The Backseat of a Car

A little over a month ago - I can remember that it was a Tuesday - I had a call at work that has stayed with me.  That in itself isn't so strange - some calls float around in your head for a while even in the sanest of individuals - but this shouldn't have been one of those calls.

We got called for a car accident at a pretty benign intersection, but at a curve in a relatively major road that my partner and I agreed en route could have potential: potential meaning that there was a reasonable chance it could be bad.  Perhaps I should explain to the average reader that nine out of ten car accidents we respond to have no injuries or are minor - the disasters you see on television are, frankly, uncommon.

We noted several vehicles on the side of the road as we pulled up, but none looked damaged.  All parties were up and walking around.  Deputies were on scene and no additional resources had been called.

Scene size-up: so far so good.

We pulled up, put on our vests, and step out of the truck to see a car about 50 yards into the woods, driven head on into a tree with significant front end damage.  We see someone pinned in the passenger seat, a man walking around on the far driver's side, and a deputy leaning into the driver's rear window, talking to someone we can't see and holding a leg, wrapped in a Chux (the disposable pad you place beneath someone to absorb fluid).

Modified scene size-up: not so good.

The force had been enough to throw the backseat passenger sideways and to the floor; she was just large enough in a smallish vehicle to get wedged there.  Someone managed to pry the door open on the side by her head, leaving us a small doorway and the opposite window to extricate her.  Without compromising her spine, four of us were trying to lift her up and out from the floor onto a backboard, but her middle section kept slipping her back down to the floor.  We eventually realized someone would have to lift from the middle, so I climbed up the tree with my sore shoulder and lowered myself feet first into the car through the driver's window.

It took a few good heaves, but we finally succeeded in un-wedging her.  As we were passing her body out the door, her leg got handed to me for support (the deputy's arms were only so long, leaning in through the window as he was).  I hadn't yet looked at what was beneath the pad, but I could feel that something wasn't right; it fell away as I took hold.

And this is the still frame, my memory's snapshot that creeps home with me.  In the background, the fire department hydraulic equipment is winding up.  The passenger, still trapped, is moaning in pain next to me. The patient herself is crying out: in pain, in fear, in confusion.  Twenty or so rescuers are yelling commands to each other.  I can hear dispatch calling us on my partner's radio.  In a front seat that is smashed to half the normal size, with a steering wheel in my back, I am kneeling in glass and have blood smeared up my arms and down my shirt.

And in my hands I'm holding a tibia.  Not a jagged-edged one poking out through an open fracture, not one that's even bleeding a large amount, but just four inches of the end of a leg bone, attached to a living, breathing, screaming person.  The foot had been essentially torn off and was hanging to the side.

And she was still moving it.  Gross.  Just effing gross.

I've seen and touched worse.  I used to be fascinated, and on some weird level I still am, but in many ways to me now it's just...nothing.  Just a bone.  Just a leg.  Just a foot.

So why, on this day, did I just want to drop her leg, burst into tears, and walk off the job for good?  I realized I was holding her foot with such tenderness; all I wanted to do was put it down so I could hug her and tell her, somehow, this was going to be ok.  Not today and not for a long time, but someday.

I have a feeling this has everything and anything to do with music and its appearance back in my life.  My heart is not numb anymore.  And that's not to say that I haven't been doing my heart's work these many years, showing up whenever I'm called and being in largest part the emotional support for panicked, hurting people, but...

But...

But...

All I could think then, and all I'm still thinking now, is, "I don't want to do this anymore."

It was only one car (i.e. no warring parties and no separation from my partner).  There was no significant bleeding.  There were no other life-threatening injuries.  No fatalities.  Traffic was controlled and all agencies were cooperating.  (See?  Not a memorable call.)

I can do this.  I'm smart, capable, calm.  I'm good at what I do.  I just don't want to anymore.  It's not normal to have become "meh" about such horrible things.

Once we were in the ambulance, I rewrapped and propped her foot as best I could.  I explained to her each of the five times she asked me (yes, I counted) that her husband was fine and we were working on extricating her son but I did not know what his injuries were (I still, always, and will never pretend to know something I don't or deny something I do know).  I was patient, because I remember.  When her husband arrived in the truck along side her, on his own backboard, I asked everyone to be quiet before I joined their hands, asked him to say hello to his wife, and to tell her in his own voice that he was ok.  I saw the deep breath, the visible relief on her face, and only then did she stop asking.  Only then did her blood pressure and pulse drop.

I was her, then.  I knew what she needed to hear and know.

I've always been more interested in the person than in the technicalities of their care; I am fascinated by the human body, but I'm more interested in the connection to the spirit within it.  That used to be enough to cancel out the rest - all the disgusting sights, smells, sensations.  All the disrespect, stress, missed meals, and small paychecks.

It's going to be so hard to leave this work that has given meaning to my experience, my recovery, my life.   I actually dread having to tell people what I do for a living these days; I don't want to talk about it.  I'm done. I've healed.  I don't want to see anymore and I want to move on.  I never again want to go home haunted by the sensation and image of someone's warm, wet leg bone in my hands, wearing her blood all day, picking glass shards out of my knees.

The question becomes, "How do I make new meaning for my life now?"

How do I work with people in the way that I truly want to?  What am I willing to give up for what I might gain?

I don't know the answer.  I only know that I finally get it.  This chapter is coming to an end.

Soon.