Partially Ejected

My nephew told me how he was the first on the scene of a fatal motor vehicle accident. A woman’s head smacked into the back end of a semi. My nephew’s face contorted in pain from the memory.

Another time. P. and I came over a hill on the way to Crow Fair. A pickup lay on its side in the August yellow grass of the median. Steam wafted from the radiator. I pulled onto the shoulder. A badge-shaped sign said I-90. The 9-1-1 dispatcher asked me to walk over to the wreck, where several other people already were ministering to a person who lay atop the side of the pickup. The voice in the phone asked me to describe the victim. “She is evidently in deep shock,” I murmured, “she is pure white with lacerated scalp where crushed when the truck rolled across the highway,” I said, “she’s still alive because she moved a little. She is wearing blue jeans and clean black Converse All Stars.”

A woman spoke gently to the victim. She said she was a nurse. An ambulance from Hardin pulled up to the wreck in the median. The paper said the woman died after being partially ejected.

Every time I drove past that place I started to cry.