed a horrible sight - I stepped out of my car which I'd just parked, heard a 'thwack', looked up and the woman who'd been standing on the corner as I pulled into the parking lot was laying in the road with blood pouring out of her swollen face and her immobile body twisted and crumpled on the streetcar track and road looking quite horribly dead. I was sure she was dead. A moment later a streetcar driver ran out and holding his arms up above his head yelled 'NO - OH FUUUCK!!! NOOOO!!!' and ran back to the streetcar. I thought it was a suicide - that was my very first thought. I think he'd thought he'd killed her.
I started over to her, along with a couple other people. I told a woman to support the unconscious but squirming victim's head with a brown Danier bag she was carrying - she hesitated. I reminded her it was plastic and could be cleaned off. She agreed with me quite seriously, quite thoughtfully. Then I pulled out my cell to call 911 and saw a guy with a cellphone. I asked him if he was calling 911 and he said yes. I told him to tell me if he'd gotten through. He ignored me and stared at the sky. A woman told me she was calling and would tell me once she'd gotten through.
Cars decided to try to drive past us. I raised my hand - directing traffic - and caught the eye of the idiot man with his idiot wife trying to drive past and refused him passage. He argued in mime. I, in mime, threatened holy grevious injury on him if he proceeded. He backed down - his wife looked scared of me.
It is difficult to remember the order of everything. Like a dream.
It looked like brains out of her nose - but it was just blood matting her hair, stuck to her face. And then she came to, she fought, she resisted and then the ambulance was there and she fought the ambulance attendants who looked huge like wrestlers and she was kicking her legs and groaning without a face that made sense. It was swollen and she looked pissed off and drunk and wasted yelling and agonized.
Observe: Cervical collar, a hard board and an ambulance and a shocked bystander beside me and a pool of blood on the asphalt and a shoe on the tracks. The tough policeman - radio calls, departing ambulance, sirens.
Then I saw the cabbie across the road just stopped - motionless, uncertain, sad, not believing, staring in stony confusion. His fare was away in a blur of lights and medical equipment. He drifted away after a while. He's thinking of the incident. The accident. So am I. So is the streetcar driver. So are the other witnesses.
.JPG)
