another day in the life.

I was off to a not-so-important meeting at around 12:30 when I was stopped and ended up talking to some people on the porch of my building. When the conversation was just about to end and we were all about to go on our merry way, we hear a loud

screeeeeeech!!!! BANG!

We walk to were we can see a car t-boned a truck, and yep, here I am running to see what sort of gore is going to present itself to my face today. I run up to the truck and the guy is getting out and he is fine, I look at the car and a woman is in the car, practically in tears. I signal asking if she is okay, but I don't know what to make of the answer, so I go to the passenger door, open it and tell her I am first aide, and ask if she needs any assistance. "I don't know!!! I have a child in the back seat!"

Oh, ****.... I look back but see no kid. I peer through the back-door window and see no kid because the windows are tinted. I open the door, and my eyes dart to the floor, the back of the front seat. It feels like it took me a full five seconds to see the boy sitting in a car seat, buckled in. I go near to check on him and he begins crying. The mother has yet to look back. I screw up dialing 911, and notice it. I redial and they pick up, but the mother is screaming on the phone: "Please, you have to come now. I have a child in the back seat, and he might be hurt. You have to come now.... I just got into an accident!" I ask her if she is on 911. "Yes."

"Here, give me the phone and I will talk to him."

"HOW'S MY BABY???"

"He's okay. Look, he's okay."

She hands me the phone and I tell the operator the location, the details, and the condition of the people in the car (they are fine as far as I can tell). I hand the phone back to the mother, and her expression is not one that I would ever want to see again: such raw emotion, pain, and muscles so tense that she barely has the strength to cry.

I sit in the back seat with the boy, and I take his hand, checking him for anything that may be uncomfortable. "Here, I'm going to take your seat-belt off okay?"

"I'm taking his seat belt off." I tell the mother. She agrees and thanks me.

I take the boys hand and massage his shoulder, and he begins to quiet down. The mother was in the front seat buckled over herself in such worry and sorrow, I wanted to be able to comfort her as well, but I guess an instinct in me said that if I can comfort the boy, then the mother would improve, as eventually happened.

I explain that there is a police station and fire station a few blocks away, and they should be there soon. The mother thanks me, and begins calming down as I talk to the boy and comfort him. He is moving. He takes off a long rope lasso necklace and I tell him to just sit back until the medics arrive. He is a wonderful kid, complying with everything I say to him.

I ask his name. He tells me, shyly, and I tell him he is doing a wonderful job. The mother asks him to move his arms. He lifts them with no effort, and she says. "That's good. I think he's okay. I think he's okay."

I always ask if she feels okay, and she tells me that she is. But I can't help looking at the agony on her face. It is something terrible, an emotion of pure... everything... worry, failure, sadness, a combination of stresses so high, and real that the reddened freckled face will perhaps be seared into my dreams for tonight. I also can't help feeling a tinge of love for her; the kind of love that can be called infectuous, not for another human, but the love that says there is something left in the human spirit. Love that is so powerful that other's concerns come before the love of your own. That if the child was hurt in any way, she would have likely died before my very eyes.

The trucks come, and I walk back to my building. The manager is out there asking who's fault it is. In the circumstance I was just in, it didn't matter. It only mattered that they were alright.

I walked around for an hour, trying to decompress, and get the terrible image of the mother's face out of my head, but I can't. I don't cry, but tears well and fall. I have a pounding headache.

This is as good as place as any for this, so.... I have had about a 50% flake-out rate, so I have some ground rules now. :( If you are someone that is not willing to arrange a meet over the phone, it ain't happening.

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Hmmm. Well, let's say we meet over coffee or tea or something like that to start, womp each other at cards or Scrabble, trade dirty jokes and banter about all things stupid and smart in the world, then do whatever... Go out into the night and go boom or bust. Call it a night with a good story or 5, hopefully not ending in the emergency room.