Car Crash

So, it’s about 7:22am and I am driving to work. It is pouring rain. I pull out of a gas station and am heading toward the highway so I can go work in my cubicle so as to pay my bills until I head out for Afghanistan.

I am about a hundred meters behind a Ford Explorer Sport when it spins out of control and flies into oncoming traffic… nailing a PT Cruiser. The sounds of glass and medal shattering, bending and breaking, look like beasts attempting to slaughter each-other. Both vehicles lift off of the ground and spin as they embrace eachother with crushing power.

I immediately grab my cell phone and dial 911. I provide the operator with a quick SIT REP (situation report). I then reach behind me… grab my CLS (combat life saver) bag and run to the scene. A woman and her two daughters lie in the grass on the side of the road. They are okay, just shaken up. Her daughters are around ten and maybe thirteen years old.

Realizing that only one of these three people could have been driving, I ask if anyone is in the other vehicle. I run around to the driver’s side of the other vehicle and find an attractive woman, probably in her late 20’s or early 30’s… pinned in her vehicle.

She has no visible life threatening injuries. She isn’t bleeding. She has full mobility of her upper body. I help her get her seat belt undone. She asks me to open her door. The impact has pushed her into the center of her vehicle. There isn’t going to be anyone opening her door by themselves anytime soon.

As I lean into her passenger door I help her undo her seat belt and look quickly at her legs, wondering if they are just pinned under the dash or shattered by the crushing collision. Then, the Jacksonville Fire/Rescue arrived.

I motion Fire/Rescue toward the woman in the Explorer. If anyone needs immediate attention it’s her. Then I walk to my truck and continue my completely normal and boring day, feeling more alive than I have since I returned home from Baghdad. I can’t wait to get back to the Middle East.