Yesterday, In Fact
When I emerged, I saw the cluster of people. They stood at the edge of the sidewalk, next to the road.
There's something about the way people move after an accident. Every step is deliberate. Their hands elevate. Their fingers spread and get ready to grip. Their gazes drift to the area where they saw it happen. In this case, four citizens advanced to the edge of the curb, closer to the asphalt than people normally stand. Among them, a man held himself back, poised, fingers slightly spread, unsure of what to do. My wife strode over to join them.
I had emerged onto the street a few minutes after we finished dinner. I'd paid the bill and slipped on my coat. Taking those steps made me slower out the door than anyone else. As I paused on the doorstep to comprehend the scene, the owner of the restaurant rushed past me, headed back in. He muttered something to himself. His gaze darted to me with a wide-eyed look of alarm. A moment later, I walked forward to join the group at the edge of the street.
One of my sons met me. Steam puffed out from his nose and lips as he spoke.
"An old lady fell and hit her head," he announced.
"Okay." I joined the crowd. Everyone else had surrounded the body. There was nothing for me to do.
Sometimes I arrive on the scene early enough to administer care. Other times, I'm so late there's no question of helping. This evening, I seemed caught in an in-between state. My wife had knelt next to the fallen woman. She was part of the inner circle of care. Members of the woman's family had occupied the other spots. An oldish man, salt-and-pepper haired, stalked off with his mobile phone in his hand. He was trying to place a call for an ambulance with an urgent tone to his voice.
In about half a minute, I understood I would need to wait. I had to look for my chance to help. Fortunately, it didn't take long.
"Get the blanket from the trunk," my wife said. However, first she spoke to my daughter. It took her a moment to notice me. "You've got the key. Go get the blanket out. We need to elevate her legs."
Later, I would learn it was my youngest son who had noticed first. When he saw the woman was bleeding, he tried to tell to tell her family to elevate her legs and keep oxygen flowing to her brain. Her family wasn't listening, really. Only my wife heard him.
The old woman didn't seem able to move. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. Beneath her, the sidewalk was hard and freezing. Keeping her conscious and maybe warmer seemed like a fine idea.
My car was only a few steps away but two of my grown children beat me to it. After I opened the trunk, my daughter took the blanket out of my hand. She scurried back to the scene of the fall.
When I returned to the sidewalk, I learned that the woman who had fallen from her walker was ninety-seven years old. She had reached a tilt in the concrete. It signaled the beginning of the driveway to the restaurant parking lot. The incline was too much for her. The walker had pitched forward and to the left. She had tumbled, backward and to her right side, perhaps as she was trying not to fall face first. She had slammed the right side of her head above the temple. Someone in her group had heard her skull crack.
A few people muttered about how fragile her bones were. Then someone said, "Can we stop the bleeding?"
"I don't think we can move her."
"That sounds like a bad idea," my wife said. She was probably imagining what could go wrong if someone tried to apply pressure on a fractured skull. Although she was kneeling, she put a hand on her own hip for a moment. Someone said a few words about the blood getting in the woman's eyes.
"Get napkins," my wife decided. She took her hand off her hip and pointed to my closest son. When he didn't move right away, she turned to my daughter, then to me. "Help them find napkins in your car. Find anything to clean up the blood."
"Napkins, right."
As I headed to our little Chevy Cruz again, I realized I was out of practice in lending care. I should have thought of getting napkins as soon as someone mentioned blood. Or maybe I was standing to far on the edge of the scene, not really getting a view of the problems up close, not seeing the blood dripping into someone's eyes. The distance made me passive, so I had let someone closer to give me a realistic sense of direction.
And the direction was: get napkins. So I did. As I pulled them from the glove compartment, my grown children took them from my hands, three batches each in their turn. By the time I returned to the scene of the accident, Diane was using them, sopping up blood. The inner circle of helpers were trying to keep the woman comfortable on the frigid Christmas Eve sidewalk. Her son, the man with the phone, informed us an ambulance was a minute away.
During the minute, which took at least twice the time, my wife covered the woman's legs again with the blanket. Underneath the blanket, she rubbed the woman's calves. I think that was at the request of the victim, who was in pain and immobile yet still conscious.
When the ambulance arrived, I guessed our duties to assist were coming to an end. A pair of youngish men got out with a stretcher. They had a clear idea of what they wanted. For a minute or two, I simply watched. They rolled the woman on her side so she wouldn't choke on her vomit. They strapped her to a stretcher.
"Where are we going to put all these things she dropped?" someone in her family asked.
"We need a bag."
"Honey!" Diane raised her hand. She turned and found me with her gaze. "Go back into the restaurant and get a bag for the family. They need to carry her things."
"Okay." I nodded as I headed back through the door I'd exited earlier. My youngest son followed me. As it turned out, I was able to get bags promptly. The owner helped, wide-eyed, but with speed. My son took the brown to-go bags from my hand and headed out before I could do more.
Out in the cold again, I watched the helpers and the ambulance crew work in parallel. I realized I hadn't seen my wife in quite this level of response before. I had been with her for ages, it seemed, starting when we were different people - when she'd panicked in emergencies. I'd given her directions and had her assist me in urgent situations. We did our best, sometimes with friends, sometimes strangers, parents, and our children. Parenting is sometimes like that. This time, many years after our first opportunity to help together, she was perfect. My adult children moved to assist her faster than I did, too. My daughter was first with the blanket and napkins. My youngest son got there early with the bags. I felt I'd done some small part but it was entirely by lending assistance to the assisters.
There was a little more, I realized. I'd done something, who knows what, to help get our family to this point. We lent aid to an injured woman, as good citizens should. We accomplished our deeds in a competent manner, not over-reaching, just finding a few useful things to do. Then we watched the ambulance take the elderly woman away.
"We've got her things," said a middle-aged woman. She raised one of the bags we gave her. "The restaurant won't take the trash."
In a second restaurant bag were wads of our napkins, now sodden with vomit and blood. Maybe it was no surprise the place didn't want it back. They had refused to touch it, even to dispose of it.
"I'll do it," my wife volunteered. She took the bag for us to throw out at home.
When we want to help, it’s never about us. But I'm so full of the idea of leaping into action, it's a surprise when my wife saves the day before me, when my daughter strides ahead, when my son moves faster than I can. In such times, the best we can do is help the helpers. Bystanders must occasionally stand by. We may not even know if the small part we played did any good. Maybe our best deed was only, in conjunction with others, to give it a good try.
We got in the car, dark and cold. My grown children rocked the suspension beneath us. My wife slammed her door. She placed the bag of vomit and blood at her feet. And I turned the ignition.
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