Life, and death.

I am sitting here at 4:41 am in a subway eating some sun chips of the cheddar variety.  i don't quite have the appetite for a full sandwich, but am glad i have an appetite and can eat.

You see, about 3 hours ago I just, I j-, I saw a couple of cars slowed, maybe stopped in front of me on the freeway.  I slow and see that one of the cars is crumpled and the other has just stopped like me.  I put on my hazards and get out.  It's me and this other guy.  We approach the car, I grab my flashlight and peer inside, we shout, try the door, it's locked.  The other guy says we need to break the window, I try twice my flashlight unsuccessfully, then go back into my car for something better, but then they get one of the doors open.  There is a male inside, unconscious and positioned awkwardly.  He is unresponsive to verbal and physical stimulation.  I check for breathing and a pulse.  I don't feel one and his breathing isn't apparent.  I'm looking up at the cars that are still coming at us on the freeway, as we're stopped right in the middle of it.  I'm thinking that those breaths that I do see look agonal.  Agonal breaths happen right before someone is about to die typically.  I consider getting the guy out of the car and off to the side of the road.  Others have showed up now.  One is an off duty cop.  Between him, 911 dispatch on the phone with the other guy, and some 4th guy in his car on the far side of the highway, they all tell me NOT to move him.  Fuck!  The off duty cop checked his pulse and said it was there but faint, so I am doubting myself now.  From my training as an emt, putting someone in anatomical position is good and allows to properly check airway, breathing, and circulation.  Instead, I just sat there watching him not move, watching him there with his neck terribly positioned.  The guy says the ambulance should be here any moment.  Finally a cop shows up and stops traffic and comes over and finally i get someone to say yes, let's pull him out of the car.  We get him in a slightly better position and then fire shows up and they take over.  Upon getting him out of the vehicle, they check his pulse and immediately begin CPR.  Fuck!!  They load him into the ambulance.  I decide to ask one of the firefighters about what I should have done.  He said my plan of action was solid.  I ask for something to clean the blood off of my hands.  I tell the other guy good job for stopping and helping.  I ask the police if they need me, they said no.  So I get into my car and start to drive, awkwardly giving the wave of acknowledgment to the firefighters who don't recognize me now that i'm in my car.

I make it about a mile before I realize I need to pull over.  I find a side street to pull over and i get out and start crying.  Experience my experience I tell myself.  Ok.  I think about how this is reflective of other parts of my life, like if I only was more aggressive with my gut instinct instead of listening to others who are telling me no.  If I really just went with my training and experience and asserted myself, we could have been doing CPR on that guy.  Or we pull him out and someone texting doesn't see us stopped and slams into all of us.  But we did stop, block traffic and turn on our hazards and immediately call 911.  We did check on him, and followed directions from 911 dispatch.  And we successfully didn't get struck by any cars.

After I cried for a bit, I called up one of my old co-workers from when I worked 911 as an emt.  He picked up thank god and listened to me as i told him what happened and cried a little more.  We talked for an hour.  He consoled me and helped me pick my chin back up.  I feel some more tears coming up right now.  I'm ok.  Another wave of emotion.  That's normal.  Several years back, he shared with me a hard time he had as a paramedic and it was that act of vulnerability that allowed me feel safe to call him that he wouldn't judge me.  And i was safe, and I am truly grateful.

I don't think there is any big and simple lesson to be learned here.  Being more assertive and aggressive may have been the right move, or maybe i'm too far removed from EMS and 911 dispatch and the off duty cop truly do know better than me, an ex-emt 4 years retired, and moving him would have made things worse.  Am I supposed to be reminded of how life is precious and can be so quickly taken away from you?  It seems lately, that it can be exhausting constantly reminding yourself that you only have one life to life so you better make the best of it.  This is the sentence i hear in my head when i'm numbingly checking reddit or facebook.  That I should be doing something more productive, more meaningful.  Fuck, it's exhausting to constantly be doing something.  And i've done so much.  "Yet so little at the same time," I hear another part of me say.

These are the stories that are harder to tell.  What's the point of sharing them?

UPDATE:  I wrote the this correspondence recently, but didn't post it.  I figured it might show up in the news the next day and I wanted to protect his anonymity, which I found out was wise, as when I checked the following day, I learned that he had died.  I also learned that they wrote about me, and that of course, news is not to be trusted and is typically written without actual facts and is quite embellished.

After learning that he had died, I called another friend and told him about what happened.  He asked what it would have been like if I did successfully remove him from the vehicle and immediately start CPR.  If I actively went against professional opinion and then he dies.  Then it would have been on my hands, and he most likely still would have died due to the nature of vehicular trauma, but instead I would have felt that his death was on my hands and that if only I listened to everyone saying to not move him, he would still be alive.  All of this serves to remind me of how grateful I am for my friends and support network.

I also realized I didn't know what it takes to break out a car window to get to someone trapped inside. So last night I called an auto scrap yard and told them about my experience and asked if I could break out a window.  This morning I went and did it.  I feel resolved with this experience.

Pro tip:  If someone is trapped in a car and you need to break a window, break a side window by striking it with something hard near one of the corners where it connects with the metal.  It is most fragile there.  If you can't immediately open the door, lay down a blanket so that you don't drag the person over glass still in the window frame.  If you have something hard and you don't aim for the middle of the window, (MUCH more sturdy) it doesn't take much force to break a window.  I broke the window this morning with this crescent wrench that I keep in my car.