As Bill negotiated the three point turn, I unraveled the cord around the teardrop blue light, plugged it in and threw it onto the roof of Bill’s small red Toyota, giving us the most Starsky and Hutch like feeling we had ever had. Bill had recently graduated from high school with me and eventually decided to join me in the volunteer fire service. It had only been a few weeks since his application was approved when we got this call.
I held the handle of the passenger door tightly as Bill sped off the main road onto a hilly back road, a shortcut we had gotten used to, to get to the firehouse. I was thinking ahead trying to give Bill tips about driving with a blue light on since this was his maiden blue light voyage. The words seem to fall on deaf ears as Bill just seemed to get faster and faster passing cars without hesitation.
We turned from Convent Road on to Red Hill Road, To our right was an open pasture with horses at the far end, bordered by a white wooden fence. To our left, woods. The road was only two lanes wide with a small yellow line in the middle. Just ahead was a sharp bend to the left….and we were approaching a car in front of us. I was more familiar with these roads than Bill since I had been using them to respond to calls much longer than him. I knew that just around the bend there would be a wider open area of road where we could get around this car with ease. I tried to tell Bill …
The words were completely formed in my head and were only beginning to emerge from my lips when it happened…
To my shock, Bill turned the wheel and moved the car into the oncoming lane just three car lengths away from the sharp blind bend. He accelerated enough to get by the slower car in front of us but, not fast enough to get back into our lane. Suddenly I saw headlights coming toward us. The mid afternoon sun was shining high above, but the large station wagon coming toward us in the same lane, had their high beams on. And in the next split second, we collided.
The next thing I remember was waking up in the passenger seat, Bill lying across my lap, my right arm searing with pain, and my vision blurred by the blood dripping down my face. I looked out the front windshield and realized we were now sitting in a field, down an embankment, but facing the road. At the top of the hill cars were stopping and people were making their way down the grassy hill to our car. I couldn’t move my right arm, and Bill was not answering my calls to wake up or to move off of me. The bystanders trying to help us weren’t able to open either door.
Things started becoming clearer to me. We had just been in an accident. We landed in a field off the road. Bill is unconscious and covered in blood. I am hurt, and apparently we are both trapped. The next thing I remember is waking up again, and there is a rescue truck parked at the top of the hill. I see George Baldwin, the old school Fire Chief walking through the grass toward the car wrapping a splint with gauze. I see John Richardson manhandling the large box containing a hydraulic tool kit which typically requires two men to carry. John picks it up by the two handles and carries it down the embankment by himself. I scan across the scene and then find Donna, my girlfriend at the time, sitting on the back of the rescue truck crying, being consoled by another firefighter. Each one of these observations added up to one thing in my mind, we were in a serious car accident and these guys were scared. And now, so was I.
I looked around the inside of the car and realized Bill’s legs were pinned under the left front side of the car which had been pushed in by the collision. Somehow he repositioned himself and was now lying between the two seats, with his legs still hidden under the metal. I was just able enough to reach out with my left arm to the button on the cassette deck to stop the Kansas music still playing. My right arm only moved above the elbow. I would try to reach for the door handle, and only the top part of my arm moved. My hand never left my lap. In front of the driver’s seat, the steering wheel was crushed and the windshield was shattered. My side of the windshield wasn’t broken. This made me feel a little better about my own condition, but I was extremely worried about Bill. He had only muttered a few words and lost consciousness again.
I watched as crews used the Jaws of Life on Bill’s side of the car. As happens in many accidents, the metal began pushing inward instead of out away from the patient.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” I yelled with all the strength I could muster. I could see the metal coming closer and closer to Bill’s legs from my side. Again, I lose consciousness.
The next time I wake up I am being wheeled along side the rescue truck on a stretcher. My right arm is wrapped up and feels like its tied to something like a splint. As we pass Donna she reaches out for my hand crying. We keep moving to the back of an ambulance parked nearby. After I am loaded into the ambulance I recognize the crew I am with. I knew Walt was driving and Joe was the EMT in the back with me. It was nice to have familiar faces along for the ride, but that didn’t matter for long.
The ambulance ride from the scene to the ER at Crozer Chester Medical Center was the longest ride of my life. It became very apparent that I had broken my right arm above the elbow. Because of this, I felt every crack in the road, every bump, every turn…
The excruciating pain of two bones rubbing together lasted for as long as the ride to the hospital. At one point I yelled to Joe,
“Tell him to slow the hell down!”
I was calmly advised by the helpless EMT that we were already crawling way under the speed limit. Still, the sharp pain ripped through me with every bump.
Inside the bustling Emergency Room, nurses and doctors swarmed around me. From all angles faces leered over me. I was moved into a bed from the stretcher and that was the last time I saw Joe and Walt. Suddenly, I was in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar faces. Although I was over 18, I called everything to a halt.
“I just don’t want anything to happen until my mom gets here…”
And they listened. The number of curious faces peering in at me dwindled. I was left with a few regular faces still trying to convince me they should start treating me. The second thing I wanted to hear was about Bill.
“I need to know how Bill is…the other guy in the accident.” I explained to many nurses. They politely tried to explain that he would be fine, and that he wasn’t brought in to the same ER.
“Well before anyone does anything to me I want to hear how Bill is.” I insisted.
Shortly after, my mother and brother appeared in my room.
“Mom, find out how Bill is, he’s really bad…bleeding a lot!” she grabbed my hand trying to calm me. “He’s really bad mom…” I began to tear up.
Gradually I allowed the nurses to take care of whatever they thought I needed done. One by one they would come into the room with bandages, gauze and one actually came in with a syringe of some sort. I made it clear that I did not want any needles, the true wimp through and through. They were trying to numb me up for the seting of the right arm. The nurse listened to my protests then winked at my mother…
“We’ll start without the needle and when you feel the pain you’ll ask for it.”
The procedure went without a hitch. The arm was broken in two places, and the doctor set it beautifully, and without pain meds. In fact, the ant-needle order had spread through the ER and when it was time to give me a tetanus shot, the nurse actually snuck in behind the curtain behind me, quickly wiped my upper arm with an alcohol swab and stuck me before I could even tell what was happening. I had become victim to a cleverly planned sneaky drive-by sticking. And my mother, she just smiled.
I continued to ask about Bill and it was some time before the word finally reached me. Bill had been transported to a different hospital, and to me that was very confusing. I was the one at the trauma center, and he went to a different non-trauma emergency room? He was the one with blood all over him and unconscious in the care when I left him. I didn’t understand.
My mother left the room and returned in a few minutes with more of an update from the other hospital.
“Pat, Bill is at Riddle Hospital, and he has a broken leg, he is going to be fine.”
Again, my mind raced. I could still see him lying covered in blood and not responding to my calls. How could this be? When I asked about the blood he was losing, my mother added calmly…
“The only cut Bill has is a small one on his back, other than that he wasn’t bleeding Patrick. The blood you saw was yours…”
The words travelled in one ear and somehow banged around inside my head for what seemed like forever. Finally, it all made sense. Bill was lying on my lap, my head and face was bleeding so much it covered Bill who was below me. It suddenly clicked.
Then one last thought ran through my head before the pace picked up…
“Well if I am that bad, what are you people waiting for? Fix me up! I’m bleeding here!”
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