Quiet

The quiet after accidents is what often strikes me the most. It seems that a very chaotic scene should be really loud, but they always seem very quiet to me. We were alerted for a pedestrian struck on Route 1, in front of a bar. This section of route 1 has a bar on each side and people often run between them. They sometimes get hit. I went to the station and took the ambulance out by myself since no one else showed up. I could see the woman in the middle of the road as I approached. She was lying face up, like she just decided to lay down and take a nap. I pulled past her and parked the ambulance across the lane, to protect me from oncoming traffic, got out and walked back to the body. A small crowd had gathered, but I didn’t hear anything. The world was narrowed to just me and this lady. A man approached. “I am an EMT and she is dead. She was thrown at least 100 feet. I saw the whole thing.” “Ok” I knelt down beside this woman and felt for a pulse. There was none. She looked perfectly normal except for her grey color. There wasn’t any obvious deformity, but as I did a quick initial assessment I could feel that her skull was crushed through her long blond hair. She was a bag of goo. It felt like her body had no internal support left. I wanted to work her. She was so young, maybe 20, and beautiful. But I knew she was dead. “EMS lieutenant 73 dispatch. Priority 4” It was hard to pronounce her. Priority 4 is a designator that technically means no patient, but in my region it means the patient is dead prior to EMS arrival. There was nothing I or anyone else could do for this young woman. I knelt in the middle of route 1 with this dead young woman, and the world around me was silent. It was just the two of us, even though a group was gathered. “What is that lady doing out driving at 2 am anyway?” one of them said about the woman driving the car. Really? You are blaming the driver who struck this woman, who was out running between bars My patient now became the driver of the vehicle, and my concern became the crowd. I really don’t remember the driver much. I know she was upset, but she didn’t do anything wrong. Law enforcement arrived and helped secure the scene. I put a sheet over the body. The forensic investigator arrived. I didn’t have to, but I stuck around to assist with the forensic investigation. I felt I needed to for some reason. I had some kind of connection to this person I had only met in death. Maybe because I was the one to decide she was dead. Six years later, I met her husband. He had no idea I was on that call. He had no idea I was in EMS. As he described the scene, I knew instantly who he was talking about, and 6 years later he still blames himself for his wife’s death.