Hit and run

This afternoon I watched a boy die, then come back to life. The paramedics said he’ll probably die again.

And it was so stupid, and I’m so angry, that I’m not sure what to do. I just want to smash someone.

Driving home, I turned up my street and heard screaming. A teenager lay sprawled in the road, leg terribly bent, eyes staring, cyanotic. His sister stood over him, hands full of blood, screaming for help.

I slammed on the brakes, grabbed the phone and called 911 (which put me, god-dammit, on hold). A white-haired gentleman began CPR as I dialed. I think he’s an orthopedic surgeon, lives up the street from me.

And he wasn’t getting a pulse.

I’ve seen these kids in the morning, waiting for the bus just around the corner from my house. They wave cheerily, call out “hi,” when they’re in the mood. They’re good kids, not that it matters.

911 finally came on the line. “GET THEM HERE NOW!” said the doctor, “I’m finally getting a pulse but his airway’s obstructed. He needs an airway, fast.” A river of blood flowed from the back of the boy’s head, down the street and into the gutter, while I held the phone to the doc’s mouth. He enumerated the damages, and I wished I didn’t understand what he was telling them. It was very bad.

More people turned up to help, nurses and doctors on the way home. We hugged the girl and she cried.

“Where’s the car that hit your brother?” I asked gently, and her eyes grew wild.

“It burned rubber getting out of here!” she screamed, “We weren’t in the middle of the road, we were over on the side, just walking, and it veered over and clipped him and he flew all the way across the street and oh god Mom is going to die. She can’t take this and she’s going to die too. My brother is dying and he didn’t do anything wrong!”

The police and the ambulance and the fire trucks came. The paramedics intubated the kid, kept up the CPR, and he finally started to breathe. He looked so amazingly young, maybe 12, though I knew he was older. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing on his own or if the woman squeezing the bag was doing it, but I hoped. They gently straightened his legs so he was lying flat on the pavement, so he didn’t look so lifeless and thrown away.

The parents arrived in a frantic rush, and the mother grabbed her hair, started to scream. “Mom, don’t look,” cried the daughter, shielding her mother’s eyes, “Just don’t look! He’s going to be fine, Mom. They said so. Don’t look!” The father dropped to his knees, covered his face, and shook.

The police took statements. Two girls saw a dark green or grey SUV. The sister saw a black pickup truck. A neighbor thought it didn’t have a license plate. The parents cried, and held the boy’s toes, gently, as if keeping him anchored to the earth.

The officer standing next to me swore softly. “Fucking assholes,” he said, looking down at the boy’s baseball cap, still at the point of impact. “Fucking driver hit him so hard he came out of his shoes.”

They stabilized the boy, got him strapped into the gurney, and an officer handed the sister a couple of wipes to remove her brother’s blood from her fingers. She swiped, but they weren’t enough. He handed her a whole bottle of cleaner and a cloth, and grimaced.

The mother got into the ambulance with her son and left. The father held his daughter and they sobbed for a moment, then started the long drive to the hospital. The paramedics began cleaning up the paraphernalia of saving a boy’s life, and the blood. The police opened up the barriers to let us go home.

Oh God. Help them be OK. And help the cops catch the bastard that did this.

Update, 8/27/2010: The boy died last night at the hospital, and apparently the woman who hit him has called police and turned herself in. He had just turned 18.

Update, 10/28/2010: The 33-year old woman who turned herself in was indicted for felony hit and run and criminally negligent homicide. No word on why it took so long. or what happened that day, but hopefully this provides a measure of closure for the family. I feel sorry for everyone involved, but I just can’t stop asking, “why did she leave him there?” None of my business, I guess.

What IS my business: School and city buses stop all along this road to pick up passengers, yet in many stretches anyone wanting to reach the bus stop must walk on the road–there’s no sidewalk, no shoulder, only a deep ditch or neighbor’s fence. We need to fix that before someone else is killed. The county re-marked the road lines in the days following the boy’s death…but that’s not enough.

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