Last night I was walking down Central Park West on my way to an event with my church. I was trying to get there a few minutes early because my roommate and I are coleading a table so I wanted to be there when our participants arrived. I had just come out of the subway and was walking when I heard a noise. It was really dark, and there were a lot of cars because it was a little before 7 p.m., but I happened to look in the exact spot the noise was coming from. A car was screeching to a stop and now other cars were honking. As I looked up and saw the car stopping, I noticed a dark figure on top of the car. It took me a second to realize it was a person. The shape and the outline were so flimsy, it didn't seem possible that it was a person, but it was. I gasped and said "oh God." Instincts kicked in, and I immediately ran toward the scene. The person in front of me already had 911 on the line. We were the first ones to reach the man, and I'm not sure how as we had to be the furthest away from him. I'm not even sure I checked for traffic, but I do remember yelling at cars to stop because there was a body in the road. People started yelling thing as they passed by like "that's why you don't drive fast." I don't know why people feel the need to be such assholes.
The man was very old, and he was wearing a very dark suit at a very dark intersection. I immediately checked on the driver. He was there, and he told me he was ok. I started praying for the victim and the driver. I couldn't imagine being in either of their places. What happened was clearly an accident, and now the driver was staring at this scene that he caused. The man who called 911 was giving very detailed information to the operator so I could tell he was either a paramedic or a doctor. I asked, and he confirmed he was a doctor. I asked him what we should do. He said we needed to turn him over, but that we needed to wait for the police to arrive. The police got there just a few minutes later, and they all began working on him. The rest of us stood in shock.
There were four of us that witnessed the accident. Me, two men and the doctor. The ambulance arrived shortly after the police, and the doctor went with the victim. The police asked me and the two men to wait so we could give our statements. All I could do was stand there and try to process what I had seen. The man's body was so contorted he looked like some sort of life sized doll that had been thrown around. He was dressed very nicely, and was actually not scraped up or bleeding anywhere, but he was completely unresponsive. The doctor said he had a pulse, but they were doing chest compressions as they put him in the ambulance and drove away. I had never witnessed anything like this. As we stood there, people kept walking by asking us what had happened. The police had crime scene tape around the intersection and weren't letting people in or out, but people could walk by. I suddenly thought about all the crime scenes I had passed gawking and asking what had happened, and I felt like a jerk. People were asking us what had happened when the driver of the car was standing three feet from us. We just stared at anyone who asked until they walked away. It never occurred to me that when you ask things like that you could be talking to anyone: the victim, the victim's family, someone who just got involved in a horrible accident. It's none of your business, and it's not polite.
It took about an hour for the right people to arrive for us to give our statements to before we could leave. They said they didn't know anything about the victim yet, but that a detective would probably be following up with us later, and we could ask him what happened. I felt really useless the entire time. I didn't see how the accident happened, I just saw it happen. And I couldn't even help give CPR because I don't really know CPR. I was really thankful the doctor was there and that he knew exactly what to do. Me and the other witnesses tried to put together what we think happened based off what we all saw. We think the man was crossing the street but didn't finish crossing in time, the light changed and the car came up on the intersection and couldn't see the man until it was too late. There was a cane, which we think belonged to the victim, glasses and a broken watch.
I left the scene and headed home. Today I called the precinct to see if I could find out what happened to the victim. The switchboard operator was being very rude and told me the detective wouldn't tell me anything more than what she told me, which was nothing. I told her that was fine that the detective could tell me just that then, but that I wanted to hear it from him. She said "FINE!" and transferred me. The detective was out, and at first the person on the phone didn't want to tell me what happened, but I said "please, I just want to know if he made it or not." She asked if I had read the news. I told her that I looked for stuff online, but I couldn't find anything. She then said "he didn't survive." It was hard to hear even though I already knew in my heart he was gone.
I wish I could check on the driver. I don't know him at all, but my heart goes out to him. It has to be hard to live with knowing you killed someone even though it was an accident. I also wish I could find out who the victim is just to send the family a note or flowers. I just want to not feel helpless. I want to be a better citizen. I want to take a CPR class and learn what to do in a situation like that. I want to be more sensitive the next time I pass a crime scene and try to resist the urge to become an onlooker. And I never want to see anything like that again. I think about how many times I've seen things like that on movies, and now it just feels like too much. What I've seen in movies was too realistic. Last night it was really hard to sleep. I kept playing the whole thing over and over in my head. Tonight, I'm going to try and give it up to God and know that everything in the world is in his control. But sometimes that's a hard thing to accept, isn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment