Unforgettable

Oh, hello there,

It’s been a while since we had a good chat. Too long, if you ask me. I took some time off. My brain got a little twisted but I’m back. I spent this week thinking about what I wanted to chat about. The obvious would be Halloween. It is, after all, nearly here.

So I started checking out cool Halloween movies that flew under the radar and googling weird Halloween traditions from around the globe but I just kept thinking about death. Not mine, mind you. No, not yours either. I’m thinking about theirs.

**TRIGGER** Actual death descriptions about to take place **TRIGGER*

I won’t say their names. I wouldn’t want to read about my friends/family dying on some stranger’s blog on the internet. It was a man and a woman and their motorcycles.

We were coming home from dinner with my parents. We’d passed many, many bikers. It was a gorgeous night and the sun was setting and everything was bathed in dusty pinks and bruisy purples.

A group of bikers roared up behind us…two started to pass us. They didn’t see the trailer turning in front of us, blocking the lane. He couldn’t slow down – she was right on his tail.

Bam.

I called 911. I was a coward. I wouldn’t look at them. The operator needed me to tell her what was going on. I ran to him. He looked up at me and said her name.

“You’re going to be okay! Hang in there!”

I counted out CPR for the woman hammering on his chest.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. You’re doing great. You’ve got this. 

The woman was thirty feet away, surrounded by her friends. She was groaning and twisted up but alive.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

I pressed towels against a gash in his chest and put my phone on speaker.

Damnit, where is the ambulance?

Sirens. Finally. It had only been ten minutes but it felt like a decade.

They ran to her. The slowly put gloves on for him. They covered him with a blanket.

Paramedics came. She crashed. They loaded her up.

We waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The helicopter landed and special paramedics rushed into the ambulance.

We waited.

and waited.

and waited.

They came out slowly and boarded the chopper alone.

One of her fellow riders screamed into the black night. Sobs filled the air.

It had only been 54 minutes.

I saw their faces and heard those screams every hour for weeks.

It took a while before I realized I never saw any blood. Femoral arteries were severed and gravel was heaped upon the carnage left on the gravel road but I didn’t see any blood. Only the spatter on the CPR-giving-woman’s cheek and a bloody fingerprint on my phone. Funny how the brain works.

I used to be fascinated by death.

I’m not so much anymore.